To the botom of the top of the world

Day 12 - Day off Gorak Shep (Kala Pathar)

We were miraculously blessed with the best weather of the trek so far for the hike up Kala Pathar, said to be the highlight of the entire trek, and believe me it didn't disappoint, in fact it shattered every expectation I ever had.

Like Gokyo Ri I raced up this thing. I didn't care much for the lower terrain or the tough walking, but shot straight for the time at a near jog. I got up there painting, sweating and feeling ready to collapse, not because of the effort I had just put forth but because when you turn around to look over the Khumbu Glacier below, there it stood. From the first step to the summit, you could see Everest in an unrestricted view. With the pyramid of Nuptse to the right, Everest to the left and Lhotse in between, you had a view of 2 of the 4 highest mountains in the world right in front of you. Everest ran up from base camp, now visible as a tiny colorful city below, to its famous ice fall, all the way up to the South Col, the South Summit, the Hilary Step and finally the top of the world lighted covered in spindrift (snow blowing off the summit). The view was like nothing I'd ever seen. Similar in ways to Gokyo Ri but bigger, closer, and all the more impressive from this vantage point. Down the range were my favorite smaller hills of Ama Dablam and Cholatse and further up the ridge that is Kala Pathar stood Pumori, which from our perspective looked to be the highest mountain there (it is 5000 feet shorter than Everest, actually Nuptse looks higher than Everest, just barely though, despite being 3000 feet shorter, these mountains really do transcend scale....I mean, I was standing at 18,200 feet, just shorter than the highest point in North America and Everest was still 10,000 feet above me). The views were unthinkably gorgeous, for those 3 hours I felt like I was in heaven. I tried my best to soak it all in and from what I can tell the views have been forever etched in my mind (thanks to my parents for giving me a good memory by the way). Kala Pathar had surpassed Gokyo Ri as the most beautiful place that I had ever stood.

On top of all of these famous outlooks and over all the bridges are hundreds of prayer flags placed there by the sherpas of the area. My trekking agency gave me a scarf to place somewhere that I deemed appropriate so I decided to put the scarf up on top of Kala Pathar in honor of the Dewey family. Along with a picture of my beautiful puppy Simba should she ever get the chance to climb up there and sniff it.

Day 13 - Gorak Shep to Everest Base Camp to Dingboche

There are mixed reviews about going to base camp aka "Tent City". Some love it some hate it. I loved it. Seeing the culture of it all was fascinating. 37 expeditions currently wait there in limbo as to whether or not they can climb since the Chinese have vetoed it until after May 10th so that they can bring the Olympic torch to the top. The Chinese have jammed all forms of communication at base camp so that the teams can't even get weather reports so that they won't dare attempting a summit bid and have even posted a military (or police, there are exaggerations all over the place with this) unit at camp 3 (there are 4 camps to climbing Everest) to prevent teams from going up. Each of the 37 teams are color coded it seemed as there were sections of blue, red, green, orange tents spread over the 2 square miles (estimate) of land that Base Camp covers, it was much larger than I expected. The terrain there is also a glacier, meaning it is ridiculously rocky so they are pitching the 1000+ tents that are there on some of the most inhospitable terrain imaginable at an elevation of 18,000 feet. The climbers have to stay there for 6 weeks acclimatizing to the elevation in bitter cold weather. They put themselves through hell and fork out ~$70k just for a chance at the top, insane if you ask me. The Base Camp sits at the foot of the Everest ice fall which is a very very active glacier with hundred foot crevices everywhere. It is actually the most deadly part of the climb. A team of ice "monkeys" or "doctors" charge each team a fee and they fix a route through the ice fall consisting of a series of ladders (sometimes 2 or 3 tied together) going over the crevices and up the seracs (ice towers) that make the ice fall famous....and gorgeous. The atmosphere there was interesting though, like all other parts of the trail Base Camp was run by locals. Nepalese people who certainly wouldn't be climbing were the western climbers servants, making them breakfast, washing their clothes, bringing them tea in the morning. It was the most shocking part of the trip to base camp. If you go on this trek I highly recommend you take the time to go up there.

On the way back we heard a thunderous bang, looked up and an avalanche was barreling down Pumori straight at us....don't worry it was still 10 miles from us probably, but the cascading snow made for a waterfall like feel as it slid down the slopes. Upon arriving back at Gorak Shep we had a quick lunch and were headed back down the trail for our descent. We went at a very rapid pace as the clouds closed in and made it to Dingboche in just under 4 hours. It was a long day walking and the town of Dingboche was adorably cute and much more developed than anything we were used to.