The Trail Looked Flat on the Map

Shuffling my feet forward, my loud breathing fills my ears. I look up, snow covered mountains are surrounding me, tall and jagged.  Mountains with names like Everest and Lhotse--towering with intimidating heights over 8,000 meters or 26,000 feet.  Looking in the distance, I see people. I see Everest Base Camp. Suddenly, it feels, not like a dream, but like a reality. Like ants, people are moving across the rock and dust covered glacier, when I realize we are drawing closer to them. Which means…we’re close! Adrenaline is bubbling up inside me. It suddenly feels easier to breathe, not because there is suddenly more oxygen, but because of my excitement. 

Walking to base camp. We already dropped our packs off in Gorak Shep so that helped. Base camp is the dark rocks by the snow to the right

As the trail slid off the rocky ridge that we had been walking on, we trekked down the side to reach the base camp nestled among the minefield of boulders on the glacier. A group of people pass us and a woman cheers “you’re almost there!” I bite my bottom lip to stop myself from looking insane from happiness. It feels like a dream, I’m walking, no, floating. The rocks are a lot bigger than they looked when we were up high, I think while leaping from one to the next. We pass a small frozen lake on the left. Scouring the ground I find a rock and throw it as hard as I can, which at this height, isn’t very hard. I watch as the rock hits the snowy surface and sits amongst the other rocks. 

We are basically there now, I can feel it, I think. I see a group of people posing for pictures. Wait, haven’t we seen them before? Oh yea, aren’t they a day ahead of us?  When trekking up to Everest Base Camp over 8-10 days, you become an intimate community of trekkers bonded by a bit of uphill misery and stale teahouse menu choices, and know exactly who will reach the base camp the same day you will.  Oh well.  The important thing is they made it.  

I saw a big boulder with the words “Everest Base Camp 5,364 meters” spray painted in red across the front. That is about 17,598 feet. Yeah, really high, but keep in mind that Jordan Romero climbed to the summit of Everest at age 13 in May 2010.  As for me, I’ll stick to base camp since the fatality rate to reach the summit of Everest is 14% and there have been over 200 deaths on the mountain. The spray painted rock was shaped like a cave. The top was arched and just below the paint was hollow. In the caved part, there were many names scratched with other rocks, written with sharpie or spray painted to commemorate trekker achievements. The front of the rock was also littered with sharpied names and dates. Blue, pink and white painted rocks were placed on a small ledge. I wasn’t wanting to add my name along with the others, since I would know I’ve been here, which is all that matters. On the ground in front of it was a puddle of gray murky water with a string of prayer flags showing their bright colors beneath the liquid. 

While waiting for the other group to finish their pictures, we walked off to the side and took some of our own. Attempting to do a jumping picture didn’t work since firstly, it’s hard to jump when you're that high even if you’re as excited as I was, and secondly, my necklace kept hitting my mouth causing weird faces. 

Making weird faces

When the other group left, I climbed up on the rock and sat while pointing to the words, my smile honest. I threw my head back and put my arms in the air. I was so gleeful since it had been so hard and I finally did it.  It had been 10 long days of altitude acclimatization, uphill trudging, cold temperatures, frozen plumbing, repetitive food choices, a few headaches, and being force fed water and tea by my Mom.  Not to say it was all hard and unpleasant, but there were quite a few challenges.  I was beginning to get cold as the menacing clouds hanging in the valley started to move towards us. We took some more pictures with my dad, mom, our guide and our porter. We also took some pictures on the  ground, squatting and pointing up at the words. Another guy showed up so we took our last shots and let him take some pictures with these pre written signs like “Happy Birthday Son!” and “I love you---” I can’t remember the name but there were at least 10 different signs. He happened to have some extra paper and a pen so we quickly wrote Summit School and took a few pictures.  While technically not at the summit, I did put “Summit” in Summit School considering I was 16,748 feet higher than where the school actually resides in Winston-Salem.  We left as soon as we could since we had heard some horror stories from the people the day before who had left base camp too late and gotten stuck in a snowstorm. We thanked the guy for the paper and took one last look at base camp. It was surprisingly rocky. There were no tents yet, since it is too early in the climbing season to summit. The best time of year to summit the 29,035 foot mountain is May. Many Sherpa people have summited over 20 times!

I made it!

Put the “summit” in Summit School

We did it!

Despite the 2 liters I had already drank that day, my stomach was tight and painful. On the walk back, we put on our gloves and down jackets, as the incoming clouds made the air briskly cold. We passed a group of people, some on horse, others on foot very close to the base camp. Whooping I exclaim, “You’re so close!” I remembered how it felt when people cheered me on, so I wanted to pass the joy along. We passed many yaks and porters, carrying gas, water, flooring boards and other unidentifiable stuff. A landslide kicking up a lot of dust nearby made us hurry through the last rocky section because we didn’t want the landslide to bring us down. 

