 |
| Can you spot the bridge over the river? |
Today was a rough one, but more for Krista than for me. Yesterday while we were at the hospital, someone mentioned a couple of trekkers getting sick up in Gorak Shep from tuna. This was about an hour after Krista had a tuna sandwich. She woke up this morning with stomach cramps and within minutes of setting out, she needed imodium. Anyway, we started out walking through the valley along the river (which was really a trickle of glacier melt as opposed to the white water rapids we saw in previous days). After about an hour, we veered right and went up a gentle slope. Soon we crossed a metal bridge over a mostly frozen river and arrived in a "village" called Dughla. Basically, there were some picnic tables, two restaurants and a few rooms to stay in. We sat down for some tea and I looked up a nearby ridge. After looking at it for a bit, I realized that the small white line leading across and up had little ants moving along it. Those ants were people and that's where we needed to go next. Crap. Since things were relatively flat so far, I had no problems with my knee and could keep up with the group. That was about to change.
 |
| Chortas |
After our tea, we started up that ridge. It was an hour or so of a very steep up. The view at the top was spectacular though. First of all, there were chortas everywhere you looked. Each was a memorial to a fallen climber in the region. Some where westerners, but many were Sherpas. It's so sad, considering the Sherpas are climbing to earn a living and provide for their families. They do the bulk of the work for the westerners paying big bucks and thus take the most risk. OK, off my soapbox.
We arrived not long after in Lobuche (16, 158 ft). Our lodge is by far the worst we've been in. It's not very clean and there's very few bathrooms for the number of rooms. By the way, in the bathrooms along the trail (except Namche which had actual flush toilets), there is a large container of water and scoop. When you are done doing whatever you need to do in the toilet, you scoop up some water and pour it in, thus flushing. Here it seems that a lot of folks have missed with the water scoops and the floors are a sheet of ice. This is going to be fun once the sun goes down.
 |
| Italian Research Station |
Anyway, after lunch (and Dana helping out another trekker who was very sick from tuna), the Romanians and I set out on a short 20 minute walk to see a solar paneled, pyramid-shaped research station built by Italians. The walk was short and very flat. The research station was quite a site. It's not nearly as pretty as the glass pyramid at the Louvre, but I do have to give the Italians style points for building this at 5,000 meters. We weren't allowed inside, but I did talk to one of the guys who came out to microwave something (after turning on a gas generator). They are doing a lot of work on seismology, plate tectonics, measuring of the mountains, and effects of altitude. Did you know that Everest is growing at the rate of 6 cm/year?
I was surprised that Bogdan lagged a bit on this short walk. He had a headache by the time we got back to the lodge, so he went and took a nap. I hope this isn't altitude sickness. Tomorrow's the 2 hour walk to Gorak Shep. It's a village on a dry lake bed that was base camp for the first successful Everest climb in 1953. We're nearly there.
No comments:
Post a Comment