Three days prior to what for many will be the adventure of a lifetime, photographer Michael Powers gathers participants at Ocean Studio, Powers’ hand-built work space at his home on the Miramar shores. After looking at maps and taking a final pre-trip group photo, last-minute questions arise as he hands out an updated calendar itinerary.
“What will we do if someone has trouble with the altitude?” asks Mary Anne Chase, who lives in Frenchmans Creek. For the group of 14 headed to Nepal for 13-day trek in the Himalayas, altitude sickness poses one of the greatest dangers and most difficult to understand challenges.
  
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Laughter helps to relieve some of the anxiety but even the reassurance that the expedition is being organized and led by Karma Lama, a native of the mountain region who has more than 20 years of experience guiding tours on the route to Everest does little to alleviate concerns about something that could affect even the most healthy and physically fit.
“The goal is not to get to the top,” explains Lama who co-founded Half Moon Bay-based KarmaQuest Ecotourism and Adventure Travel with his wife, Wendy, 10 years ago. “Everyone has to have in their own mind how hard to push themselves,” he told Powers a week earlier, over breakfast at Café Classique. “Each one has to know their limit.”
Adventurers at heart, Powers and Lama have been swapping stories of harrowing and heart-lifting journeys for more than two years. They talk between weightlifting sets at Coastal Lifestyles Health and Fitness Center in Princeton. They share early-morning workout routines. Looking to organize a fourth Ocean Studio expedition, six months ago Powers asked Lama for his idea of the ultimate trip for filmmakers, photographers and writers interested in the mountains of Asia. Lama’s immediate response: the Mani Rimdu festival.
Held under a full moon after monsoon season, the annual Sherpa festival celebrates the culmination of 10 days of prayers to Chenrezig, the Buddha of Compassion. Lamas dance through the night wearing wooden masks and silk robes, also receiving blessings from Rinpoche, the High Lama of the Tyangboche Monastery.
Excited about the potential to document a prominent local gathering along with the reaction of fellow Coastsiders to the indigenous culture and community, Powers and Lama agreed to collaborate on a shared venture between Ocean Studio and KarmaQuest. Within days of hearing about Mani Rimdu, Powers christened a new file folder with scribbled names of potential recruits. He then invited candidates by e-mail, phone and in person chats, holding an informational meeting and planning session one month ago at his Miramar studio with Karma and Wendy Lama.
All told, 15 found the time, energy and resources to join together this week in Kathmandu. The expedition team also includes locals Tim Sullivan of Half Moon Bay and the Ken and Sally Coverdell of Miramar. For some, the journey is a spiritual calling, providing an opportunity to visit a society founded in Tibetan Buddhism, along with the break from the daily grind and time for introspection. Others have made it a physical quest, using the trip as a challenge to get in shape and spend more time outdoors.
Powers has been leading training hikes up Montara Mountain as well as on the Purissima Creek loop. At age 69, he often surprises new hiking partners by bolting far ahead, enjoying both the feeling of exertion and so that he can be ready around the corner to film or photograph the participants as they stroll by.
Powers enjoys the thrill of pushing himself, his gear, and his home to its physical limit. “Any true adventure, I think, has an element of danger to it,” he said, adding that such adventures naturally make for good stories.
“This process we are going through is the same that people have done for centuries and centuries,” he said. “Even with all our technology we are still just storytellers. My goal is for all of us to have a great experience and make a documentary film that will be worth sharing for generations to come.”
For his part, Lama is looking forward to returning to the Himalayas for the first time since 2005. “Since I was young, I always wanted to meet people from other parts of the world. I’m excited to take a group of people from my new community on the Coastside to introduce them to my old friends and family in the region.”
For the next three weeks, Lama and Powers will share in the wonder of witnessing an exchange of values and cultures that comes when those who live in a Western culture at sea level meet Asians who live at high elevation.
In 1998, on a similar trek in the region, Powers was most impressed to visit “a society living without motorized vehicles and very little fossil fuel usage. … To think that almost everything is carried in by hand, down to a single bottle of beer is an amazing thing.”
The group will be walking for 13 days from Lukla to Tyangboche Monastery and on to a dramatic view of Mount Everest from Kalapathar, which, at 18,190 feet, is the highest point on the trek.
Sherpas will carry the majority of the weight and the group will stay in teahouses arranged by KarmaQuest, in consultation with Powers, for optimal photographic opportunities of small villages and sweeping vistas.
“It’s one of the best places on earth,” beams Lama. “Some places you go to look at the mountain as a view. There, you are not just looking at the mountains, you will be a part of them.”
From the Coastside to the Himalayas
This is the first in a special series of field reports from Review photographer Lars Howlett. He is participating in a three-week documentary expedition to Nepal, organized by Half Moon Bay residents Karma and Wendy Lama in collaboration with Michael Powers and Ocean Studio. The trip is made possible, in part, with the support of KarmaQuest Ecotourism and Adventure Travel. This first dispatch was written on Sunday afternoon somewhere between San Francisco and Seoul, Korea, on an 11-hour flight. Howlett was one of about a dozen Coastsiders making the trip. When he returns, Howlett will document the spiritual and physical journey of all involved.
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