Dudh Kosi Bridge
Project details
In 1964, the same season his expedition built the Lukla airstrip, Sir Edmund Hillary's team put up a bridge across the Dudh Kosi, the fast-flowing river running through the Pharak valley on the main route into Khumbu. John McKinnon, who later became Khunde Hospital's first doctor, was on the same 1964 expedition and remembered it simply as the one "which also built the Lukla airstrip, a bridge and a few schools."
By the late 1960s the crossing was known locally as "the high swinging bridge across the Dudh Kosi," daunting enough that one terrified trekker refused to cross it without a doctor holding her hand. The river has not spared it: a 1977 glacial dam-burst in the Mingbo valley swept bridges away as far south as Chaurikharka, and a much larger flood in 1985 destroyed every bridge for 80 kilometres down the Bhote Kosi and Dudh Kosi. Bridges in this valley have had to be rebuilt more than once.
The Dudh Kosi Bridge went up in the same 1964 season as the Lukla airstrip, part of a single expedition that also built several village schools. John McKinnon, a young mountaineer who later became Khunde Hospital's first doctor, was one of those who took part. Looking back on the trip, he described it simply as the expedition "which also built the Lukla airstrip, a bridge and a few schools."
The crossing itself became something of a local legend. By the late 1960s it was known as "the high swinging bridge across the Dudh Kosi," and it unsettled visitors more than the mountains around it did. One trekker became so afraid of re-crossing it that she refused to move until the Khunde doctor walked her down more than a thousand metres of steep track, gave her medication to calm her nerves, and held her hand the whole way across.
The Dudh Kosi valley has never been an easy place to keep a bridge standing. In September 1977, a glacial dam burst in the Mingbo valley above Tengboche and sent a wall of water down the valley, sweeping away bridges as far south as Chaurikharka. A much larger flood in August 1985, triggered by an ice avalanche into a glacial lake above Thame, was worse again: it destroyed every bridge for 80 kilometres down the Bhote Kosi and Dudh Kosi. Whatever crosses the river at this site today has, in all likelihood, been rebuilt more than once since 1964.