I lifted my head out of my cold sleeping bag, peaked out the window....BLUE SKIES. April is the pre-monsoon season meaning we should expect blue skies in the morning with clouds rolling in in the afternoon and that is just what we got today. I ran outside like a kid on Christmas morning and looked up and there they were.....they snow capped peaks that had been hiding themselves. We are still way to low to see any of the bigger peaks but these 6000m peaks were impressive all the same. Thamserku stuck its 7900m peak (thats huge, Everest is 8850m, sorry about not converting this to feet, for a reference, the highest rockies are at about 4000m) proudly out of the sky and I smiled. I couldn't be too upset over the lack of views the previous few days, because frankly, that low in the valley you can't really see anything, the views really pick up upon leaving Namche and heading into one of the two major valleys in the park. We followed the trail up to the museum on top of the hill overlooking Namche and got our first shots of Everest. I won't lie, I mistook Nuptse (a common occurence due to their relative sizes) for Everest at first. No matter, for the first time I had a panoramic view of the highest mountain range in the world at my disposal, and the views would continue for the next 2 weeks! To the right was Ama Dablam (Ama = mother, Dablam = father, the parents of the mountains if you will) which is one of the most recognizable mountains in the world. Despite being a full 2,000m shorter than Everest it has the most distinctive peak of the region and is unspeakable gorgeous. We followed the trail around a ridge and the views continued to thrill. At this point the names of the mountains were beyond me, there were too many to try and remember, but everywhere you looked was a new peak. It began to dawn on me that even the "small hills" were ridiculously beautiful so I didn't mind that we could no longer see Everest. Relatively speaking we were still at somewhat low altitudes so the 6,000m peaks still loomed eerily high overhead. The end of the day was all downhill again, though overall we went up about 1,000 feet on the day. We descended back in the valley to the beautiful river again and most of the views were blocked by the mountains valley walls again. I spent most of the evening sitting and reading next to the raging river and it was quite peaceful and relaxing.
Thats Everest in the background (the tiny black peaking sticking out over the ridge)
Ama Dablam
Uphill was the theme of the day. We continued to follow the same valley up along the river only this time it headed uphill for a good 3 hours of walking. We made it to the town of Dole around 11am (4200m, which was 600m higher than the previous day more on this later) but Stewart insisted we continue on since it was too early in the day to stop. After lunch in Luzla we came around a bend in the valley and straight in front of us stood Cho Oyu (the 6th highest mountain in the world). To my right was the huge valley with nameless snowcapped ridges above it, to the left was the jagged peak of Glacier Dome (not really a dome, I think Arjun may have made a name up for it) which was the sharpest peak I'd seen yet and behind us was the beautiful view of the front face of Ama Dablam. A full 360 degree view of the mountains, pure bliss. We finally ended the day in Machermo at an elevation of 4450m (14,600 feet) and were above the continental United States for the first time. At this altitude acute mountain sickness (AMS) can be a real problem and I did have a small headache, which fortunately went away with some advil so we were certainly on the look-out. Up until this point we had actually met more people who had to turn back due to the altitude than actually finished their trek. But I was very relaxed and had an amazing night sleep in this high mountain village that had views of one of the highest mountains in the world.
