Everest trek - Day 8 - Thukla to Labouche

4600m to 4940m (+340m)
3.0km - 3 hours

It rained all night, and is still raining this morning but the clouds seemed thinner and were moving faster, giving us more and more faces to drool over. I had a very good nights sleep last night so was ready for action, which is good as the path out of Thukla is immediately up, for a long time. In fact most of today's 340m vertical is in the first hour or so. At the top of the first section are many memorials to dead Sherpas and climbers, including Scott Fischer who died in the 1996 Everest tragedy.

Memorials

After the memorials the path goes past the end of the Khumbu glacier, which just looks like a huge pile of rocks. From there it turns right and the rest of the walk following the river to Labouche is easy. I nearly ended up in the river slipping on a stone while trying to fill my water bottle!

End of the Khumbu

We strolled into Labouche, excited to reach 5000m! There's not much lodge choice - high season must be a free-for-all - but now there's no-one else here apart from us and the South Africans who are staying in the lodge next door. We choose the Sherpa lodge, the furthest away as you enter the village, next to the expensive eco-lodge. The weather was spitting something half way between rain and snow and the staff quickly crank up the stove with some yak pancakes and we set up camp in the toasty restaurant. The owner confirms what we'd heard about the weather clearing tomorrow, he says the snow is a good sign, meaning the weather is turning winter and the monsoon finishing - we may have timed this trip perfectly! Me, Helen, Dave and Tom have a hot bucket shower (not together) in an outside corrugated hut. I had one just so I could say I'd had a shower at 5000m! It wasn't as much of shock as initially thought, the worst bit trying to dry yourself and get some clothes on as quick as possible. I had been wearing the same T-shirt now since we'd left Kathmandu, not wanting to change because of the cold! Needless to say I put the same T-shirt back on after the shower!

I get food envy when Martin the Swede orders a giant plate of tuna noodles, so order one too. Later we have snickers rolled in pastry and deep-fried - very tasty, expensive and bad! We play some cards and drink lemon tea. I take a depleted camera battery to the lodge next door for charging for 300 Rupees an hour.

Snickers roll

Everest trek - Day 7 - Dingboche to Thukla

4350m to 4600m (+250m)
5.0km - 2 hours

100th post on this diary!

Almost no sleep last night. It didn't seem like an issue not being able to sleep, it was just some more time to kill, but in silent darkness. My brain felt fresh and wide-awake - I'd read that sleep deprivation was common but had assumed it would be intensely annoying and groggy. I listened to podcasts and music all night! Helen and Dave were also having broken sleep patterns.

There's two possible paths out of Dingboche; one is a gentle climb but longer, from the top of the town; the other is short and steep. We chose the latter which was an exhausting three steps, stop, get breath, three steps, stop, get breath, three steps... and so on to the Stupa. The weather was overcast and windy again, we wondered if we would ever see any mountains! Once past the Stupa and on the ridge the walk is a nice, open, steady climb. Far below on the left are the river and Penriche. We sat down to let an enormous group of trekkers, porters and guides overtake us.



The land is mostly barren now, but if  you look closely there's millions of beautiful tiny flowers carpeting the land!

The path follows the river up, and at the end of the valley is the rocky end of a glacier, a natural dam for a crystal blue glacial lake. Our brief dog companion today was George, who soon decided we weren't interesting enough and went the other way. The path turns right and meets with the river. There's an interesting bridge here, the first section being okay but the next part (which is sometimes washed away) is no more than two thin planks, so requires a little more balance. Over the bridge the path then heads into the three-building "village" of Thukla - the Yak lodge, the restaurant and the Sherpa lodge (no tourists allowed!).

End of a glacier - glacial lake just visible

That bridge!

Thukla

Fluffy exhibition yak!

We had some lunch (I had an amazing Sherpa stew) then the rains came. Also here were Tom, Verena, Martin and the friendly South African couple we'd seen in Dingboche. The South African man had an impressive watch with GPS, an altimeter and many other functions - I was a little jealous of his statistic collecting abilities! He'd received a weather report that the weather was going to break the day after tomorrow - this was great news if true! Two ladies came out of the rain into the restaurant, they'd been to base camp the previous day and said it was snowing, and they didn't see a thing. One of them said she had to try and sleep sitting up at Gorak Shep as she felt like she was suffocating while lying down. The South Africans said farewell, put their packs on and bravely melted into the mist, wind and rain!

Me, Verena, Helen, Dave, Martin, Tom, lodge owner

Our original plan was to stay two days in Dingboche but we read a good acclimatisation schedule suggesting one night in Dingboche and one night in Thukla. It's not immediately clear but there's two types of accommodation at the Yak lodge; one in the old building tucked away behind the restaurant (50 Rupees) and the other is in the more obvious new building (100 Rupees). We didn't see the old building and stayed in the new one but it seemed unfinished, and the toilet was bad! Also staying here were the monks from Tengboche monastery - they were heading to Mother Everest for an annual Puja.

The evening was freezing so the lodge workers popped some Yak "pancakes" into the stove - we all gathered around, scared to leave the warm and get into freezing beds!

Yak powered warmth