By Caitlin

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:


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. |


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