Everest Base Camp Trek

Everest Base Camp Stuff :-

We walked 15 days for that? The abandoned quarry that is base camp.

Man, the flight to Lukla from Kathmandu to start the trek is something to behold, although nothing compared to the taxi ride to get to the tin shed that is the Kathmandu domestic airport. After checking in at the Sita air counter which doubles as a cake stall at the local school fete, and getting the Nepalese grope ("no, those are actually my testicles") we hung about for the presumed half hour before our reported takeoff time. Seems that Nepal has a 12% sales tax on everything, including time so closer to 2 hours later we finally made it out to the tarmac to inspect our magnificent flying machine, a Dornier 227. I think it was called this after flying 227 successful sorties in the Korean War. Was at least comforting to see our bags safely packed into the nose of the aircraft, that is until we saw it take off with us still standing on the runway. Hmmm.

Alrighty then, so next flight we get on board and leave Kathmandu far below. There was much nervous jesting amongst the three of us about our chances of seeing it through to lunchtime but man, when we got above the cloudline, the whole horizon was just one long stretch of snowcapped himalayan mountains. Beautiful stuff and to see them seemed almost a worthy return if we were not to land safely in Lukla.

If there's one thing you must do in your life, it is to land at Lukla airport. I'd heard it was short but crickey, I reckon Maurice Green could run it in under 10 seconds. Its slopes up the hill at about 25 degrees and you drop from a cruising speed of about 600 clicks to zero in about 4 seconds, either by means of reverse thrust or the side of the mountain. Thankfully the reverse thrust was operating sufficiently and we able to step out onto the tarmac to discover our bags lying thereabouts also, obviously ready for our or anyone's collection. Unfortunately someone had obviously believed that anything not locked inside was fair game and my walking poles were no more. For some reason however, nobody seemed to believe that my cricket bat was worth stealing. Strange people these sherpas.

The itsy bitsy airstrip at Lukla

Lukla is at 2800m above sea level, higher than any point in Australia by some margin and you can already feel the depletion of oxygen. Thankfully our first stretch was downhill for a while until the village of Phakding. The great thing about hiking at altitude is that you cannot ascend too far in an any one day due to the risk of acute mountain sickness so on the way up, we were barely hiking more than 3 to 4 hours in any one day. Those hours could often feel like 30 to 40 of course considering you're walking straight up with a 20 kg pack on your back and near the top of our trek, you're breathing less than half the regular oxygen. That spare tyre I carry around my waist may have contributed to the difficulty also. I did however get complicated from several Nepalis about my "strong" legs. I think it was a compliment. Even with my strong legs however, the going was really tough in some stretches, so much so that I reckon I now know how Pricey felt that day we hiked (and he crawled) up Mt. Warning. On second thought I guess I might be being a little melodramatic, it wasn't THAT bad.

Rooms with a view. That's actually Everest in the background...yep, 40c a night.

The three of us did the trek without any porters or guides which had several advantages, but obviously several glaring disadvantages. Each village you stay at along the way has several lodges for you to choose from and you quickly get used to bartering Nepali style (i.e."Room for 3?", "yes, 100 rupee each", "20 each?", "OK."). Basically these lodges are all desperate for you to stay so long as you eat there as that's where they make their money. We usually paid no more than the equivalent of AU$1 per night for acc. but food costs started to spiral once we headed further up the range putting our strict "stickin' to the thou" budget at great risk. (roughly AU$20/day). The reason for this increase in price is that the only way to get any supplies that aren't grown in the villages up to each one is to physically carry them, either by yaks or by porters. $2 for a mars bar doesn't seem so expensive when you realise that some 5 foot nothing 90 pound sherpa carried it plus about half a tonne of other stuff up over 3 vertical kilometres.

Some typical scenery encountered at "lower" altitudes, i.e. >4000m. Lots of bridges like the one in the backround, often 100m or so high, with files of yaks to compete with.

As an independent trekker you really start to develop a pride and comraderie with other indies and similtaneously you start to despise the lazy bastards who get these little sherpa dudes, often half their size, to carry all sorts of ridiculous loads for around AU$10 a day. We would often shake our walking sticks in an insultory manner at such heinous practises until we realised that this extra exhertion nearly caused us to collapse from exhaustion. To be able to survive hiking at these heights, we continuously had to employ "power breathing", basically breathing really deeply and forcefully exhaling each breath. Caused much sniggering amongst many of the locals to hear these three whitey sealevel lubbers with their feebel respiratory systems making such a racket merely to make it up a flight of 3 stairs. I'm sure they could hear us all well before we arrived in each village.

I think someone should contact his union...

