Tomorrow I begin my second trek of the season, my 20th trip to Everest Base Camp. This year, the mountains are no less spectacular than when I first saw them, but I am bereft of new description. The extreme geography is comfortingly familiar, the dirt trails well-worn...
After a few days R&R in Kathmandu, it's time to turn around and do it all over again...the stiff climbs, the steep descents, the landscape turning from lush to stark, the stars extra crisp in the sky with less intervening atmosphere. We meet Lama...
Back in Kathmandu, the once medieval city now offers us every amenity: soft beds, hot showers, pizza & salads, shopping, drinking… We roam and relax and enjoy some wine and a delicious meal before everyone flies home! Over 17 days in Nepal, it feels...
Days 10 & 11 see us losing altitude rapidly. What took us 5 days to ascend takes us 2 to descend. It's a relief to be down below 14,000 feet, where our lungs suddenly feel FULL with air, where trees grow, villages dot the landscape, our bodies feel...
Day 8 the world turns to a moonscape. We cross the Tsang-ri glacier up and down and up and down over the rocks into Gorak Shep (place of the dead crow). Aptly named, there's not much to sustain life up here. It's an extreme world of rock and ice--and trekking...
On Day 6, the sun returns, and it elicits easy smiles despite the heavy breathing on our acclimatization hike. We string prayer flags over Dingboche and climb to 15,800 feet just for the views (and the oxygen adjustment). Day 7 pushes us higher to Lobuche, where the...
Day 5: Meeting with Lama Geshe always brightens my heart, and my trekkers were so moved by his blessing and his warmth that they were crying. This 80+ year old Tibetan lama chants over us, instructs us in mantras, blesses our prayer flags before we hang...
On Day 4, we walked out of Tengboche Monastery after the monks finished chanting prayers to find snow starting to swirl around us. Finished with our hiking for the day, we retreated to the warm comfort of our lodge, complete with iron stove and yak dung fire inside....
Maybe it was the blessing we received from the Hindu ascetics during our day of sightseeing in Kathmandu, but whatever the reason, luck was with us even when the weather wasn't. After rising at 4am to catch the first flight to Lukla for our trek to...
After a few days rest, I do it all one more time...Kathmandu temples and monasteries, spine-tingling flight to Lukla, yaks and packs and porters and gear, hours of hiking from the lush and livable "hills" at 9,000 ft to the rocky summit of Kala Pattar at 18,450 ft,...
Finally we hike out to the comfort of Pheriche where 14,000 feet feels like thick air. From there we have a few days of beautiful hiking and hanging out with our staff. Life is good on the trail...
The following day, we cross more of the moonscape and head out to Everest Base Camp, surrounded by looming mountains. Incredibly dwarfed by the landscape, the tents of EBC slowly grow from dots of color in the distance to life-size domes and squares. We are one of the...