Heading off from Dhingboche we walked back up the hill that KTP & I had ‘acclimatized’ with the day before – following the lay of the land over hills and small dips. The high altitude was most definitely starting to affect me as I found I quickly became very short of breath, despite my slow walking pace. Though in some ways my slowness came in hand as I spotted two thousand rupees that had been dropped along the path!! Being a kind soul I made sure no one else had dropped it before adding to the Team Nepal’s group fund… which was received with little gratitude :( (haha!) From where we were we could see down the valley below us and Raj pointed out that this would be the route we would be using to head home after Base Camp!
After crossing a frozen over river (by jumping from rock to rock) we made our way to our lunch teahouse. Lunch took forever to arrive (Nepali time!), however this tea house will forever be remember for the god-awful toilet!! A little tin shed off to the side… wooden wonky board over a LOOOONG DROP… and OMG THE SMELL!! I had my neck warmer over my nose and the roll of toilet paper and it was still horrible!!
After lunch we had to conquer a massive hill “straight up” to make our way up some 200 m to the Thokla Pass. For the majority of us the pace was slow going as we needed constant breaks to slow our racing heart or gather back some breath – however KTP zoomed up that hill like the devil was after her… and I think was about the 2nd person up the hill!!
During the climb I chatted a little to one of our porters called Nema… and then confused him by mistaking his question of “first time” (in Nepal) for “past time?”… The whole f/p pronunciation thing confuses me!
Upon reaching the Thokla pass we rested for awhile and admired the memorials for those who had lost their lives on Everest. From memory, believe at least one person dies for every 5 – 6 people who reach the summit… though these numbers may come down now as those figures were after the 1996 distaster (where 11 people died in the one climbing season) – but as you can imagine there are quite a lot of memorials there.
The route flattened out after this and we touched the edge of the Khumble Glacier – a massive wall of rock and ice that reaches all the way to Everest Base Camp (& beyond). It was about at this point that Alicia unfortunately succumbed to the runs – making the rest of the way to Lobuche quite unpleasant for her :(
For most of the afternoon we followed the path of a frozen-over river – Mark & Torbs both testing the strength of the ice by hurling large stones at the river… none of the rocks broke the ice, so it was obviously nice and solid!! I hung out the back for the majority of the trek hanging out for KTP and Alicia (who had to make a few stops along the way!).
As we reached Lobuche, we came across poor Ash who was struggling with vertigo. It took her quite a few minutes to make it all the way to the tea house and she looked pretty worse for wear – obviously the high altitude (Lobuche is @ 4910 m) was starting to make it effects known!
Alicia didn’t even make it to the tea house before needing to stop – ducking behind a Porter’s rest house for another ‘rest’ stop… and when she did reach the teahouse she headed straight outside to the toilet only to come back a few minutes later with a sheepish look on her face and a short exclamation “Oh my God guys, I dropped my camera in the toilet!”
As you can imagine, we all just burst out laughing (no sympathy here!) as she told us how her camera had fallen out of her jacket pocket right down the LOOOONG DROP!
It was the guides/porters to the rescue as they successfully retrieved her camera… according to them it didn’t actually make it all the way down – instead falling on a piece of ice. I must admit it looked pretty clean – but we used a good dosage of hand sanitizer before we touched it again!!
Poor KTP had a massive migraine tonight which also made her feel pretty nauseous, which probably wasn’t helped with the entire place reeking like Yak Shit from the heater. She’s a bit hesitant about making the massive trek to Base Camp planned for tomorrow and even Raj said it’s not worth pushing yourself to Base Camp if you can’t as really it’s just “ice and rock”, at least you’ve made it to 5000 m above sea level… achievement enough! Either way, she’ll just have to wait to see how she feel tomorrow… BASE CAMP DAY!
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