One great thing about hiking at altitude is that its neccessary to take acclimatisation days, perfect opportunities for moi to make some moves on ze ladies. Hmm, actually I can't back that one up. And even if I could, we came up with a theory about women and hiking in the Himalayas that proved remarkably accurate for the duration of our trek, the main hypothesis being that no hot single chicks hike in the himalayas. We did run into several beautiful German women, including one particularly beautiful woman we dubbed our "white whale" (who on days of bad weather provided the best view), but they were few and far between and quickly at pains to mention their boyfriends. In any case I'm quickly coming to realise that the freelove Everest freeway which I had hoped would eventuate is becoming increasingly unlikely if this hypothesis remains to be true. Basically for me to have any success, we shall need to run into a group of 3 or more single girls in a group (according to our theory, odds are approx. 1,206,790:1) as I am travelling with two men of far greater credentials than I (without a guitar or piano I don't have a single trump card in my hand) and hence I shall always be reduced to the slim pickings of third choice. Basically once all the sums are done, I think my chances are even less than what they were in Brisbane (is it possible to have negative chance?).

One of the many lodges we encountered without any beautiful single women.

Anyway we resigned ourselves to the fact we would primarily be enjoying the company of men, a sausage fest of sorts, but as a result we did meet lots of interesting dudes from all over the world. One Jesus looking dude from America called Dave who has travelled all through South and central America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and central Asia for 11 months on less than US$10 a day. Seems you just need a tent, a bicycle and an extreme willingness to rough it. A great Brit guy called Charlie who we had several mammoth games of 500 with has cycled his way around the world for nearly 10 years after quitting his job in the oil business. Puts our tame little 3 month adventure to considerable shame.

I won't try and describe the scenery, you can gauge for yourself from the photos, but basically the first 5 or 6 days were very green, rolling valleys, steep gorges and the like. Once we started getting up really high (4000m +) we really started getting some spectacular views of the peaks that were all around us. You'd have to be quick however, it really paid to wake up early each morning when there would often be not a single cloud in the sky and hence the most crystal clear views you could possibly imagine. Soon as the sun started heating the snow and glaciers however, the clouds could roll in within a matter of minutes and you sometimes wouldn't see them again for the rest of the day. It changes so quick that literally by the time you got your camera out for snap, the peak you were just admiring could be gone.

Some typical scenes we encountered most of the way up

The ultimate destination of the trek was of course base camp and we finally to got to the final village before it, Gorak Shep, after day 9 or 10. Talk about rooms with a view. In several places along the way we were paying around the single aussie dollar to stay in reasonably comfortable lodges with simply the most spectacular mountains right outside our window. Very nice to wake up to. Anyways from Gorak Shep we headed off towards BC, cricket bat in tow. For some reason I had this idea that it would be cool to play cricket at 5400m and damned if I was going to give up on the notion. Walked along a giant ridge above the massive Khumbu glacier which runs from the base of Everest. Basically the path to the camp is a giant pile of rocks which you traverse for several hours only to find more rocks which is base camp. There is absolutely nothing there except some dirty ice and a shiteload of rocks, basically looks like a frickin huge quarry. There were two downed russian helicopters (we saw three on our trek) which prompted a flurry of "get to ze charpper" paraphrases which we never seemed to tire of.

"We all live in giant blue downed russian helicopter, a giant blue downed russian helicopter..."

Hmm, the bat. Halfway to BC I had thought it a grand idea to try and hit some small rocks baseball style into the glacial lakes far below. Unfortunately however it seems that I seriously underestimated the friction coefficient between my gloved hand and the bat handle and hence the normal force I applied was not quite sufficient to engage a solid grip. Suffice to say the bat went about 3 times as far as its intended target and smashed into many more pieces down on the glacier below. Not one to give up on fanciful ideas easily, I was convinced that I could salvage enough of the bat to realise my dream. I immediately regretted that decision once I slid down a manmade avalanche of pebbles and scree down to the glacier. Very unstable going but I did manage to rescue three of the major components of the damned bat.

Me on the glacier picking up that frickin bat.

One thing that really is annoying hiking at 5000m+ especially is that it is usually freezing (-10degrees and below) so you rug up to the max but as soon as you start hiking and your heart rate jumps to 150 in a matter of seconds, your boiling inside a fleece furnace. You therefore start carrying all your warm gear but when you stop for a few seconds to catch your breath you're freezing again. Anyways I got so sick of carrying three bloody pieces of the bat plus a yak hat, down vest and jacket that I ended up just chuckin the dam thing into the glacial stream where hopefully the bastard will lay frozen in an icy grave. As you could imagine, the other two found this whole episode entirely hilarious considering I'd lugged this highly impractical item all the way to base camp for nothing.

