Mera Peak Expedition, 6,461 m

No, and most people who book this have none. Day 10 at Khare is a full day of instruction on the glacier: crampons, axe, harness, jumar, abseil, and moving roped as a group. What Mera asks for is stamina at altitude and a willingness to be taught, not a climbing CV.

Fit enough to walk four to seven hours a day for a fortnight, on consecutive days, on rough ground, and then to keep moving for nine to eleven hours on summit day starting at two in the morning. The training plan on this page is what we would give a reasonably active person twelve weeks out.

Harder in the ways that wear you down and easier in the ways that scare you. Mera is nearly 300 m higher, the approach is twice as long, and you sleep two nights in tents above 5,300 m. Island Peak has a steeper, more technical headwall but a much shorter walk in. Most people find Mera the bigger day out.

Across the industry roughly four in five climbers who set out from high camp get to the top, and weather and altitude account for almost all of the rest. Our profile carries an extra acclimatisation night and a spare summit day, which helps, but nobody can promise you a summit and we will not.

No upper one. We have taken climbers in their sixties to the top and turned back climbers in their twenties. The youngest we accept is sixteen, with a parent on the trip. What matters is a history of long days in hills, not your birth year.

Mera Central, 6,461 m. The peak is usually listed at 6,476 m, which is Mera North, a more technical top about three hours further on that most commercial parties do not attempt. We will say Central on your certificate because that is where you stood.

You leave high camp around two in the morning because the snow is firm then and the wind is usually lighter. Four to five hours of slow, roped walking up a wide glacier, then a steep fifty metres on a fixed rope, then the top. Down to Khare the same day, so nine to eleven hours in total.

Gently, for almost all of it. The glacier from high camp rises at an angle you would happily walk up without a rope if it were rock. The exception is the final headwall below the summit, which is short, steep enough to need a jumar, and rigged with fixed rope through both climbing seasons.

Yes, on the glacier between Mera La and the summit, and more of them in a warm spring than a cold autumn. You walk roped together from the moment you leave Khare, your guide chooses the line, and the early start exists partly so that snow bridges are frozen when you cross them.

Ropes, ice screws, snow bars and the tented camps are ours. Boots, crampons, harness, jumar, descender, helmet and axe are personal, and you can bring your own or hire a set in Kathmandu for about $150 for the trip. We fit everything on day 2 rather than at 5,045 m in the cold.

Three acclimatisation days, at Chutanga, Thaknak and Khare, each of which climbs several hundred metres and comes back down to sleep. Above Khare the sleeping gains are 305 m and then 430 m, both inside the guidance the Himalayan Rescue Association publishes. Fifteen-day versions of this climb skip one of those days.

It is the one day on this route that breaks the rule, and there is no way around it: between Chutanga and Thuli Kharka there is a 4,610 m pass and nowhere to sleep. That is exactly why day 4 is a rest day beforehand and why day 6 drops you 700 m to Kothe afterwards. We would rather explain it than hide it.

An emergency bottle and mask travel with the team from Khare upward, and your guide carries a pulse oximeter the whole way. The oxygen is there to get somebody down, not to get anybody up. Nobody on our departures climbs Mera on supplementary oxygen and nobody needs to.

You stay at Khare with a member of our crew while the rest of the party climbs, which costs you nothing extra and happens on perhaps one departure in four. If you need to lose height instead, we walk you down to Kothe. Nobody is ever left to sort themselves out.

No. The Hinku has no clinic, no road and nothing like the Pheriche aid post that the Everest trail has. The nearest real medicine is a helicopter to Kathmandu, which is why we ask to see insurance that covers climbing to 6,500 m and helicopter evacuation before you fly to Lukla.

Three. The NMA climbing permit for Mera, the Makalu Barun National Park entry permit, and the Khumbu Pasang Lhamu Rural Municipality permit you buy in Lukla. All three are in your package price. A refundable garbage deposit is lodged per team and comes back when the rubbish does.

Not for this trip. A climbing permit replaces it, and the Khumbu dropped TIMS in 2018 in favour of the municipality permit. You will still see it listed on other operators' pages for Mera. Do not buy one.

A policy that names mountaineering or high-altitude trekking to at least 6,500 m and covers helicopter evacuation and repatriation. Standard travel insurance almost never does, and the cheap upgrade that says 6,000 m is not enough for this peak. Send us the certificate before you fly, not after.

Simple lodges as far as Khare, with plywood walls, a stove in the dining room and no heating in the bedrooms. Above that, two nights in tents at 5,350 m and 5,780 m. We supply a bag rated to minus twenty and a mat, and at high camp you sleep in your down jacket.

Patchy, and it stops at Khare. Lodges from Kothe upward charge around $3 to $5 a device and sell data cards that work on a good day. There is nothing at all at base camp or high camp. Bring a power bank, keep it inside your sleeping bag at night, and tell people at home to expect silence.

A screened toilet tent with a drum that we carry back out. It is cold, it is the least pleasant part of the trip, and it is a great deal better than the alternative that the mountain has been getting for thirty years. Please use it rather than the snow.

The NMA royalty for a peak of this height is $350 a climber in spring and $175 in autumn, winter and summer. That $175 difference is the whole of the price gap on this page. We pass it through at cost rather than averaging it out and quietly pocketing the difference in October.

International flights, your Nepal visa, insurance, personal climbing gear if you do not hire ours, drinks, hot showers, charging, wifi and tips. Budget $300 to $500 in cash on top of the tips. There is no ATM anywhere in the Hinku and no card machine above Lukla.

Two to three months for October and November, because Lukla flights and the better lodges at Khare fill early. Six weeks is usually enough for spring. We have put people on a climbing permit in five days when somebody dropped out, so it is always worth asking.