Lobuche 16,175ft – Gorek Shep 17,008ft – Kala Patar 18,192ft – Lobuche
I slept fitfully and not very well at Above the Cloud lodge, this was mainly due to the fact that all the rooms were booked solid and three of us ended up sleeping on the communal/dining room benches. It was at least warm though due to the heat from the Yak Dung burning stove, which lasted for a while into the night even when the stove was put out. The fifteen or so porters whose bed was the hard wooden floor of the room also added to the warmth, if not the quiet! At 5.30am we were up, the porters having vacated some time earlier. A breakfast of porridge and tea and we were out by 6.30am.
Today is the day for me, the day that, if all goes well I will achieve an ambition and fulfil a dream to walk up Kala Patthar and see that classic view of Everest. A view that I have seen for many years on photographs I will at last, hopefully see with my own eyes. This trek has been nine months in the planning and eight days so far in the walking from landing at Lukla, so I am as ready as I will ever be. It was freezing in the Khumbu valley as we set off from the lodge, the Sun wasn’t quite up, dawn was just breaking and our boots were crunching the frost which was still hard on the ground. After half an hour though the Sun, which had been rising unseen behind the ridge line finally tipped over and bathed us all with its light and warmth. At home, I pay little attention to the warmth that the sun gives, being safe in my office or a warm car, in the cold hills of the Himalayas however with no central heating to turn up you quickly learn to appreciate the warmth and life that our nearest star gives us each day. Duvet jackets stripped off we set a fair pace along the trail as it was going to be a long day. As we neared Gorek Shep, the pace slowed and we joined a queue of brightly clad trekkers from what appeared to be a League of Nations from all the different languages I could hear. It seemed like everybody in the Khumbu, or maybe even the whole of Nepal had decided that this was the day to get to Everest Base Camp and we all trudged, procession like up the trail.
After two hours of steady walking we arrived at Gorek Shep. At a height of 17,008ft it is a rather cold, bleak looking place with a number of lodges and it is the last stop for food and accommodation before Everest Base Camp itself. I was glad to have a rest in the lodge, drink some hot chocolate and eat a couple of snicker bars.
It had been a tough couple of hours to Gorek Shep, the altitude was now draining us, we were all pretty tired and we now had to decide what we were going to do. Personally, my aim had always been simple, I wanted to get up Kala Patthar. You can’t see Everest from Base Camp and I had come for that classic view of Everest across the Khumbu valley. Kala Patthar is also higher than Base Camp. Some of the other guys however were more interested in going to Base Camp and one of the guys in particular had a memento of his brother who had sadly passed away that he wanted to leave there. So we decided that Steve and I would go up Kala Patthar, the rest of the guys would head up to Base Camp and we would all meet back at Gorek Shep for the return journey later. The weather was as good as it gets, I felt well, fit enough and although tired there was no guarantee that either the weather would hold for tomorrow or indeed we would all still be feeling OK in ourselves if we put things off, so that was it, we were going up!
Steve and I set off, across the dried up lake bed that borders the village and up and onto the steady incline that leads to Kala Patthar. After the rest stop in the lodge it was a shock to be on the move again and I was certainly starting to feel the altitude now, breathing as if I was jogging when in fact we were walking at a slow steady pace. We shared a rucksack and about halfway up, I gave Steve the pack. This should have made things easier for me, but I seemed to hit a wall just afterwards. My legs suddenly felt very heavy, I became very tired and breathing became a big effort. I kept going though, just putting one foot in front of the other as the path continued to rise upwards towards Kala Patthar. And slowly but surely, with each step we climbed, in the distance, across the Khumbu, Everest began to reveal herself. And then, after about an hour and a half, we found ourselves standing at Kala Patthar, tired, breathing heavily but absolutely elated.
We were rewarded for all our effort with a crystal clear view of Everest, almost within touching distance across the valley looking quite majestic. Spin drift was blowing off the summit but we had a fantastic view of her, the Grey rock and White snow of the mountain contrasting sharply with the Aqua Blue sky above. It really was a quite magnificent site to behold. It had been tough work getting up Kala Patthar and I was pretty drained but I couldn’t have been happier. I had achieved what I had come to Nepal to do and it felt just great. Steve and I took plenty of pictures and I spent a while just taking in, absorbing the scene all around me with a growing feeling of self satisfaction and achievement welling up inside of me.
To the right of Everest were Lhotse and Nuptse and behind us, the shapely Pumori, of which Kala Patthar is a ridge. We were surrounded by the highest mountains in the world and it was a sight to take your breath away, if the altitude hadn’t already done that! All too soon however it was time to head back down to Gorek Shep and get ready for the trek back to Lobuche. As we approached the lodges a sand storm suddenly blew up over the dry lake bed and somehow I managed to lose one of my gloves from my pocket in the dust and wind that whipped across the flat area. All told it was about a three hour round trip to Kala Patthar and I was absolutely shattered when we arrived back at the lodge, I needed ten minutes just sitting down outside, resting to recover myself. Steve and I waited for the others and not long afterwards the other guys turned up from EBC. We then all started our way back to Lobuche, on the same path we had travelled up that morning.
By 4pm we were back at Lobuche making it a nine and half hour day of walking over 16,000ft. I got really tired on the way back, even though it was downhill and when we finally got in I just sat, for perhaps twenty minutes on the bed just to recover myself. I drank a cup of Coke that Mark brought me and eventually I began to feel like I could move again. We ordered some chips and I managed to eat a few but, although I should have been starving considering the energy I had expended that day, my appetite had vanished. Loss of appetite being another problem of high altitude. By 6.15pm I was in bed. I was shattered, my body was aching, but I had a contented feeling inside of me. That feeling of immense satisfaction and achievement that you get when you complete something that isn’t easy, that takes it out of you, but rewards you with so much more. As I fell asleep, I noticed a poster on the plywood wall above my head, it said:
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
Today was the day I fulfilled my dream.
For map and route details of this walk click ‘Learn more’ below
