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Published: October 25th 2006
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mt everest
everest on the left with the cloud over the summit and lhotse on the right (4th highest in the world) Back in Kathmandu for a night of luxury with hot showers! Matt and I met up with Prem and were introduced to another Prem who was going to be our trekking guide for Island Peak, we hit it off straight away and were again really excited about the trek.
We arrived at Kathmandu airport for our 8am flight to Lukla to face the sign 'All flights to Lukla are delayed due to bad weather'. So we got to know Prem a bit better and learnt several new card games that would later become our daily ritual in the mountains. This lasted until 1pm when the flights finally got cancelled for the day and we were all sent back to our hotels to return again tomorrow morning. This is actually quite common for flights to Lukla which after 3 days waiting the Austrian guys next to us were well aware!
(note for future trips, allow a few days either side of your trek for international flights!)
So we rocked up the next day with our fingers crossed and were lucky enough for our flight to proceed, landing in Lukla at about 11am (its only a 30 min flight!). After seeing
ama dablam
i hope to climb this peak one day (6680m) that the landing strip consists of about 600m of tarmac heading straight into the side of a mountain, it is understandable that perfect visability is required!!!
We headed off for a short walk to Phakding for our first night. All of the steps in Annapurna served us well as we breazed through the much more gradual tracks of the Kumbu region.
We spent two nights in Namche Bazaar to hire some climbing gear and have a rest day. Its quite a lovely village with all the luxuries you could want including fresh bakeries!!! our rest day was spent walking over to Kumjung to see the school and hospital that Sir Edmond Hillary established. His love for the area is obvious and he continues to visit annually with his son, despite being in his eighties now! He is a local hero here, even more so than Tenzig Norgay who they feel a little betrayed by after he fled to India.
The difference in landscape of this region compared to Annapurna is quite dramatic, everything here is so dry and baron, i guess not much can survive in the altitude!
'Back on the road again'. The next few
days went by smoothly winding our way up to Chhukum where we met our climbing sherpa Dawa. Having summitted Everest a couple of years ago, wer felt that he may have been a little over-qualified for our little Island Peak expedition, but he certainly didn't make us feel like it, very excited and happy to be showing us the ropes, which he spent a few hours doing!!
We headed up to Island Peak Base Camp and decided that we would stay there for the night, as Dawa felt we were able to summit from there and it would minimise our chances of getting sick from going over 1000m up in a day.
For Matts first real sighting of snow...he sure got it!!! about 4 hours worth!! Whilst playing cards in the tent, we started to wish the snowflakes away as too much would mean we couldn't summit the following day as planned. Luckily it did stop by nightfall and we all tucked into our tents well out sherpas tent because apparently ours didnt have any poles in the bag and didnt i get a serve from Hinda ab out not checking before we got there so luckily he
gave us his tent and seeing he is so well know he easily found another spare tent from the opther bigger trekking groups to borrow for the night. So we went to be for some warmth which we didnt get it was -2 degrees inside the tent
Our wake up call came at 1.30am to be off with head torches set by 2am!!! Within an hour we both had our down jackets off and had well and truely warmed up. It was quite a weird feeling not being able to see exactly where your heading except for a couple of metres of path in front of you.
The darkness eventually lifted and by then we were into our harness and crampons with ice axes in hand ready to climb!!! The actualy climb to the summit is probably about 150m, of which I did about half with just our axes due to a shortage of rope everyone else was climbing up preprepared fixed ropes from there guides!! Matt did the entire climb unassisted as Dawa was out of earshot and we later realised was belaying me from above instead of putting in fixed points along the way as planned.
Island Peak
The objective 6189m The 1200m ascent took 6 hours and we were standing on the summit by 8am. Boy was it worth the effort!!! It was so satisfying looking out from what felt like the top of the world (despite Lhotse standing just beside us at over 8000m!).
We were really lucky to have a perfectly clear morning, that clouded over within an hour of us starting to descend. It was quite bizaare to be in such a far away place doing something that you think is so unreal and yet there are 20 or so other people there all shuffling along doing the same thing as you! They were quite literally pushing and shoving one another to get to the front, you would think this to be quite ridiculous considering we were standing on a ridge no more than 70 cm wide with a vertical drop down both sides!! They didn't care to connect to safety points either!!!
Due to the number of people and only room for two fixed ropes, we had a fair delay in getting down from the summit. We could then take our climbing grear off and proceed with our descent over the extremely steep
and slipperly rocky terrain. Climbing boots are very similar to ski boots, so you can imagine how comfortable they were after being in them for 8 hours! We were just getting down past High Camp and matts knees were giving him grief when our guide Prem popped up!
I don't think i have been so glad to see anyone in all my life, he had brought our trekking boots up so we could change and be more comfortable. Such a gesture!! This gave us some renewed energy to get down to Base Camp.
The round trip took us 11 hours all up, not bad for a mornings work!!! We had some soup and a rest before packing up camp and heading back down to Dimboche for the night. This is where Dawa left us to go and re-join his other group that had been acclimatising for their climb.
We planned to get back down to Lukla in two days so that Prem could be back in Kathmandu with his family for a festival that was happening on the 24th oct. This was going to plan until matt and i had something dodgy to eat in Namche and
Island Peak Base Camp
Locals joyko (cross between cow and yak) just hanging out spent the next day throwing his guts up!! We had to call it quits and stay in Jorsale for the night. We made it back to Lukla the following day, feeling a little worse for wear and were able to fly back to Kathmandu by 9am on the 24th so Prem got to join his family and matt and i spent the day with our head in various toilet bowls!!!
(Note: don't eat any meat in the Everest region!)
We are back in Kathmandu now and feeling better, ready for our next adventure!!!
Summary of the Island Peak trek;
Day 1: Flight from Kathmandu to Lukla (2800m)
Lukla to Phakding (2600m)
Day 2: Phakding (2600m)
to Namche Bazaar (3440m)
Day 3: Rest day, Kumjung (3780m)
Day 4: Namche (3440m)
to Pangboche (3930m)
Day 5: Pangboche (3930m)
to Chhukhung (4730m)
Day 6: Chhukhung (4730m)
to Island Peak Base Camp (4970m)
Day 7: Island Peak Base Camp (4970m)
to Island Peak Summit (6189m)
down to Dingboche (4410m)
Day 8: Dingboche (4410m)
to Namche Bazaar (3440m)
Day 9: Namche Bazaaar (3440m)
to Jorsale (2740m)
(food poisening day!!!)
Day 10: Jorsale (2740m)
Island Peak Summit
Looking down from summit to Lukla (2840m)
Day 11: Fly back to Kathmandu
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