Yesterday we left Pheriche (4240m) and trekked up to Gorak Shep (5140m)
We got our rooms and had lunch. I have a new roomie now. One of our group Mark isn’t too well. He has the Khumbu cough and his Vo2 is really low. I hope he doesn’t go though. He’s been up to high camp on Everest on the Tibetan side which is the most difficult. So he’s no stranger to this game. Anyway he makes strange noises in his sleep now so now Sam has moved in with me for the night. Raj is also not well either so we could have another two casualties but at the moment they’re hanging in there. I really hope Mark can stay.
After lunch, we left our lodge in Gorak Shep straight onto a big flat piece of gravelly land. This is the exact place where in 2009 they flew an official out from the World Guiness Book of Records to hold the highest cricket match.
Apparently English people came up with the idea. The record was then broken in 2014 on Kilimanjaro.
After lunch we headed up to Everest Base Camp at 5300m. It was a nice moment. It really it’s just a load of rock and snow and ice. The teams climbing Everest are here in April/may.
We returned to the lodge for dinner.
This morning we were up at 5am and set off for Kala Patthar which is a nearby mountain of 5550m with amazing views over all the mountains here. But it was really freezing so we took a couple quick photos and had quick look around and headed down.
We returned to the lodge for breakfast, took our backpacks and retreated all the way back to Pheriche which is where we were 3 nights ago. It’s 4240m.
Now Raj is moving really slowly and I’m scared this will affect our summit. I don’t know if he should go really.
The idea is that we sleep low tonight and the sick people may get better. It helps us acclimatise. Then tomorrow we head off to Island Peak base camp where we will camp in tents for 4 nights and return here to Pheriche on the fifth day. We will reach the base camp and spend two days training then we leave at about 11 pm hopefully to summit about 8am. We will climb in the dark with head torches. The training we’ll be doing is crevasse rescue, self arresting, rappelling etc. All snow and ice stuff. It’s rather daunting even though I’ve done it all before I summited Mont Blanc but that was back in 2007.