Upon arriving at EBC, we quickly dropped off our things at our yak tent and headed out for a hike to the actual base camp where the climbers set up their camp. It began to snow on our way up, and I was freezing despite wearing 6 layers on top (heavy weight thermal, technical shirt, sweater, puffy vest, down jacket, waterproof windbreaker), 2 layers on bottom, and 3 pairs of gloves and socks.
It's only a 4 km hike, but it usually takes about 2 hours due to the altitude. It's just so much harder to breathe, and everything feels like an incredible effort. Well, unless you're a yak, in which case you practically prance up the mountain with 100 lbs of rice strapped to your back.
Luckily, I acclimatized pretty well, and we managed to make it there in a little over an hour. We had to register (again!) at the police checkpoint, and then I was finally allowed at the top!
It started snowing during our hike, and the snow was coming down in earnest when I got to the top so I rushed to tie on my prayer flag before my fingers froze and I also caught a glimpse of the climbers' tents.
It had been a while since I last felt my fingers and toes so we hurried back to the tourist base camp. Of course, this is when the storm decided to break. Just my luck. Only a light mist remained, which gave a dreamy look to the landscape. It was just so beautifully ethereal, and it was hard to believe that it wasn't just some Hollywood backdrop.
Back at our yak hotel, we dashed off some postcards to send from the world's highest post box and discovered that the toilets were even worse than what we had encountered thus far. Some good advice: just go behind a yak. They're pretty docile so they don't mind much, and their large size provides ample coverage for privacy.
We hunkered down in our tent for the night and it wasn't too cold as long as they kept feeding yak dung to our fire. It got pretty smoky in there so it was difficult to breathe, and the air outside at the campsite was even worse. I would've put up with the smoke for the warmth of the fire, but they put it out when it came time to sleep. The wind sounded like there was a freaking hurricane outside, and I just prayed that I didn't need to go outside to pee in the middle of the night.
I had a rough time sleeping as I had pretty bad insomnia and a racing heart rate from the altitude. On the plus side, I was awake to see Everest at the buttcrack of dawn before anyone else was awake.
It was the coldest I've ever been in my life - and this is from a girl that survived three Michigan winters - and I rushed back to the tent to get some piping hot tea. Everyone else had gotten up, and we packed our things and were soon on our way to Zhang Mou, a trading city at the border of Nepal. Unfortunately, we had another four hours of off-roading, and we got stuck a bunch of times in particularly difficult terrain.
The drive was relatively boring, and the landscape was quite desolate except for the occasional nomad and his yaks.
The weather was mercurial, snowing one minute, raining another, but we managed to make it into Zhang Mou. The drop in elevation was amazing - all of a sudden, we started seeing trees and plants, and it went from being dry and arid to wet and humid. Unfortunately, this meant lots and lots of flies, and we fought a losing battle to keep them off our dinner. Disgusting.
Zhang Mou itself sucked. It's a soul-less trading town, and our room at the hostel was a horrific experiment in seeing how many different kinds of mold could grow in one room. We had put up with a lot of crappy conditions, but this was just beyond the pale, and we negotiated with our guide's agency to move across the street to the much cleaner hotel across the road.
Thank goodness we would cross the border into Nepal the next day.
It's only a 4 km hike, but it usually takes about 2 hours due to the altitude. It's just so much harder to breathe, and everything feels like an incredible effort. Well, unless you're a yak, in which case you practically prance up the mountain with 100 lbs of rice strapped to your back.
Luckily, I acclimatized pretty well, and we managed to make it there in a little over an hour. We had to register (again!) at the police checkpoint, and then I was finally allowed at the top!
It started snowing during our hike, and the snow was coming down in earnest when I got to the top so I rushed to tie on my prayer flag before my fingers froze and I also caught a glimpse of the climbers' tents.
It had been a while since I last felt my fingers and toes so we hurried back to the tourist base camp. Of course, this is when the storm decided to break. Just my luck. Only a light mist remained, which gave a dreamy look to the landscape. It was just so beautifully ethereal, and it was hard to believe that it wasn't just some Hollywood backdrop.
Back at our yak hotel, we dashed off some postcards to send from the world's highest post box and discovered that the toilets were even worse than what we had encountered thus far. Some good advice: just go behind a yak. They're pretty docile so they don't mind much, and their large size provides ample coverage for privacy.
We hunkered down in our tent for the night and it wasn't too cold as long as they kept feeding yak dung to our fire. It got pretty smoky in there so it was difficult to breathe, and the air outside at the campsite was even worse. I would've put up with the smoke for the warmth of the fire, but they put it out when it came time to sleep. The wind sounded like there was a freaking hurricane outside, and I just prayed that I didn't need to go outside to pee in the middle of the night.
I had a rough time sleeping as I had pretty bad insomnia and a racing heart rate from the altitude. On the plus side, I was awake to see Everest at the buttcrack of dawn before anyone else was awake.
It was the coldest I've ever been in my life - and this is from a girl that survived three Michigan winters - and I rushed back to the tent to get some piping hot tea. Everyone else had gotten up, and we packed our things and were soon on our way to Zhang Mou, a trading city at the border of Nepal. Unfortunately, we had another four hours of off-roading, and we got stuck a bunch of times in particularly difficult terrain.
The drive was relatively boring, and the landscape was quite desolate except for the occasional nomad and his yaks.
The weather was mercurial, snowing one minute, raining another, but we managed to make it into Zhang Mou. The drop in elevation was amazing - all of a sudden, we started seeing trees and plants, and it went from being dry and arid to wet and humid. Unfortunately, this meant lots and lots of flies, and we fought a losing battle to keep them off our dinner. Disgusting.
Zhang Mou itself sucked. It's a soul-less trading town, and our room at the hostel was a horrific experiment in seeing how many different kinds of mold could grow in one room. We had put up with a lot of crappy conditions, but this was just beyond the pale, and we negotiated with our guide's agency to move across the street to the much cleaner hotel across the road.
Thank goodness we would cross the border into Nepal the next day.
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