Day 8 - Dingboche to Lobuche

April 3rd

In the morning after our second night in Dingboche:
Yak herd rolled into our compound last night. A trekking group of 9 comprised of Americans, Canadians, and Australians along with all their gear and porters heading to 'Olympic Base Camp' to spend the night. It was a big production. Their stuff was spread all over the compound at our lodge. They seemed more stressed than happy. I don't think I would want to travel like that. Too complicated.

The plan for this day was to slowly climb 700 feet to Dugla, and spend the night to acclimitize. But we were feeling pretty good at that point, and Karma thought we should push on for Lobuche the same day ( an additional 700 vertical meters up). (This was a decision I would later regret).
The second half of the trek up to Lobuche was significantly steeper and required quite a bit of energy.

I was fighting a headache as we climbed, but it went away when we stopped moving up. I also was beginning to feel pain in my back, even though I had sloughed off additional weight to my porter. Our porters seemed to be impervious to fatigue and the loads didn't seem to bother them as they powered on ahead of us.

We totaled 6 hours of hiking today and gained about 1,400 feet. It became increasingly cold as we hiked upwards towards the Khumbu glacier. By this point we were hiking with quite a few warm layers, even though we were working hard. I hike portions of this leg with my puffy down jacket on as well.

When we arrived in Lobuche and found our rooms we were exhausted and crashed on our bunks. I ate half a small yak cheese and tomato pizza for dinner. It was tolerable. The lodges try hard to cater to western tastes, but it is tough for them to get the same ingredients that we would have in our part of the world. I also had half a fried veggie plate (also tolerable) and washed it all down with a cup of hot chocolate that I made with a packet of hot chocolate that we brought from Portland.

We met some crazy Finish guys climbing Everest while we were warming ourselves around the wood stove. They were climbing with only one Sherpa above base camp. The rest of their gear they were schlepping themselves. The previous year they had attempted the climb with no Sherpas or porters. Totally unsupported. One of the two of them made it to the top. They would carry most all of their own gear up to higher camps and fix their own lines. Below Base camp they said they had 52 Yaks and porters hauling up their gear. That's a lot of stuff! They were very friendly and we chatted by the yak dung fire for a while. Later Alison and I played golf (cards) and eventually I got up the courage to take a bucket bath. They charged me about 3 bucks for a little bowl full of warm water, then I headed for my little adventure. I could barely hack the cold. My feet went instantly numb on the icy floor of the "shower room." It ended up being only a partial bath. Once again, at least part of me felt better. My toes were back to normal temperature after an hour or so.