We leave Dingboche and the track is covered in a little snow, but enough now that it’s compacted and slippery for me in only trainers. I decided against bringing heavy hiking books for the walk in as the path is usually good and I have my heavy, bulky climbing Olympus Mons boots. I didn’t want to bring another pair. I avoid sliding over the edge on a few occasions and I’m glad of my Pacer poles. We arrive at Dugla but it’s too early for lunch at 10:30 so we just stop for hot drinks and I buy a snickers to munch.
Just before Dugla, we passed a school trip coming down from a base camp trek. I asked them which school they were from and they replied “Brentwood”, like what’s the chance of that. Just outside London. I resisted the impulse to say “The Only Way is Essex” lol. Jeez, what a school trip to be on. Amazing and they all looked in great shape and enjoying themselves. Trip of a life time for them. Wow.
The trek from Dugla up to the Chortens which are memorials for climbers who have died here is very steep. It’s a lot up up again, many stones steps and we take it slow to keep the heart rate down. We see the memorial for Scott Fischer and many other famous climbers, some from the avalanche as well. It’s a beautiful, colourful, but sad sight.
The trek from here to our stop for the night at Gorek Shep is mostly flat and sandy from the edge of the moraine being ground down into fine dust. So we started out in the arctic snow and we arrive in the Sahara sand lol. Only it’s not Sahara temperatures, it’s bloody freezing. We have lunch and once again we seem to have hit the jackpot food wise. We’re staying in Oxygen Altitude Hut which stands at 4985m.
The pizza again looks good (often it can be really greasy and inedible) and Craig Van Hoy (our expedition leader and base camp manager) has chicken Kiev which comes with mashed potatoes (made from real potatoes not powder) and veg and the veg actually looks really good; carrots and greens and green beans. I decide I’ll have this for dinner as I haven’t had a proper vegetable now for a long time. (You may wonder why I write so much about food but it’s notes for when I come back with my fellow Team Nevagiviners and we do the base camp trek – I want to remember which lodge to never stay in again (Everest Rhododendron), where has good food and what was good to eat from the menu. So apologies for that. The rooms are also good here, there is actual furniture, my room has a table AND a chair. It makes it easier for laying out kit. And the beds are enormous. Very nice although an electric blanket would go down a storm now but no such luck up here. In your room you have to get into your sleeping bag underneath the heavy blankets as it’s just so cold.
I also can’t wait to get to base camp to clean my teeth properly. I think I might just clean my teeth outside tomorrow, the sinks are outside the toilets which are always stinky and when I clean my teeth I gag so much I think I’m going to puke so the cleaning does not last for anywhere near the recommended two minutes. It’s probably about 20 seconds. We also can’t use the water from the tap and have to pour our drinking water on the brush. I like to add hot orange to my drinking water as it’s so cold it’s nicer to drink when it’s warm. Then this gets cold too so in the mornings I’m cleaning my teeth with orange juice, outside the stinky toilets almost throwing up. Lovely.
When I use the stinky toilets I put a disposable glove on one hand and only touch anything in there with that and then throw it away. I brought a pack of twenty pairs. At base camp it should be cleaner. Probably a long drop but at least it’s natural with no germs.
Holy crap, (pardon the pun lol) I just crawled out of my sleeping bag for dinner and guess what I found, an electric blanket. The wire is on the other side of the big bed. I switch it on but no light comes on. I’ll leave it on and see what the score is when I return.
At dinner the bloody Spanish are here again. They are a big group and they’re so loud. The first night at Dingboche, they were in a room beside me and the walls are so thin you can hear people sniff or cough next door. I have no idea how or why two people who are in the same room that’s so tiny need to have a conversation at the level they were at, I almost knocked the wall at them. It was 6am and my rest day as well. I’d even swung it with Craig for us to have breakfast half an hour later at 7.30 and now I was awake at 6am.
In the Spanish team is Carlos Soria, a 79 year old man who is here acclimatising to then fly to Tibet to climb Daulaghiri which will be the 13th of the 14 mountains in the world over 8000m. He has the age record for seven of them. He climbed Everest when he was a mere 62. He then only has Shisha Panga to complete the set. What a feat. But I do wish his team mates would shut up.
I return from dinner and the blanket doesn’t work. Oh well my bag is toastie with two heavy blankets over it.
(NB: these are the best rooms, book C block: rooms 101, 102, 103. Well any in C block are the best)