One of the many great views from Kala Patar, that's Pumo Ri in the background, over 7000m

The real highlights of the trek however were the climb up a minor peak called Kala Patar (which provides the best views of Everest) and crossing over the Cho La Pass to the village of Gokyo. We woke up at 4:30 to head up Kala Patar to catch the sunrise but it seemed our diligence would go unrewarded as there seemed to be cloud cover all around whilst we sat up the top, myself fretting about the seemingly realistic chance of frostbite in all 20 digits. Fleece socks my ass. Fortunately however, our persistence paid off and much as it did for incy wincy, the sun dried up all the clouds and we had some spectacular view of everest open up to us.


The money shot...yep, that's Everest.



Favourite day however was crossing over to Gokyo via the Cho La pass. There are two major treks through the SoluKhumbu region (basically Everest national park) which in plan make a giant Y shape and split paths at the village of Namche Bazaar. Head east and you get to base camp, head west and get to the village of Gokyo and its beautiful turquoise lakes. You can cross over from these two ultimate destinations however via the somewhat adventurous Cho La Pass, a large glacier in between two large peaks. Awesome. After leaving some very Scottish highland-esque surroundings, we climbed up about 400-500m of steep rock scrambling until we hit this snow covered arctic plateau, giant crevasses and all. Fortunately we were simply able to follow the paths led by those before us to the other side and then we faced with a very steep descent down snow covered skree, basically felt descending a steep mountain of ice cube boulders. Pretty hairy but luckily apart from a few arse slides, we had no injuries.

Notice the large deposits of snow some of us including Papa Smurf on the left were able to sustain within our 3week growths for this arctic explorer shot. I emphasize the word some. That's us on the Cho La Pass by the way.

Soon after this the strangest event occurred of the journey occurred when we pushed on from the village of Thangnack at the bottom of the pass we had just descended from. The three of us had joined up with two dutch brothers and attempted to follow a supposedly clear cut path across the final glacier over to Gokyo. It was clear cut for quite some distance until we hit a cliff overlooking a glacial lake. Were forced to turn all the way back to the village to seek clearer directions which we received from a friendly but hardly confidence inspiring Briton. Seems we were following the old path and the new path was very poorly marked having only recently been forged. In failing light and enveloping cloud, knowing that we had at least 2 hours of solid hiking ahead of us (assuming we took the right path) we took the gamble to push on. It was then that some stray dog who had first started sniffing about our heels in the village sprung out of the mist and started running just ahead of us. Without having any better clue we just decided to follow the same path as dog, basically so we didn't have to make any choice of our own rather than anything else. The dog always kept about 30m or so ahead of us and would stop if we got too far behind. I'm still struggling to come to grips that we put such absolute faith in this dog but he took us all the way through a myriad of confusing half paths for two hours to Gokyo. Unbelieveable. To show our extreme gratitude we gave him two crackers.

"You're like a wise Buddha, all covered in hair"

Hygiene on this trip was fairly nonexistent. (Girls please stop reading here). Toilet talk and the state of ones bowel eruptions were the staple topics over lunch. I was pretty much fine the whole time, making regular deposits of solid brown bullion for the duration of the trip. Tim however, man that guy went through the whole gamut of poop, from pumpkin soup and beyond but the farts were unbelievable. Supposedly altitude brings on an increase in gas but had we been able to harness the energy he was releasing we could powered several of those villages for weeks, admittedly it would have stank worse than their usual fuel of dried yak shit. It was bad. Grooming also went out the window, the other two more hirsute of our party looked like they had been stuck on a desert island for 2 months by the end of it. I of course looked like I had forgotten to shave that morning. We all stank however as you can imagine when you freeball in the same pants for two weeks. Oh boy, that smell of nether region sweat is the absolute worst. It still haunts me. I did manage to have one bath of sorts in one of the glacial lakes at Gokyo. Not recommended. Generally a glacial lake is pretty cold but especially in the early morning when the outside temperature is -5 degrees. I'm still waiting for feeling in 3 of my toes and I didn't see my little buddies for at least 3 hours after that little episode. Was quite invigorating nonetheless.

I immediately regret this decision...

Great feeling to finally get back to a more reasonable oxygen level, felt like you could run a marathon. To put into perspective how much the altitude affects your ascent, we took about 9 days to get up to BC but descended the same 35 odd horizontal km in 2 days fairly comfortably. So great to safely arrive back in Kathmandu to our favourite guest house where a buffet breakfast of bacon, eggs, pancakes, croissants, tomatoes, cereal, juice etc was waiting for us, all for about $3. I love kathmandu.

And to finish off with, here's just a few pics of Tim looking gay/hot, whatever you're fancy....

Holy incredibly gay looking balaclava batman.