Lobuche to Gorak Shep

Well after almost 12 days of trekking and gradual acclimatisation we are due to arrive at Base Camp tomorrow. Everyone is looking forward to the next stage of this epic journey. Not least because we are all getting fed up of living out of a bag that has to be repacked most mornings! 

 We woke this morning to 10 cm of snow on the ground and thick cloud. We certainly couldn't have done yesterday's walk in today's weather. 

 The walk up to Gorak Shep is only a couple of hours or so although we made a detour to have a look at the Italian Research Station. This is a pyramid shaped building that was built 21 years ago by the Italian government originally to confirm the heights of Everest and K2. Nowadays it is available to any research institute wishing to undertake scientific research into any subject that would benefit from being undertaken in such a location. It's no longer limited to just high altitude research. 

The track up to Gorak Shep narrows after Lobuche and seemed even narrower in the snow as we made way for the numerous porters and yaks making their way to EBC. There's no doubting the popularity of this route. 

Today's ascent was only a couple of hundred metres and it was nice to arrive at our lodge in high spirits and with relative ease compared to our previous two days. 

Things only got better when Phil proudly shouted out ' my dongle is working!'. Not to be confused with an anatomical euphemism those of the IT generation will know this meant Ncell had repaired the mobile mast. Once again we had an Internet connection!

Over to Lobuche

Getting up in the morning doesn't take long. In fact you way to do it as quickly as possible. Bruno and I can be dressed and have our gear ie sleeping bag packed away in less than 15 minutes. Very handy considering it was only 1 degree c this morning in our room. Once you've unzipped your sleeping bag you can't afford to stop moving or you'll soon freeze. 

Talking of rooms like the price of goods as we've got higher the size of the rooms has decreased no doubt as the cost of materials rise. The lodges have now resorted to having the doors hung so that they open outwards into the hall to ensure that there is no wasted space within a twin room. We have to climb over our bags to enter and leave the room, however it beats camping each night. 

On the Kongma Pass

We woke to crystal clear skies this morning and our walk took us to Lobuche via the little used Kongma Pass at 5550 m. Early on we heard the haunting sound of an avalanche and looking across the valley we saw this tremendous plume of snow racing down the north eastern flanks of Ama Dablam. Thankfully the slope was gentler than yesterday and I felt much better. This was the first day of the trek in to BC that I wore my lightweight boots. Up until now I've been wearing walking trainers which have proved very comfortable. Today was much rockier and we were walking for part of the day in 8 -10 cm of fresh powder snow. So I grateful for their extra support and warmth. On reaching the pass we could see Lobuche some 600 m below across Khumbu glacier. This end of the glacier is known as a 'dry' glacier as the tons of compacted ice are hidden beneath rocks and stones - glacial moraines. It took us almost an hour to cross the 1 km wide glacier as the path criss crossed and undulated across the glacier. A nasty sting to the end of the day! The walk took just under seven hours with a total of 900m of ascent. Everybody is pretty exhausted including David which is reassuring! Today as an experiment I set the Spot2 messenger to track our route. Hopefully this means that you should see a bread crumb trail of our position every ten minutes. You'll soon work out which are the up hill and down hill sections. We are now only two days away from base camp.