Hike Chuskyurmo - Lartsa

Chuskyurmo is always charming in the morning at nice weather – the canyon walls, whose passage is now awaiting you, are well lit and directly above you rises the jagged peak, on its walls take you a turning from the secret lookout.

The entire canyon is quite narrow and its walls are made of red rocks. The walk is definitely more interesting than yesterday's walk through wide river valley full of boulders.

As in every canyon there is the greatest enemy of every photographer – constant shadow. But even so, there are however some nicely lit places where you can admire the geology of Ladakh.

Local attractions are beautiful rock mushrooms that were made here in these local strange muddy rocks with pebbles by powerful erosion.

Along the way there are a couple of pools and even a small ford, but they can be easily jumped over on the stones – nothing difficult.

If water level rises, there could be at this small waterfalls problems with further walk, because the path now leads here through riverbed. The old original path is already in many places destroyed by landslides and was not repaired again.

In some places it is clearly visible how much work was done to build the old trail. Gaps in the rocks are lined with thousands and thousands of stones. Unfortunately, there is no one today to maintain this path.
 

After an hour and a half walk the valley spreads and you walk along quite unpopular path between boulders. Here and there flashes the final ridge on the horizon. After an hour lasting weaving between the stones you come closer to the rock gate, where it may be at the beginning of summer and after heavy rains quite interesting with passage.

Rock gate is the narrowest part of the canyon – you barely fit here together with the horse with heavy burden. At the time of high water this place may be impassable. From here begins the steep winding ascent above the river and the path then continues for a while relatively high above the bottom of the canyon.

The ascent route is narrow, so if you happened to meet a caravan of horses, you must wait until they pass. But you cannot meet more than 1–2 caravans a day, so you walk all the time virtually alone.
 

Altitude slowly goes over 4600 meters and mountains appear for the first time through the canyon walls far on the horizon.

Just a few meters before the camp Lartsa appear before you shallow ridge with a prominent pass Kongmaru la ( 5260 m asl ), which is still about 600 vertical meters higher than you are now, so you need to think carefully about whether you have enough energy to cross today or you camp already here. Your decision depend not just on your physical acclimatization and energy, but also on the weather that is changing very quickly here and intense hourly rain or storm can thwart your plans easily.
 

You will reach Lartsa camp in 3–3.5 hours walking, so if you have energy and weather permits, you can go over the pass. Anyway, it’s quite uncomfortable here – it is just two small pitches for tents. But there is nice a few meters high waterfall a few meters away.

If you do not continue on, you can make a short expedition without the backpack – after about 300 meters further you will find out that trekking path turns into a dry side valley and the main path turns sharply to the east, so you can possibly make a small exploratory trip in this direction.