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Published: March 23rd 2009
We have finally completed a long, tiring trip in the Everest region and we are both glad to be back. The places that we visited were amazing and unlike anything that you can experience anywhere else in the world. But the experience itself can be the end of you if you aren't careful. We saw at least 5 helicopters in the area and that means only one thing--another hiker needed to be airlifted out to lower elevation. From what we heard, all of these people were fine and just needed to get off the mountain, but not everyone is so lucky. Back here in Kathmandu, the traffic is as crazy as ever and the dust and noise a bit oppressive, but nothing a good (well, mediocre) margarita couldn't cure. Anyway...
We left Phakding after a decent breakfast at our lodge and headed out for a long day up, up, and up to Namche. Or so we though, as the trail instead led up AND down for the first few miles, gaining and losing over 1000 feet before the slow trudge into Namche. We felt pretty good about our pace as we passed porters carrying food and supplies up the mountain...of course, some of these are carrying up to 200 pounds of sundries. It's one of the best ways to earn a living up here, but I know in their place I would feel a little strange lugging bottled water up valleys filled with it. After making our way through the 100s of porter stopping to rest on the way up, we complete our 3000 ft climb and were in the Namche ''bowl", a depression in the mountain will houses and hotels built into the hillside and the starting point for any good documentary on climbing Everest. It, along with most of the area, was much dirtier than I had expected with trash covering many of the streets and plastic rappers on the hillsides. Not quite as nice as the Sierras, but the mountains across the valley are about 1000 meters taller than Mount Whitney, and the locals don't even bother learning their names!
We stayed at the Himalayan Hotel which was fairly nice, but we were beginning to understand the recommendation of a down coat. Inside or out, the Himalayans are cold, espcially in March. Every other major range, from the Andes to the Alps to the Rockies, summer is the best time to hike. Here, the monsoon makes that impossible, assuming you want to actually see anything. So you're stuck with spring or fall. While Everest is about the same latitude as Florida, seeing it well requires being about 2000 feet higher than Mount Whitney. In summation, it's cold. Not only that, but the body isn't too keen on high altitude, and it takes a bit of time to adjust. Since at rest the body maintains it's normal breathing rate, your blood begins to absorb more CO2 than it can expel, which is what causes altitude sickness. If your doing it right, you'll be spending alot of time during the night peeing this out as bicarbonate. So we were adjusting! We spent the next day hiking to the Everest View Lodge to have tea and a look at where we would eventually be headed. The views were good but a bit ominous--clouds were blowing across the summits of all the peaks. We didn't get any rain, but were hopeful it would clear.
The next day dawned a bit brighter, but Sara not so much. A headache had hit her during the night and though it had gone, we decided on the safe rather that the sorry path and decided to sit it out in Namche for another night of acclimitization. Our friends from the flight were headed on, so we exchanged contact information and said our goodbyes. Instead of just sitting around, we figured we would try a see a few birds, and took the walk toward Thame west of town. Though we didn't quite get there, we did see Blood Phesant and a Himalayan Monal, the national bird. Unfortunately, it was only a female, as the male is irridescent like a hummingbird but much more so--find a picture and then imagine it twice as bright (spoiler alert, we did see the male later). Anyway, we made it as far as Phurte, were we were hoping to have lunch. There didn't seem to be any place open until a porter walking by called out to one of the houses. I guess we looked hungry. A woman came our and handed us a menu, covered in dust. A real experience with a local! We order dal bhaat, pretty much the national meal ("How are you?" is translated as "Have you had your dal bhaat today?"), and momos, kind of like a pirogie. It was quite tasty and would prove to be the best meal of the trip. If you're ever in the area, try the Green Valley Inn. The weather started to turn a bit, so we hustled back to avoid the biting wind. And we still have 5000 feet up to go!
The morning, like every morning, was cold, with frost covering our windows. But we needed to move on, so we packed up and headed to Phortse Tenga. The route had views of Everest and Lhotse, two of the four highest peaks on the planet, along with expanding views of the gompa at Tengboche and Phortse, the town above our destination ("Tenga" means bridge). We took the turn for Gokyo, our first destination, and were immediately off the beaten path. Seems almost everyone was headed to Base Camp. Good for us! I've wanted to visit this area for the past ten years ever since I read a trip report on the GORP website. At a minimum, it would take four days of acclimitization to get there, so heres to staying health! We ate lunch at Mong La, where we had gorgous views of Ama Dablam, a strange looking peaks that looks as though it's about to topple over. Quite beautiful. This was followed by a long descent to Phortse Tenga and the River Resort at the bottom. We had a nice hike up to the main town, one of the few areas spared deforestation. We saw two of our main animal targets, the Musk Deer, which looks vampiric with it's long fangs, and the Daphne or Himalayan Monal, male and female! The colors were amazing and the pictures I had seen did not do it justice, with turquiose and gold and blue and green everywhere. An amazing bird, if you're interested in those sorts of things. Our meal was decent, the room cold, and was time to move on.
