Overnight low in tent vestibule 14F. Altitude 5260 metres
(17260 ft). Max altitude 5505 metres (18050 ft).
I love my sleeping bag. Been sleeping in bare feet, and they’re
toasty warm. Been sleeping in base layer tights, too, but that’s just to make
it easier to keep warm when getting up in the middle of the night to – as the
Brits on the expedition say – “have a wee”.
You’re welcome.
Okay, I know. It’s body stuff. Eeeeeewwwww. But the fact is
that at altitude, what your bod is up to is a topic of much consideration and
often conversation. Sleeping is a problem – for most everyone – but I myself
haven’t gotten more than four hours of good sleep a night since I got to
Lobuche BC. Because, get this, I forget
to breathe. Being at altitude plays with the percentage nitrogen in your
bloodstream, and that percentage is what triggers your body to take a breath.
What happens is that trigger doesn’t happen, my breathing tails off, and then
when the nitrogen percentage finally alters enough to trigger a breathing
response I end up gasping while feeling like I’m suffocating. Not a health
threat in any way, but waking up in a panic every two minutes, gasping, isn't conducive to rest.
Okay, anyway, to kick off the picture portion of today’s
blog, here is today’s PMOTD (Pointy Mountain Of The Day). Sunrise over Himex
Base Camp.
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| PMOTD is P |
That bright flare behind the mountain is caused by the sun,
which is about to motate up into the sky and shine brightly upon base camp.
When that happens, everything gets 10 degrees warmer. From this you may
conclude, accurately, that I did not take this picture. After the first
morning at base camp I resolved that I wasn't freaking gonna get out of my tent
until the Magic Moment of Sunshinyness had already occurred.
Today was a special day. Trekker summit day. If you are a
climber, Everest (or other nearby peak) is the prize. For a trekker, it’s Kala
Patthar, to get a view and photos of Everest, which is not actually visible from base
camp. Today, we would be climbing “Himex Kala Patthar” and hopefully get what
we considered to be the money shot: a picture of us with Everest in the
background.
Kala Patthar means “black hill”, and rises behind Gorakshep.
It is the hill most trekkers climb to get a view of Everest. It also can be
crowded, is festooned with cell phone towers, and you have to hike an hour
south of base camp to get to Gorakshep and begin climbing it. This means that traditionally if you want to
climb Kala Patthar (if you’re trekking with Himex) you go on the day you hike
back down to Lobuche BC and hope the weather is good. If you’re not trekking
with Himex and don't get to overnight at base camp, then you have to choose between climbing Kala Patthar or going to the Trekker’s Base Camp
monument, before heading back downhill.
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| We will climb the one in the foreground |
What we planned to do instead was climb up what we were told was
called “Himex Kala Patthar”. In the photo above, Kala Patthar is the brown lump
in the background, and Himex Kala Patthar is the brown thing in the
foreground, rising to a pointy prominence on the right. It’s summit is 75
or so metres lower than Kala Patthar, but it actually has a peaky bit to climb
up to whereas Kala Patthar is more of a rising ridge. It isn’t crowded, and if the
weather didn't cooperate today we would have another day on which we could climb it again
and try for a photo. Also, the view of Everest is as good if not better.
I really wish I could somehow make things more dramatic, but
I've pretty much exhausted all those resources. It ends like this: The weather
remained good for as long as we needed it to. We climbed the hill and got the shots. Fifteen minutes
after we got the pictures we wanted, the clouds moved in and mostly obscured
Everest.
The summit of Himex Kala Patthar is roughly 5505 metres; a
little over 18000 feet. That’s the highest altitude to which either of us have
been. There is less air there.
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| But there was enough air to power a couple of smiles |
That’s us at the summit of Himex Kala Patthar, at which
there actually is a really cool pointy upthrust bit to stand
on. Pumori rises in the
background.
And this picture, taken by one of our guides, Woody, facing
in the opposite direction.
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| Man, I don’t even know what to type here. Simply badass is all. |
Of course, climbing up to 18000’, gasping most of the way,
does not inhibit whimsy. In fact, we found that hypoxia has a tendency to facilitate whimsy.
And so here is the picture we took at the behest of the Sisterhood of the
Travelling Scarf.
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| It has now been here. |
Below is a clearer shot, zoomed, of the mountain. This was
taken about 2/3 of the way up our hike. Some well-known features of the
mountain are identifiable. From the summit, about half way to the major
downslope on the right, you can see the first significant drop-off. That’s the
Hillary Step. Just before the major dropoff on the right, there is an upslope
to a bit of a peaklet. That’s the South Summit. The other major features of the
South approach are hidden behind what you can see of the mountain here.
Everest stands out from the other mountains for a couple of
other reasons besides being the tallest. Frankly, it’s comparatively ugly – sort of a tetrahederonal lumpule
set amidst otherwise magnificently sharp and contoured neighbors. The other
thing is that has relatively little snow on it, exposing stark black rock, which likewise makes it stand out distinctively.
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| Ugly as I wanna be |
We were buoyant, though exhausted, on the hike down. As it was to turn out, the
weather was cloudy and overcast for the next two days, so the day we went up
was in fact our only shot at getting the pictures for which we were so eager.
To put a cherry on top of a fantastic day, dinner happened.
For dinner, we had: Duck. Yeah, seriously, duck, with sides of cauliflower and
potatoes. Dessert was flourless chocolate cake.
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| If food porn is wrong, I don’t want to be right |
Yeah. Freakin’ duck.
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