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Published: December 15th 2018
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View of Dingboche
View as we head towards view point above the village Today was a ‘rest’ day in Dingboche. This obviously meant we went on a walk up a hill from 4360m to 5070m, a mere 710m ascent.
Last night was the coldest so far, we woke up with ice on the inside of the window and our breath clearly visible. Fortunately we were toastie in our beds pushed together with 2 duvets and my sleeping bag. Getting up was tricky but we had left our clothes in bed so they weren’t too cold to put on.
The dining room was cold but the fire (yak poo) had been lit so soon started to warm up. It was a good thing we weren’t in a rush - despite having pre-ordered for 730am our watery porridge didn’t arrive until nearer 8am. On the plus side it was very hot unlike yesterday’s breakfast.
Leaving the lodge we descended to the bottom of the village and joined the path as it went up past a Gompa and onto the ridge. We were slightly disappointed to see a line of coloured jackets ahead of us.
By the gompa we bumped into a New Zealand couple we had met on our flight to lukla. They’re planning
on doing the 3 passes trek and it was lovely seeing them again.
Starting up the way the views were very quickly stunning - we could see over the ridge to Pheriche in the west. As we continued up we could see Taboche & Cholotse towards the West, and the Chola Tsho lake with the scarring where it’s glacier used to be. To the east we could see Amphulapcha & Ama Dablam and the lakes below the Duwo glacier (which looked fairly non existent now).
As we went up we lost all the groups. People thinned out the higher we got. This meant that by the time we were at the viewpoint at 5070m there was just a handful of people.
On our map it looks like you should be able to continue up to another viewpoint at 5616m. This isn’t mentioned in the guidebook and I’ve not spoken to anyone who’s done it. The viewpoint we were at had sheer drops either side and we couldn’t see a path along the ridge. It looked like it just dropped away and wouldn’t have been safe to try. Very odd - I wonder if there’s a different path to get
The top!
Looking north there, or our map is just wrong...
Back in Dingboche by 1ish we went looking for food. Failing to find anywhere cheaper than our lodge we ended up back in the SherpaLand lodge for a tuna & cheese toastie. We then wandered up to a bakery and got a brownie and Danish pastry for tea. Back at our lodge we changed, sorted our bags, marked our map and made plans for tomorrow. We then enjoyed our pastries with tea.
So our new plan is to walk to Chhukhung tomorrow and from there cross the Kongma La pass to Lobuche. This means that we may well end up doing the three passes route despite having originally ruled it out for being too technically challenging for us...
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