After two days on Lobuche we made our move to Everest base camp. The hike up here follows the Khumbu glacier and passes by the last outpost called Gorakshep which is at 16,860′ (5140m). From what I hear Gorakshep was a staging site for the 1953 British expedition, that would put the first two people, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, on the summit of Everest.
Gorakshep is essentially three buildings that serve as lodges and tea houses providing meals, some provisions, and “internet” (in lucky times! None when we passed).
From Gorakshep there is a trail going up a point called Kala Patthar which is, in reality part of a ridge that connects to the very technical and dangerous 7165m peak called Pumori. But Kala Patthar is a very popular viewing point to get great classic views of Everest as you cannot see the summit from base camp.
Kala Patthar may be a simple hike up from Gorakshep but it is 5550m
(18,205′) high! So the altitude makes it a challenging ascent for trekkers.
I plan on going to Gorakshep and hiking up Kala Patthar on one of my many acclimatization days before our summit push in May.
Gorakshep is the final sleeping stop for trekkers doing the Basecamp trek. They normally spend a night there and then either hike up Kala Patthar or they visit base camp and return to Gorakshep. We continued our hike passed Gorakshep to base camp. Views of the Khumbu glacier, Pumori and Nuptse are spectacular. These peaks have incredible steep rock faces and giant hanging glaciers which routinely break off large ice chunks we call seracs and create avalanches that run down hundreds of meters down the mountain. As I began writing this dispatch. I heard the large, powerful characteristic sound of one of these avalanches off Nuptse just a few hundred meters away from where we are.
Between Gorakshep and base camp we got to see the summit of Everest between the west ridge and Nuptse. It looks impossibly high and remote even though it’s not that far from us. It’s hard to believe climbers actually stand on that amazing summit every year!
I have to take things one step at a time! As we reached base camp at 5300m or 17,500′ (our camp is a little lower than the rest of BC. We are at 17,400′) every step felt tiring. You can definitely feel the altitude here! At this point it is hard to fathom attempting the summit at 8,849m (29,035′)! But that is why we are going to spend weeks here getting our bodies acclimatized to this extreme altitude, and finally when we go for the summit from camp 3 (passing camp 4) we will be using oxygen.
