Everest Recap

Before too much time gets between me and this part of the journey, let me recap the second part of our Everest journey.

We spent a rest day in Namche so we were there for two nights. While there, we met a group of doctors on a continuing education trip, and we just somehow ended up integrating ourselves to the level that we took off from there with them. On this part of the trip we had less weight (we left a bunch of extraneous stuff at a lodge between Namche and Lukla), there was less time spent hiking (since altitude changes dictated a slower pace) and overall we just had a LOT more free time. So it was great to be traveling with a group, since we benefited both from their wacky and cool personalities in the evenings for card games and social games, and we got to sit in on their courses, which ranged from insect transmitted diseases to how to avoid getting struck by lightning in the outdoors. I picked up quite a few new bits of knowledge.

The trip to Everest Base Camp was inspired by my friend Joe's status as an employee there, so I was REALLY excited the day of our summit to the camp... and instead I ended up crossing paths with him along the trail. Which was cool because I got to catch up with him and also meet his girlfriend, whom I'd heard plenty about but never met, but it kind of took the wind out of my sails for the trip to camp. Still, base camp ended up being great! Carla and I left the med group to go there, and we ended up chatting first with an American solo climber, and then we chatted up a group of Spanish climbers and got invited into their tent for a hot drink and a chat. This group was led by a badass woman who had been the first woman to climb all 14 peaks over 8000 meters tall, and was now leading the team to do all 14 without oxygen. So far the had accomplished all but Everest. I have the website info for them so we'll check it out-- and we might even be on Spanish TV! (their videographer took video of our conversation).

Thank goodness we are both Spanish speakers! Though to be fair probably our being female had a lot to do with having gotten the opportunity... base camp has some pretty skewed male/female ratios and we got a ton of attention just walking around the camp in our hiking skirts.

BTW, general info about base camp: it's a little village of tents, with no permanent structures. There are sleeping tents, which are short and igloo shaped, and cooking tents, communal tents, storage tents, and even toilet tents. The Spanish crew showed us their provision tent, which was chock full of all the Western junk food you could ask for, from cookies to hot chocolate to chips and candy. Though it seemed like paradise to our variety-starved palates, I'm sure they get pretty sick of it.

Climbers spend most of their 1-2 months at base camp. They will go higher for short periods to acclimatize at Camp 1 or Camp 2. They go up to Camp 3 briefly, and beyond that is the "Death Zone" where acclimatization is physiologically impossible, and basically you only go there for as long as you have to to summit and get the hell out. It takes I think 5 days to summit Everest from Base Camp, and people just wait for the weather to clear to go for it. Sometimes there is not a single window in the entire season and it just sucks to be you if you hung out for two months and paid tens of thousands of dollars for permits, guides, supplies, and support staff.

It's a crazy culture and I can't imagine wanting to climb those peaks, but some people live for it. In Namche we saw a couple of movies/documentaries about it and I would recommend you check it out if you're interested. One was Into Thin Air and the other was some National Geographic flick. People are just NOT designed to be up there (though Sherpas are genetically predisposed to be able to withstand much higher altitudes than we are). And it is no joke. We saw plenty of people not take it seriously, and we also saw some life-threatening altitude sickness. We personally met three people who got helicoptered out for medical treatment. One was in our med group, and one was a guy I hiked with for a day who had done the same treks as me and Carla, only faster. It happened all the time, and apparently 1-2 people a day DIE up there. It's crazy because it feels like you're just living life normally (albeit a little breathless) but it can creep up and kill you. We followed the rules and outside of a few headaches, we made it through with no trouble. We took our pulse throughout and after descending, and while we were in the 120s resting at altitude, I had a resting pulse rate of near 50 back in Kathmandu!