Day six was our shortest hiking day of the trip, only taking about two hours to Dole. It was also uneventful, other than our trip to the Yeti Inn (yes, Sara, we should have stayed there instead), where they had a bit of a musuem of Everest gear and Sherpa tools. As I said, we should have stayed there, as it seems all the rooms everywhere are about the same price on this side, somewhere between 100 and 200 Nepali rupees, or $1.25 to $2.50. The only other item of note was finally taking a shower, which was actually pretty nice with a hot bucket of water filling the lines. Of course it could have ended at any time, but it held off long enough for me to get everything relatively clean.
The following day we had a fairly short hike once again to Machermo at 4410m, our highest night of sleep to date. There is also a clinic here, and we went to the talk on altitude safety. We felt that we were following all of there suggestions, save our use of Diamox, but they didn't really disagree with our line of thinking. Our lodge was quite nice, with granite walls instead of thin plywood and a beautifully painted eating area. A bit colder than in the past, but the elevation was probably the biggest culprit, not the lodge.
Finally, we would reach a real destination as we headed to Gokyo, which contains bright blue lakes and Gokyo Ri, or peak, the best view point of the Everest area though not the peak itself. At 4800m, this would be our highest night yet. It was a fairly short hike, but even so we were unable to beat the clouds today and the wind was picking up for the afternoon. For the next six days, our down coats would be affixed to our bodies, pretty much day and night. We were also a little disappointed that the large portions of the lakes were frozen over, so the bright blue we were expecting, similar to Banff or New Zealand, had not materialized. We had a suggestion to stay at the Nameste Lodge and Restaurant in Gokyo and met up with Nick and Catch, who were on a two year journey around the world. The afternoon was spend resting and keeping warm for the following days adventure up to the fifth lake, as we watched the snow fall outside. The standard fare of momos and dal bhaat our of the way (plus some french fries and soup), and off to bed.
As usual, the morning was clear, but there was a definite chill to the air as the temperature in our room was about -2C (28F). We ate a quick breakfast and were off with the rise of the sun. We decided to take the ridge along with our new friends, which had much better views but slightly tricky footing in places. The best part was that it was finally warming up, and we could see Cho Oyu, the sixth highest peak in the world, at the end of the valley. The telltale signs of clouds on the peaks told us we probably should enjoy this weather while it lasted, because by the time we reached the fifth lake, the weather was taking a turn for the worse. Nick and I had hoped to climb at peak at the end of the lake, but there wasn't much point as we could barely make out the close peaks from where we were. Going higher would probably mean being stuck in a cloud, or worse. The trip back was cold and windy, with the snow picking up by the end. We just hoped that the weather would clear up in the morning, so we headed back to our room (which had a fairly nausea-inducing, Beijing 2008 wallpaper) to try and warm up and get a good night's sleep.
After a somewhat long night due to the altitude, we awoke to a crisp, clear day. Time to climb a peak! We had oatmeal in the room, and were off by 6:30. The peak in question, Gokyo Ri, is about 5360m, higher than we have ever been, and about 2000 ft above the town. That's a stiff climb in the best of conditions, but at over 16,000 ft we were gasping for air. Regardless, we made better time than most and reached the summit by 8:30 with the clouds holding off and fairly clear views of Everest, Cho Oyu, Lhotse, and, if we squinted hard enough, Makalu in the distance. We took the obilgatory pictures at the top while I stuck around for about an hour longer at the summit with Nick. Best day of the trip so far, and I even managed to comfortably get out of my down straight jacket! Once back in Gokyo, Sara and I decided to move on as our acclimitization schedule had set us back a little and we still hoped to get to Everest Base Camp and Kala Patar, the close view point of Everest. Of to Dragnag (or Thangnak or Tangnak, how can a town with only three buildings have so many names?), crossing the Ngozumpa Glacier, which looks like a pile of rocks, but several hundred feet of ice below. It was a nice hike, but the weather had once again taken a turn for the worse (kind of like a broken record on this point), and we were a bit chilled by the time we reached our lodge. Other night, another warm stove (this one fueled with yak dung), and another night of trying to get warm for sleeping and preparing for our hardest day, and days, of the trip.
