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What Were We Thinking?! (Everest Base Camp Trek Part 3/3)

1/25/2015

By Jed

Spoiler alert, we made it

You know your are nearing the top when some of your fellow trekkers are throwing up due to altitude sickness. You feel quite bad when you see groups arriving to the lodge at night in the pitch black, rushing down the mountain because someone is quite sick and needs to descend immediately to try and overcome their sickness. Altitude sickness can kick in at around only 6,500 feet, but once above 15,000 feet, the risk is high and effects could be severe. Thus, it is best to go quite slowly at these altitudes. In addition to AMS risk, it is just damn hard to breathe this high up, so climbing is much more tiring. The final climb to the summit is a long, rough day.

The general accepted strategy for trekking is to climb higher than you are going to sleep for the day to help get used to the altitude. That means we would need to climb up to the summit and then back down to the town we are sleeping in all in one day. The summit day starts in the village of Lobuche (elevation 16,200 feet) and takes about 3 hours to get to Gorak Shep, which is the last sleeping spot on the trek. Amazingly, this is the only spot on the whole trek where I had 3G internet on my phone! But I digress. After the winding, up and down slopes to Gorak Shep, it is a quick stop for lunch and then on to the summit. At this point, the daytime temperature has dropped dramatically compared to rest of the trek and we are trekking on top of a glacier. It is time to fully bundle up with the down coats, knit hats, wind-proof gloves etc. The air is super thin and it is really dry...it is quite hard to breathe. And the terrain has also changed; it is now just giant piles of loose rocks that you need to climb over. Twisting an ankle is a real concern, as is a series of rock slides from one of the thousands of loose boulders up hill from where we are walking.

Trekking on a glacier

The terrain has become quite rocky

The time to the summit and back from Gorak Shep is another 4.5 hours (at our slower pace), and they were not fun ones. Although definitely the worst conditions of the trek, you are motivated knowing you are just a few hours away from completing your goal after trekking for the last 10 days. It was at this point that I really started to feel lightheaded for the first time. There were a few points where I felt like I was having an out of body experience...like my body was weightless and I was watching from above. Very, very weird feeling and not something I have really ever experienced.

Battling against the conditions, we could finally see our endpoint, but it seemed like it was getting further and further as we walked. The slow hike seemed to last forever as the sun started to go down, but after a long day, we finally climbed onto the official markers of base camp. A lot of people who do this trek say that the actual Everest Base Camp kind of sucks as it is just a pile of rocks. While they are right that the views along the way of all the other largest mountains in the world are better (see photos from our Part 2 blog post), it is still very cool to be at the base camp for the tallest mountain in the world. The spot feels special as it is marked with a lot of prayer flags and signs from previous trekkers. The view is pretty spectacular, and although the view of Everest is mostly obstructed (as it is everywhere in Nepal) since it is in the middle of a mountain range, you can still see a good part of the peak which is spectacular. What really blows me away is that we are looking at a mountain that is 3X the elevation of some of the massive mountains I had seen just a few weeks ago in the Alps.

Caitlin is getting tired

The tallest mountain in the world (i.e. Everest)

At Base Camp!

With our guide at the top

After about a billion photos, we realized we had to get back as the light was starting to fade. We slept like babies that night. After hustling down the mountain in only 3 days (since no AMS fears going down), our trek was complete. We almost didn't do this trek at all (see list of concerns in our Part 1 blog post), but we were so glad we ignored our rational selves and did it anyway. Now we can go back to the rest of our trip of drinking beers and laying on the beach and not feeling so bad about it =)

"Team Jaitlin": our guide Bhanu and our two porters

Celebrating our climb at a happening bar in Lukla

P.S. If the two of us, who have no training, asthma, fear of heights, bad knees, etc., can do it, then you can too! If you are interested, shoot us a line and we would be happy to discuss any questions or provide motivation!

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What Were We Thinking?! (Everest Base Camp Trek Part 2/3)

1/19/2015

9 Comments

By Caitlin

The start of the trek

Well, we were on our way. My expectations were low. I had no idea if we would be able to conquer this trail that people's opinions varied from "rather easy" to "incredibly difficult." In retrospect, it was both at times and everything in between. Here's some of the highlights (and lowlights) of what its like to trek to the base camp of the tallest mountain in the world:

Looking mIserable in the cold

On a typical day we would get up pretty early and have breakfast. One of our most dreaded early tasks became stuffing our sleeping bags into the compression sacks in the freezing cold. I would usually do as much in my sleeping bag as I could (washing face, brushing teeth, changing clothes) to preserve my body heat. Then we were off for 5-6 hours of hiking. As we got higher, our hiking time was shorter, about 3 hours) and on the way down from Everest Base Camp, they were much longer (7-9 hours), as we compressed a few days walking into one. Once we reached our destination each day, the battle against the cold began. We would find the warmest spot in our teahouse, usually the dining hall, and try to stay in the sunny patches as long as they were around. Once the sun went down, we either huddled around the stove in the teahouse, or retreated to our sleeping bags until dinner to read or watch Freaks and Geeks on the iPad.

