Altitude vs attitude: Gorak Shep and Kala Pattar

Day 10: Gorak Shep (5,180m/ 17,126 feet) to Kala Patthar (5,645m/ 18,520 feet)
Today will be a long and very rewarding day! We will be up early to start our trek to Gorak Shep, which takes approximately 3 hours to reach 5,180m/ 17,126 ft. Today is a very challenging day on the trail, as we cross glacial moraine on mixed rocky terrain with a lot of up and down hill to cover. Gorak Shep was the site of the 1953 Everest Expedition’s Base Camp and where we will stop for lunch. After lunch, you will check in to your room and relax before heading up Kala Patthar in the afternoon to see the sun set over Mount Everest. The trail from Gorak Shep leads steeply uphill all the way to the top of Kala Patthar at 5,645m/ 18,520 ft. This
takes approximately 2 hours to reach the top and the views off Kala Patthar are spectacular and you will be rewarded with the famous view of Mount Everest! After enjoying the mountain views at the top, we will return to Gorak Shep, which takes about one hour for the evening. Today we will hike for approximately 6 hours.

NGL. Today was absolutely brutal.  This is not going to be a long blog post because I am absolutely FREEZING – even though I am parked next to the stove at our tea house in Gorak Shep.  There was a slight change to the itinerary outlined above – we still hiked to Gorak Shep from Lobuche in the morning, arriving by lunchtime.  It had snowed again overnight so the skies were a clear blue – but it was very cold.  Let’s not forget, people, that we will be sleeping in tents at Base Camp tomorrow night!  We must be completely mad.  The village of Gorak Shep is very small with only about 7 tea houses.   While my room is fine (although there are some suspicious looking stains on the bed sheet) there is not a lick of heat anywhere to be found.  Its about 10 degrees outside right now – and it actually feels colder in my room.  As I write, its now 7pm, and it is definitely below freezing inside.

Lunch was a delicious Sherpa’s stew (rich broth, veggies and noodles) Instead of hiking to Kala Pattar in the evening, we decided instead to go straight after lunch in the (as it turned out, vain) hope that the weather would hold out.

Well, nope.  By the time we left for our hike, it was already snowing and it was cold AF.   We knew setting off that it was an exercise in futility to actually see, well, anything so it was all about the bragging rights and bagging Kala Pattar at 18,500 ft.   Well, we did it – but it was, without question, the hardest hike I’ve ever done.  Even without the deep snow, it would have been tough because of the altitude (hello there, bugger all oxygen!) but with the wind and blizzard conditions at the top, it was a truly soul crushing 3hrs of hiking.  Oh – forgot to mention one of my microspikes had broken (I think they are designed for icy Chicago sidewalks, not Himalayan mountains), so I didn’t have those to help with my footing either.  Anyway, they say a picture (or video) says a thousand words, so I’m going to leave you with a gallery of today’s shenanigans for now.  I’ll probably come back and update when I have more energy (and more feeling in my fingers) so this is it for today.

TOMORROW WE CRAZY ADVENTURERS ARE CAMPING – YES, CAMPING – AT EVEREST BASE CAMP so there won’t be any blogs cos there wont be any wi-fi.  It is going to be cold cold cold (even colder than today) so I imagine I will be spending the majority of my day tomorrow, after the 2hr walk to EBC, hunkered down in my sleeping bag and questioning my life choices.

Wish me luck.