Everest Base Camp Trek
On the grid again…finally! I apologize if you have been checking my blog regularly over the last eleven days only to find nothing posted. It is day eleven of our trek to E.B.C. and this is the first time we have access to the Internet. When I decided to do this blog I was under the impression that wifi would be available at almost every tea house along the way so that I would be able to blog about the trek every couple of days. Apparently, since the earthquake, the wifi up here is intermittent and has supposedly been offline since we started our trek. For some reason, they have it here even though no one else along the way did. Hmmm, smells a little like yak poop to me (and believe me, I know what yak poop smells like since I have smelled plenty of it over the last eleven days), but whatever. That’s what you get for coming in the off season, I guess.
Anyway, it’s day ten and we made it to Everest Base Camp. Wow, it’s been a tough ten days. We averaged between 4 and 6 hours of hiking with between two and three thousand feet of elevation gain per day, most of it between 14,000 and 16,000 feet and we went up over 17,000 feet four times and this morning we climbed up to 18,500 feet for a sunrise view of Everest. That’s pretty tough when you’re coming from sea level and haven’t done much training above 14,000 feet.
The thin air above 16,000 feet makes it very difficult to do anything. Not only is dealing with the lack of oxygen challenging, we’ve also been doing way more elevation gain per day than I was expecting and on all kinds of different terrain, not on groomed trails like back home. I’d say only 20-30% was on smooth dirt trails, the rest was a hodgepodge of rocky paths, rock stairs, rock hopping, scrambling over boulders, snow and ice. The terrain on this trek has run the gambit. So, I’d say this trek has definitely been challenging, even for people like us who are use to churning out the miles on nice trails at lower elevations.
Since it’s the end of monsoon season we have encountered a lot of cloudy days with the sun only popping out for short stints here and there, but when it does, the views are pretty amazing. No sun at all yesterday, however, which meant no view of any part of Everest from base camp. The glacier and ice fall at the base of the mountain were really awesome to see in person, though, so it was by no means a waste of a time. The sound of avalanches would make us stop and watch for cascading snow to come racing down the side of the mountain like in movies, but they were occurring too high up on the mountain and obscured by cloud cover. This mornings sunrise was awesome, though!
Fortunately, it hasn’t rained a lot while we were out on the trail. With yesterday’s soaking being the exception (it snowed at base camp while we were there and then turned to rain on the two hour hike back from base camp), the rain has mostly come before or after we have done our days trekking and the cloud cover is actually better for trekking. The sun is intense up here and we were baking whenever it came out. I can’t imagine doing this trek in the summer. Yes, you would get to see better views, but this trek is hard enough without the sun glaring down on you every day. Plus, since it’s the off season, there are very few people on the trails or in the tea houses, which makes for a very peaceful experience.
It has been very challenging, both physically and mentally, but also very rewarding. Every day got harder and harder physically for both of us, but also brought us grander and grander views of the Himalaya. You can look at pictures, but pictures are nothing like the experience of walking day after day among these giants and being rewarded with these amazing views right in front of you. Even though these mountains have been shrouded in clouds for most of the day while I’m waking by them and I’m thinking “this really sucks! I flew half way around the world and I’m killing myself on this hike and all I’m going to get to see is a bunch of mountains obscured by clouds!”, the clouds then move aside and reveal what they have been hiding, one of those snow capped Himalaya mountains I’ve come to see (most of the time it’s only for five or ten minutes and then it’s gone again, like it was never there), but even so, I can’t help but just stop and stare in awe. We are now on our way back down to Lukla to fly back to Kathmandu on Saturday. The downhill on tired legs is not much easier, but kinda glad to be done with all the uphill