Mmm, Dhal Bhat

Meals on the trek were pleasantly surprising. However, every teahouse seemingly had the same menu which offered various bland potato, rice or noodle dishes. No hesitations on the constant carbo-loading. That was the only option. Every menu offered pizza but it wasn’t great (think frozen pizza bagel). I came to really enjoy the local staple food Dhal Bhat, nicknamed the “24-hour power food!” It's just lentil soup with rice and usually served with curried vegetables. The Nepali locals were eating it at least two meals a day and it was pretty darn delish! Snacks like Pringles and Snickers were also readily available and we occasionally indulged for either an energy boost, emotional boost or both.

The teahouses we stayed in ranged quite a bit but were usually above my expectations. That being said, my expectations were incredibly low. Every building was little more than thin plywood walls and a piece of foam on top of a plywood “bed”. Crucially, everywhere provided a blanket which made the difference in us surviving the sub-zero nights, despite having pretty warm sleeping bags. Our rooms at night were roughly the same temp or a few degrees warmer than the outside temperature, which was near freezing for several of the nights. During the last week, water left on the floor over night would be frozen by morning.

A typical room

Despite cold and discomfort, the teahouse nights were some of my favorite moments on the trek, characterized by awkwardness and camaraderie. All the porters, guides, trekkers and teahouse families huddled around the fire in an effort to keep warm. One night we shared a fire with some Buddhist monks. We taught some Nepalis how to to play the card game Asshole and another game Pass the Pigs, while they taught us Nepali games. Another night we watched some of a very Bollywood-esque Nepali movie on someone's phone (featuring only Akon songs!).

Cute little village girl giving bunny ears to a dog

Up, up we go

A glacial stream

Yak traffic jams is a thing

Besides the cold, the toughest parts of the trek were the conditions on the trail and hiking at high altitude. The trail was incredibly rocky, uneven and steep. Watching every step was crucial because you were one turned ankle from falling off the cliff. Especially on the way down, the stairs became very hard on our bodies and knees. The longer days resulted in pain and fatigue. Often very narrow, the trails were shared by herds of Yaks and donkeys, hired to carry everything from tourists supplies to beer, as far up as people go. Human porters also did a vast amount of the hauling. Doors and timber were just some of the unbelievable things we saw people carrying up the trail, while we griped about our 15 lb packs. Fascinating to me was the complete lack of the wheel. No bikes, no carts, and definitely no cars. Its may be the only place I've been where there is no mobility outside of human or animal power, unaided by wheels.

That is an old lady carrying that stuff

That is 9 cases of beer he is carrying up!

Hiking at high altitude was something neither Jed nor I had done before. I don't think I'd been any higher than 10,000 ft before Nepal. Even just a little effort makes you breathe like you're running up stairs, so actually climbing stairs is very difficult. Luckily, we were going pretty slowly in an effort to acclimatize properly. Because of this, we had almost no altitude sickness, which is usually brought on by moving too quickly up the mountain. We also forced ourselves to drink 3-4 liters of water a day in order to stave off altitude effects, which is much harder when its cold outside.

It goes without saying that the views were breathtaking. Literally. After staring at our feet for an hour, water breaks were also moments to enjoy the view. The vastness of each peak and the way the same mountain changed in different light and from every angle made no two pictures the same. One critique of the EBC trek, in contrast to other trekking routes in Nepal like the Annapurna Circuit, is that you go and up and back down along the same route. This did not matter to us as we found the back-down view different and equally as beautiful as the way up. In fact, without the anticipation of reaching the “goal” of EBC, we probably appreciated it and relished it more.

Reaching the top was not the emotional high you might expect (more on that in the next post). The trek really became about the whole experience to us and we loved all the good and the bad. To that one random guy we met in Tanzania who told us “You can't do that! There's no way you are prepared for that!”: I wish he could see us on top of Everest Base Camp.

Here are a bunch of pictures from the trek (click on any picture to bring up a larger gallery you can scroll through):

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What Were We Thinking?! (Everest Base Camp Trek Part 1/3)

1/4/2015

3 Comments

By Jed

During our travels, we sometimes get some big ideas. But often, once we really analyze the scary realities of the ideas, we often decide not to take on such momentous challenges. Climbing to Everest Base Camp was one of our big ideas. The potential issues were numerous:

Conditioning

Caitlin and I have never hiked more than a half a day before. The hike to Everest Base Camp (EBC) and back would be 13 days of hiking.