Our plan was to cross the Cho La (La is pass), then carry on to Lobuche, on the Khumbu (or Everest) Valley. This way, we could keep on schedule and see both the big attractions left for the trip. The book advised that this would be "beyond most people", but we both have a bit of an inflated sense of self worth, so we tried it anyway. While Gokyo Ri was without a pack, Cho La was just as high but I was carrying about 20kg while Sara had about 12kg, instead of our light day packs. Plus, there would be scrambling (or so we were told). Well, it was a bit oversold on the technical difficulties, as getting the pass hardly required a hand and the glacier of the other side was cover with snow making it much less slick. The exhaustion factor, however, did get to both of us. We had a quick meal of Mac & Cheese that we had brought specifically for this purpose, and then hiked to Dzongla, the normal stopping point for the Cho La. Sara was definitely exhausted, and I was in denial, but we pushed on despite it and both struggled into Lobuche. 10 hours of hiking is hard enough, but at 5000-5300m, higher than we have ever been prior to the trip, by the end even simple actions seemed difficult. We huffed and puffed our way into Lobuche, and managed to find a nice place to stay (weather stripping on the windows? What luxury!). The dining room was warm and the staff pulled up a couple chairs for us to sit by the stove. Our packs were covered with snow (it goes without saying that the weather got worse as the day went along), as were we, so we headed off to bed soon after dinner, wondering if we had enough to keep to schedule.
As usually, the clear morning shook us out of our stupor, and the -7C (17F) tempertures in our room, and we hit the trail for Gorak Shep, the jumping off point for Kala Patar and Everest Base Camp. Kala Patar is the view point, so that requires good weather and would be first on the list. We made good time to the top, with Sara sending me ahead to try and catch Everest before the clouds rolled in. I just made it, but both of us had great views of Pumo Ri and Everest all the way up, as well as the peaks down the valley. We spend a bit of time enjoying the summit, as well as a new high point (and the highest we would reach) of 5600m or a little over 18,300 ft. Down we went, off to lunch in Gorak Shep. We briefly discussed skipping Everest Base Camp, but decided that it wouldn't be worth the hassle we would get from others ("How can you not go to Base Camp"), even though it turned out to be pretty boring. The sherpas were just beginning to set-up from the climbers, but no climbers had actually arrived. By this time, the weather was up to it's usual tricks, and we knew it would be a long hike back. Gorak Shep was no problem, but there was still a glacier between us and Lobuche, and the snow started to come down harder. And on a glacier, they don't really spend alot of time on the trail because it will probably change by the next season. The route finding took me about an extra hour, but the occasion porter helped out by leaving footprints. We didn't get back until well after 6pm, and couldn't understand why the group there from Accenture was so enthusiatic. We were whipped. Our goals complete, all that remained was to get back to Lukla. Right about now, we were cursing our guide books insistence that "mileage doesn't matter", only times. The hell it doesn't.
The day was like any other day. It was the best of times, as we had completed our goals, but the worst of times, as those goals had kicked our respective butts. We were intent to get to back to Namche, which takes 4-5 days on the way up, but hopefully would not take as long going down. Sara's feet were telling her it wasn't a good idea, and about halfway through the day Namche became a pipe dream and Sara's boots became dead weight in my pack as she switched to sandals. Most people would consider this insane, but they didn't have to look at Sara's ever growing blister. The sandals seemed to help, but we had already lost too much time and stopped in Deboche about 3-4 hours short. The night was pleasant and everyone seemed to take an interest in our bird book.
The next day, we were trying to make it to Lukla, but not that hopeful. We had over 1500 meters of descent and about 800 meters of climbing to do, and an indeterminate amount of distance that translated as roughly 7-12 hours, whatever that means. But we tried. In Namche we called Yeti Airlines to change our flight, and they said just to show up at the airport. Not really knowing what that meant, we resolved to do it, and kept going, getting as far as Phakding, where we spent our first night. We stopped a bit early but would plan on getting up at the break of day to start the hike to Lukla. Plus, I finally got a shower, the first in a week. Fortunately, divorces are hard to come by out here, so the marriage was saved.
My alarm, which had been spotty all trip, failed us once again, and we awoke half an hour late. Since no real flight time had been confirmed, we would have to wait to see if this would be a bad sign. The trail to Lukla was filled with porters headed to pick up loads from the incoming flights, and we did our best (and failed) to keep up. We arrived at the airport after the first set of fllights, which we saw land and then take off again, were gone. When we got to the office, we were pleased to get tickets on what we though was the next flight out. We got out to the plane and were turned back. One off. The next plane in was entirely cargo, but then on the way back was just the two of us, our packs, and the pilots and stewardess. New record for fewest passengers on a commercial, beating our four in Bolivia. So now we're back in Kathmandu, preparing for our next trip to Royal Chitwan National Park, which I'll update when we get to Singapore. For now, signing off, a still very tired and sore Matt and Sara.
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Tiffany Snell
non-member comment
wow
I love reading your tales. So fun to hear about adventures in a totally different part of the world. Stay safe and keep having fun!