Incredible porter

My hands were so cold as we finally walked back into Gorak Shep. We sat in the common area all night drinking hot chocolate, eating peanut butter, and playing cards. Our guide brought us the dinner menu. Sighing, I looked over the menu that was too familiar which had been at every place we’ve eaten in the past two weeks.  While the food is good, there is just no variety, which is understandable since everything is carried up either on the back of a person at an unfair wage of approximately 60 cents a pound or on a yak.   Rice?  Ugh, NO MORE DAL BHAT! I think if I look at it again I will barf. Other familiar foods on offer are mo:mo-similar to veggie dumplings but not the same taste, pizzas- more like flatbread with veggies with not trustable cheese, and noodles. Everything sounds gross, since high altitude curiously suppresses your appetite despite hiking for hours every day.  At last I decided on hash browns with veggies. My head aching, I write down our order and hurry back to the warmth of the cast iron stove. At many of the places we visited at high altitudes, they would put yak poop in the stove, then pour gasoline over it. Afterwards, they throw in a match, which causes (as you would imagine), a burst of flames sometimes touching the ceiling. It is quite a combination of  smells. The reason gas and yak poop are used for fire is since it’s so high, there is no source of firewood. In fact, when we started to come down we got excited when we saw trees again. 

Sitting around the heater

A funny thing happened while we were chillin in the Gorak Shep teahouse, a guy was trying to buy a can of Pringles--a bit of a trekker luxury item.  The guy at the counter was selling them for 800 rupees, which is $6.57. There are about 80 pringles in a can, so if you do the math it’s about a dime a pringle. Imagine slapping down a dime every time you popped one in your mouth. To put it in perspective, the cost of a regular sized can at home is $1.78-$2.29, only 2-3 cents a Pringle. It seems a lot better to only slap down a few pennies every time you eat one.  Anyway, the conversation went like this.

Buyer:“Hello, how much for the Pringles?”

Seller:“800 rupees. But they’re expired.”

Buyer:“What's the price since they’re expired?”

Seller:“Still 800”

Buyer:“For expired ones? No way, 500 rupees!”

Seller“Still 800”

Buyer:“Okay, when did they expire?”

Seller“Um, 2020…”

Buyer:“2020!? Nevermind.”

Okay first of all, can pringles expire? It turns out that Pringles are only 42 percent potato and they’re not even legally able to be called chips in the U.S. Also there are only 3-4 potatoes in a can. So it seems weird that they can even expire. So what are you paying $6.57 for anyway? Good question… Beats me!

 As we waited for our food, my dad wrote down some math problems for me to do. When I finished I went over to where my mom was sitting by the stove talking to another mother and son. Sitting down in a plastic, blue chair I learned they were from the Netherlands but have lived in Qatar for the past 5 years. We ended up walking the rest of the trek together since we were both going over Chola Pass and Gokyo the same day. We also even flew out the same day on the same airline! A matter of fact during the rest of our trek I did two interviews with Roàn in the tea houses and one more once we were back in Kathmandu. So…Go listen to those after reading this! 

Once our food came we were forced to leave the warmth and go over to the table. My hash browns were good, not quite like the hashbrowns at home, but still good. I had to add a lot of salt though. After dinner we had doot-doot-doloo! Victory snickers! We only had one so we cut it in thirds with the handle of a spoon. Even though it was less than bite sized it was good anyway to toast our success with a bit of snicks!  After dinner, and pretty much when you put the last bite in your mouth, the teahouses and guides insist on recording a breakfast order for the next morning.  It’s tough to immediately gaze at the same menu again, with repeats of the same few foods from the 10 days before.   I decided on Tibetan bread. It's like fried bread, but not sweet like a donut. It’s circular with big air pockets and three slits down the middle. Tibetan bread is a golden brown color and is good the first few times you have it. After picking a breakfast item and time to eat, we sat in the common room for a bit longer. 

Victory Snickers!

Outside it was snowing lightly and the sky was dark and spooky. At last we had to retreat to our freezing 14 degree fahrenheit room. Once in the room, that consists of a small window, and two beds squeezed against the wall, one bigger than the other. I hurried and pulled my sleeping bag out of my backpack then out of its maroon stuff sack. I got cold and jumped in the bed and huddled under the covers. Just to put this in perspective, I was wearing tights, sweatpants, a long sleeve shirt, a hoodie, a down coat, and a hat and was still freezing. When I went out in the hall to walk to the bathroom, I noticed that we had the entire floor to ourselves. Which ment we didn’t have to share the bathroom, which can smell especially bad when you have to share it with a lot of other groups. The toilet also doesn’t flush like the one at home. Since it gets so cold at night, the pipes freeze so you have to pour water down the toilet from a 20+ gallon bucket with a milk jug type thing. Washing your hands is just a dream.

Being cold in the room

The bathroom at the end of the hall of rooms

As I laid in bed, I had to lay on my back so it would be easier to breathe. As it turns out, it’s hard to sleep at 16,942 feet. I also had to make sure that my sleeping bag and blanket weren’t over my face.  Sometimes, we had to crack the window even with the cold to get more fresh air.  When we clicked off the light switch that controlled the one small light bulb hanging over the middle of the small room, the room went dark. This high up, there are no city lights or traffic noises--it's dead silent and dark. As I thought about what I had done today, I was so happy to finally accomplish reaching Everest Base Camp. It was checked off my list now. After seeing how hard it was to climb to base camp, I don’t think I want to summit Everest. Not to mention that it costs AT LEAST $30,000, and 10 weeks!  I’ll leave that to the professionals or at least the people who think they are. As for me, Chola Pass and Gokyo I’m a coming, then fresh avocados here I come!

P.S. Please check out the pics of the entire trek under the pictures tab and also listen to the podcasts with Roàn for more details about this amazing adventure. Thanks for reading my blog!