Photo: From the terrace of a tea house near Gong Gang, Marty witnessed a rockslide, his first indication that a geologic event had occurred. Martin Emanuel

The air was clean, and the sky was clear when Martin Emanuel, 72, of Decatur left Kathmandu, Nepal, with a guide and a porter for a seven-week trek through the Himalayas on April 25.

Home to Mount Everest, our planet's highest peak, the Himalayas span 1,500 miles and define the border between India and China.

Marty and his crew headed northwest, deviating from his original itinerary, to the Tamang Heritage Trail, away from Langtang Village. A friend of the guide owned a tea house in the Tamang area, and Marty accepted the suggestion to go there instead.

Martin — Marty for short — had trekked in Nepal before with his wife, Anne, a retired law professor. This time, however, he was going by himself. The sculptor and former Atlanta College of Art faculty member had fallen in love with the country. He'd become enamored of its people and its culture even more than the magnificent mountains, although he was captivated by them, too.

"It's not about ‘conquering' a mountain for me," Marty said of his fascination with trekking the world's highest range. "It's about going to the place where the road ends."

For two days, Marty, dressed in long pants, T-shirt and ever-present ball cap, and his companions hiked the rocky terrain up into the mountains while the porter carried their gear.

After a great morning of trekking that first day, they stopped at a tea house near Gong Gang.

The tea house owners, like many Nepalese in the area, had cut an earthen terrace into the side of the steep mountain and built a small house of rock and wood that operated as a tea house, offering food and respite to weary trekkers.

While sitting on the terrace looking out over the Himalayas that Saturday, Marty ate dal bhat, a traditional lentil soup with rice and spinach, and watched the owners' two children play.

The sky was so clear, it sparkled.

"It was absolutely gorgeous," Marty said. "We'd had a wonderful morning, a wonderful lunch."

Marty couldn't believe his good fortune.

"Things couldn't have been better," he said.

That was when he heard a loud, low rumble. It was a noise he had never heard before.

Photo: Marty points to his location on the maps his family used to track his progress as he escaped the rockslides and aftershocks following the April 25 earthquake in Nepal. Hyosub Shin

Bad news spreads
That Saturday morning in Brooklyn, Marty's son Brooks, 39, put on a shirt Marty had given him and laced up his hiking boots. A hike would be a great way to relax before finals, he thought. Brooks was winding up his last semester of law classes at New York University. Only one last round of papers, one last set of finals and a bar exam stood between him and a job in Montgomery, Alabama.

He was about to leave his apartment when the phone rang.

It was his brother, Ben, 36, who lives in Atlanta with wife, Jess Sterling, and their 16-month-old son, Theo.

"Did you hear there's been an earthquake in Nepal?" he asked.

At 11:56 a.m. Nepal time (2 a.m. EST) a devastating earthquake had struck the country. The magnitude, depending on the method of measure, was 7.8 or 8.1. The 24-hour news channels were airing horrendous images of unfathomable destruction. More than 8,000 people were dead, and the toll was rising.

Marty had given Brooks his itinerary that indicated his father was near Langtang Village, which had virtually been wiped off the map.

Brooks never made it out the door for that hike. Instead he turned his apartment into command central, gathering information on the quake and sharing it with the family.

Brooks had Marty's itinerary, but Ben had a map of Marty's route. He snapped a photo of the map and sent it to Brooks. Over the phone, the brothers compared the itinerary with the map.

Marty could be within a few hours of the worst of it, they thought. They didn't realize he had changed his course.

It was time to call Anne and tell her what was happening. They worried how she would take it.

"She was amazing," Brooks said.

"I'm just an optimist, I guess," Anne said.

Brooks contacted the State Department to inform officials an American named Martin Emanuel was trekking outside Kathmandu, and he set up a Facebook page around 2 p.m.

By nightfall, there were 5,400 shares.

With each newscast, the reports worsened. The family knew they wouldn't hear from Marty anytime soon because he didn't have cellphone or internet access. They knew it could be days before they would receive news that he was OK. And they considered the possibility that because of his remote location, he may not even know the severity of the situation.

But the family took comfort in knowing that Marty is an experienced trekker. They believed in his ability to handle whatever might be thrown at him.

Photo: Along his way up the mountain, Marty spotted a man wearing prayer beads and spinning a traditional Tibetan Buddhist prayer wheel. Martin Emanuel

Rumbles and rockslides
From the tea house terrace, Marty looked out across the river and saw a cleft in the side the mountain beside him. It looked like a giant spoon had scooped out thousands of rocks.

"A huge part of that mountain just slid into the river," Marty said. "Then we looked down and saw the break in the earth."

Marty took hold of one child, the mother grabbed the other, and they backed away from the terrace.

There was no panic, no screaming, not even a word spoken. But the expressions on the family's faces telegraphed fear.

Tears began to stream down the mother's face.

Because of the shifting tectonic plates beneath the Himalayas, earthquakes are not uncommon in Nepal. Thinking the quake was local, Marty and his party continued their hike upward into the mountains.

Along the way, they passed people gathered outside their homes, some huddled together under tarps. Quiet lay over the land as people listened for distant sounds. They passed a man with a prayer wheel and prayer beads.

About 4 p.m., they stopped in Tataponi, a village known for its healing hot springs. But that day the springs were dry. Concrete pools built to capture the water were empty. Villagers were confused and worried. While Marty and his party discussed what to do next, they heard a loud bang.

"It was very dramatic, very harsh," Marty said.

The villagers immediately began grabbing articles of clothing and bedding and fled down the mountain en masse while Marty and his group watched. Shaken, they weren't sure what to do. Eventually they were joined by a French couple and their guide, who had been hiking in the area. They all decided to take refuge in an abandoned lodge, but a second aftershock sent them racing outside.

"It was about eight o'clock. We actually felt the building lift off the ground and come back down," said Marty.

The six spent the night under tarps. The next morning, the couple from France decided to head down the mountain, but before they left, Marty gave the woman his wife's email address.

"If you make it down, please let Anne know I am OK," Marty said.

Photo: A boulder blocks the road following the earthquake in Nepal. Martin Emanuel

A treacherous crossing
With the rockslide behind them, Marty and his group now faced crossing the single-file suspension bridge.

It didn't look as secure as they had hoped.

"There was no handrail about halfway across," said Marty. There was no protection between a slip of the foot and the river below. They had to balance every step.

Once his guide reached the part of the bridge that had railings, he began to run. Marty and the porter did, too.

Safely on the other side, they took what felt like their first breaths since stepping on the bridge.

"We were jubilant," Marty said.

Onward they trekked into the next village where they began to hear reports of casualties. They heard another rumble and looked across the river. It was another landslide, right where Marty and his party had been just before crossing the bridge.

News about the magnitude of devastation had finally reached the heights of the Himalayas. Villages were deserted, trails blocked. There was no place to eat or sleep. The trio decided there was nothing to do but head back to Kathmandu.

Marty arrived at the checkpoint in Dunche on Wednesday and sent a text to Anne.