“How fit do I need to be?” gets a folklore answer almost everywhere. It should get an arithmetic answer, because our route cards publish their numbers: the passes, the hours, the kilometres and the terrain. This page reads those numbers the way a coach would, and builds the eight weeks backwards from them.
What the numbers actually ask.
Take the hardest honest days from the cards. The in-depth trek’s day three: fourteen kilometres of moraine and scree, about eight hours, on the third day out. The Riuqi Pass day: twelve to fourteen kilometres, eight hours, to 4,850 or 4,950 metres depending on the route. The Yala pass day: “five or six hours” of climbing to 4,800 metres under the west face. And the day everyone underrates: the long valley descent out of the Riuqi country, twelve to eighteen kilometres, all of it eccentric loading on tired quadriceps. That is the full ask on every supported route we run. The self-supported trek adds the pack: everything, 80 litres, on your back.
The eight weeks.
Weeks one and two — the base. Three walks a week of ninety minutes at a pace that holds a conversation, plus one longer weekend walk of three hours. Nothing clever; you are building the habit the plateau will spend.
Weeks three and four — the pack. Same rhythm, now with a day pack of five, then seven kilograms — water and books are fine. One walk a week finds real hills or staircases; the descent half is done deliberately slowly, because the downhill problem below is coming.
Weeks five and six — the back-to-backs. The plateau does not ask for one big day; it asks for tomorrow to exist. The weekend becomes two consecutive walking days of four to five hours, the second starting tired. This is the single most trip-specific thing you can train, and the one most plans skip.
Weeks seven and eight — the rehearsal. One six-to-seven-hour day with 1,000 honest metres of ascent, pack at trip weight, boots fully broken in — the packing list covers the kit. Then a light final week, because arriving rested is training too.
The downhill problem.
The injuries on trekking trips are overwhelmingly descent injuries, and the route cards quietly agree: the Riuqi exit day is the longest walk of the trek and it is all down. Downhill is trainable and almost never trained — slow, controlled descents on stairs and steep paths, knees tracking over toes, poles in the hands from the top. If the eight weeks buy you only one skill, buy the descent.
What training cannot buy.
The honest caveat, in the same words the routes use: no gym produces acclimatisation. Fitness lets you walk eight hours; only time at altitude lets you walk eight hours at 4,500 metres, and that is why the routes are built as ladders — the sleeping ladder and the road days are the training plan’s last two weeks, run by the itinerary instead of the gym. The altitude guide explains the physiology; the practical version is that the fitter you are, the easier it is to walk slowly on the acclimatisation days, which is exactly what they ask.
How you know you are ready.
Three checkpoints from the plan. The week-six back-to-back: finished, tired but intact, boots unblistered. The week-seven long day: six-plus hours with the pack and a working descent. And the kitchen-table test from the grading page: you can point at your route’s hardest card and name its numbers without flinching. If all three are true, the plateau’s ask is covered — and the calendar decides when to collect.
Training loads anchored to the route pages’ published distances, hours and altitudes, checked 7 November 2026.
Pick the pass?
All 15 routes, honestly graded
The sleeping ladder, route by route