Altitude Sickness

Even though Base Camp is at the base of Mountain Everest, it is still very high: an altitude of 17, 598 feet (5,364 meters). Neither Caitlin nor I had been anywhere near that high. EBC is higher than the peaks of the highest mountains in the continental U.S. (which are around 14,000 feet) and in the alps. Altitude sickness, or AMS, is a real and serious risk at this height. AMS affects everyone differently and actually has nothing to do with physical fitness. It is just a chance thing that no one is quite sure why it effects who it does, but it can be deadly.

Lack of Oxygen/Fatigue

The Oxygen level at EBC is approximately half of that at sea level. In addition to presenting AMS risks, it makes it much more physically exhausting to hike since your muscles are not getting enough oxygen.

Extreme Weather Conditions

Just a few weeks before making our decision, there was a horrible disaster at the Annapurna Circuit, the other most popular trek in Nepal. An extreme blizzard and resulting avalanches killed over 40 people in what was otherwise thought of as a very safe trek.

Dangerous Airport

Lukla, the airport you fly into to start the trek, has been dubbed “the most dangerous airport in the world” because of the one and only very tiny runway on the side of a mountain cliff. If you don't time it perfectly, the plane will crash into the mountain. It has happened on a number of occasions.

Extreme Cold

Although the daytime hiking wouldn't be too bad with the sun out, the nights get below freezing and the accommodations (teahouses) have no heat and are made of super, super thin plywood (no insulation whatsoever).

Injury Risk

There is no paved path on the trek; it is a rough path of dirt and rocks. It is quite easy to trip and sprain something or break a limb. There are also risks of rock slides or a run in with a yak on the trail, which has actually resulted in numerous serious injuries when yaks have pushed hikers off cliffs on the trail.

Fears/Personal Ailments

I have a fear of heights and Caitlin has asthma and some pain in her knees. We weren't sure 13 days of high-altitude trekking in the mountains would go well with these conditions.

Forced Vegetarianism

Not really an issue for Caitlin, who already is a vegetarian, but 13 days without meat was a bit of a scary thought for me, especially when I would be craving protein after the long hiking days. There is meat on the trail, but the conventional wisdom is not to eat it since the meat is not fresh up that high and you do not want to be battling an upset stomach during the long hikes.

General Sickness

Which brings me to the last fear, which is getting sick and having to do this hike. Pretty much every report of someone who has hiked to EBC includes some sort of sickness, ranging from nasty colds to serious stomach bugs. It didn't sound fun

Even the Starbucks in Nepal is a knock-off. Seriously, this is a fake Starbucks

Despite this numerous list, we went against our usual better judgment and decided to do the trek. We weren't sure if we would make it all the way, but decided to give it a try. This decision was literally made in Nepal, 3 days before the trek was to begin. We spent the next 3 days scrambling around the extremely busy area of Thamel in Kathmandu, trying to find which of the hundreds of trekking companies to use and buying gear from the endless knock-off shops that line the streets. They are amazingly good at making knock-offs in Nepal; the fake North Face, Marmot and Patagonia items were near perfect looking, right down to the tags.

After three very stressful days, we had secured two porters, a guide and all the gear we needed for our trek. Most hiking duos use just one porter instead of two, but after seeing our ridiculously full and heavy duffle bags, we felt there was no way human could carry both those bags (over 40 lbs) up a mountain, in the high altitude. After a few days on the trek, we came to realize how wrong we were as the Sherpas are incredibly strong people and were carrying loads 3X or 4X that. Oh well, we gave someone else employment for 2 weeks. The night before the trek began, we barely slept more than 3 hours due to our anxiety of the upcoming journey. Not a great way to start out 2 weeks of hiking.

Due to my fear of flying, particularly on an old, Nepali plane into the most dangerous airport in the world, we booked a helicopter into Lukla for just a little bit more money. Turned out to be an amazing ride with the spectacular Himalayan scenery in the backdrop. Seeing the mountains as we flew by, I knew these next two weeks were going to be epic...

Tea break at one of the many gear shops

Stressed about all our stuff

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What Were We Thinking?! (Everest Base Camp Trek Part 3/3)

By Jed

What Were We Thinking?! (Everest Base Camp Trek Part 2/3)

By Caitlin

What Were We Thinking?! (Everest Base Camp Trek Part 1/3)

By Jed

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