A Squamish couple will be taking the trek of a lifetime to promote the need for water access.
Maja and Jeff Aro are hiking through the Himalayas with a group of 11 trekkers from Canada and the U.S. They leave from Katmandu on Thursday for a trip that will take them to the base camp for Mount Everest and to project sites in Nepal for the charity WaterAid Canada.
“It’s one of these bucket list adventures,” Maja told The Squamish Chief prior to leaving. “I’ve always wanted to go to the Everest base camp.”
A few years back, the Aros did a climb of Mount Kilimanjaro when they were in Africa to help raise money to build homes for women affected by the AIDS crisis. The base camps for Mount Everest are at around 6,000 metres high, about the same altitude as Mount Kilimanjaro.
To honour their previous adventure, the Aros changed their last names as a tribute to the African mountain by taking the last three letters. Jeff’s last name was originally Ong, while Maja’s was Stace-Smith.
Maja said she has donated to WaterAid before, so the trip seemed like a natural fit. The aid organization has projects in 37 countries that support safe water, sanitation and hygiene.
The trek will take the group to areas that were heavily affected by an earthquake last year, which destroyed nearly half of the water supplies and left thousands of people without clean water.
Maja said they will be visiting a number of villages in the region.
“We’re spending at least one day in one of the villages that was hardest hit,” she explained. “A lot of them are really small and really remote… There’s not necessarily a mad rush to fix those systems.”
The April 2015 earthquake in Nepal killed 9,000 people and injured another 22,000, in addition to disrupting much of the infrastructure in the region. It even triggered an avalanche on Mount Everest that killed 21 people.
Maja is unsure how directly involved they will be with work to help restore water in the communities.
“I’m not sure how hands-on they’ll let us be,” she said.
The Aros work in the film industry as stunt performers and coordinators. While Jeff is finishing a TV series, Maja is just starting one, although she says her bosses were able to let her have the time off because they recognize it is for a good cause.
“Most of it is for raising awareness for water,” she said.
The couple has not been undertaking any special preparation for the trek, but they have done a little extra climbing lately.
“We’ve been hiking the gondola every weekend,” Maja said.
WaterAid has produced a virtual reality documentary, Aftershock, that takes viewers into the village of Kharelthok in the hillsides of Nepal to experience what it is like to make the difficult walk for water or to plough the fields, all in 360 degrees.
For more information on Aftershock and what they do, go to
aftershock.wateraid.org.
