In late September, TA Loeffler got on her mountain bike in Lhasa, Tibet, facing a 1,200-kilometre ride. Over the next 15 days she travelled over eight Himalayan mountain passes, ranging from 4,700 to 5,200 metres high, riding 10 hours a day to reach Kathmandu, Nepal.

Only two months previous she celebrated her 40th birthday — 5,000 metres up Mount McKinley. “I didn’t get a birthday cake and I’m still upset,” says Loeffler, an outdoor educator at Memorial University. “I saved myself a Mars bar though.”

The Tibet trek was Loeffler’s second. The first came in 2002 driving a Land Rover. On the top of the country’s mountains, Tibetans place Buddhist prayer flags called “lungta,” which translates to “windhorse.” That’s why Loeffler named her trip the Looking for Windhorse expedition.

Buddhists believe wind releases the energy of the prayers printed on the small bits of cloth. Although her first visit to Tibet was a beautiful journey, Loeffler says something was missing.

In March 2005, she became a Buddhist, and found herself thinking of the prayer flags, and being moved of the idea of them. It was time to go back, with a a slight change. “So many people ride bikes in the world,” she says. “I think it connects me to the rest of humanity … It gives you access to people. Being subject to the wind, being subject to the cold, being subject to the God-awful dust. I wanted to be in the landscape.”

The trip presented many trials for Loeffler. It started when she put together her rented bike, and found it was for a person six-foot-six. She’s five-foot-three. On her second day of riding, her 12-person team rode 30 kilometres uphill. She says it was a grueling start, “but once you get to the top you’re rewarded with the most amazing views.”

The expanse of the Himalayas lay before her, rugged mountain passes, snow-capped peaks and isolated villages. And that was only the beginning. Later, she tackled Pang Pass on the north side of Mount Everest. The road involved 42 hairpin switch backs — snaking back and forth as it ran up the mountainside — over 22 kilometres of road.

“We heard the road maker was paid by the kilometre,” she says. “But it seemed like it would be harder coming in the other direction — there were 60 switch backs on the far side, going down.”

The expedition stayed at the Everest base camp — 5,000 metres above sea level.

Hard life at 5,000 metres

“It’s a pretty funny idea to take a rest night at 5,000 metres — life’s just hard up there,” she says. At that height, the oxygen level in the air is cut in half. After leaving the base camp the team took a “shortcut” through another 5,000-metre mountain pass, which Loeffler describes as basically a yak track through the side hills. On the plus side, it let her roll down the world’s longest downhill, a long, bumpy, washboard road. She flew down, riding much of the way with no hands. She calls it the most cosmic experience of her life — until it leveled out to a three per cent grade and the headwind picked up. She says plowing into the cold, hard-driving mountain wind was just like peddling uphill.

“The universe was playing quite a joke,” she says with a laugh. Generally, the people were friendly, giving high-fives as riders passed, but being on a bike almost caused her bodily harm — when villagers attacked her with rocks. The children wanted candy or a toy, some trinket, says Loeffler. She didn’t have anything. They began throwing good sized rocks at her, while another group set up a human barricade in front of her.

“I rode my bike directly at one young man hoping he would balk,” she remembers. “He did.” A person doesn’t wake up and decide to ride through eight 5,000-metre mountain passes every day of the week. Loeffler went through gruelling training that would be trying to someone half her age.

Tough training regime

Six days a week she began at 6 a.m. She rode her bike two hours to Cape Spear or Pouch Cove, anywhere she could think of, then shower at 8 o’-clock and be teaching at MUN by nine. On her lunch hour she trained at step aerobics — with her backpack on — or did pilates. Another training session came after work, from 5-7 p.m. In bed by 9:30 p.m., she was back up the next morning to do it all over again. That was her regular schedule. Then there was the extra stuff. Loeffler would pick a downtown street and bike all the way up it, move one street over, and come all the way down. She had a Signal Hill day, where she would ride up the hill as many times as she could in an hour. Her record was 4.25. “The part coming back down was never long enough,” she says.

Then there’s her base-line training climbing Mount McKinley in Alaska, North America’s highest peak at almost 6,200 metres — more than 20,000 feet.

Next for Loeffler might be Mount Everest. She’s toying with the idea of scaling Pumori, the 7,000-metre daughter of Everest. She has to climb it to qualify for the big one. One in 10 people don’t come back from Everest, but that’s not what scares Loeffler. “The fundraising! That has me shaking in my boots.”

Taking the flag to Everest

She’ll need $60,000 to $80,000 to pay the Tibetan government for the privilege taking the Newfoundland flag to the top of Everest. If she does climb to the highest point in the world, Loeffler plans to take it easy back in Newfoundland. Maybe climb a few local mountains, possibly circumnavigate the island in a kayak. Nothing too strenuous.

dstevens@thetelegram.com