6gorakshep

Okay, now lets get really high!

From Tengboche, we did a 5-6 hour hike to Dingboche (4400 m). Dingboche was a small town with more spectactular views in the morning... at Dingboche a few things happened
1) it snowed and we froze our butts off that night
2) the bathroom was 20m outside of guest house, making for a long night when your drinking 6 liters of water a day
3) we decided at the advice of our guide to skip our acclimitization day and push on (this one is important later)

From Dingboche, we hiked past a little town called Tukla up another huge hill toward Lobuche. On the top of the hill were some spectacular views, and also a memorial to Scott Fisher, one of the leaders of the American expeditions in the 1996 tradgedy.

Luboche (4930m) was our worst guest house by far. It was cold, we had to sleem in the "dormatory" where we slept on the bottom (for easy bathroom access) and the upper bunk rained sand on us all night.... no wonder they say you can't sleep at altitude.

The next morning, we left before dawn toward Gorak Shep. It was so cold our water bottles froze. Our guide, Tika, also started to get altitude sickess. 2 hours later we were in Gorak Shep (5169m). At Gorak Shep, we had breakfast, and then started out on the 7 hour round trip to Base Camp. We also met the Mexican team that was heading out to tackle Pumari (7400m).

The first stop on the way to base camp was another set of memorials. Most interesting was the memorial for Rob Hall (the leader of the other American team in 1996) and his other team members who died...

After that, things started to get interesting.....