Trek Day 6: Lobuche to Gorak Shep

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Time taken: 1 1/2 hours to Gorak Shep, 2 hours return to Kala Pattar (incl. breaks)

Distance: Today: ~6 kms (2 to Gorak Shep, 4 return to Kala Pattar)  

Total distance to date: ~36 kms

Altitude: Lobuche - 4740m, Gorak Shep - 5160m, Kala Pattar - 5545m

Max ascent: ~420m to Gorak Shep, ~385m to Kala Pattar

(Note: More pictures in the archives - click on any picture to see the others!)

Sleep last night was even worse than the night before.  Not only did I get little sleep, but also started getting chills and fever for much of the night.  I literally almost got up out of bed at 1 am to wake up Keisha and ask to descend.  Huge dilemna since we are so close to our final stop (Gorak Shep), and I really wanted to get up close to the Himalayas.  Would be a shame to quit at this point, given what I have done so far.  Once again, I managed a little sleep in the final hours of the night, and was feeling ok in the morning.

The trek to Gorak Shep was a short series of little climbs and descents over rocky glacial moraines, no more than 100m or so at any time.  There is almost no foliage at this point, just rocks and sand.  Traversing a couple of these moraines brought Everest and the famous Himalayan panorama into view, making the whole trek worthwhile.  Besides the mountains, we saw several glaciers and glacial lakes all around us in this area.  Absolutely awesome...

I was not feeling great at all by the time we got to Gorak Shep, and spent a few hours lying on a bench in the restaurant area of the teahouse, feeling half-dead.  In the early afternoon, Keisha dragged me out of the teahouse, on the trail to go see Kala Pattar, which is the site from which the most famous shots of Everest and the Panorama are taken.  If you have seen the wide poster showing all the mountains in the Panorama, you have seen the view from Kala Pattar.

Normally the trek would go in the morning to Kala Pattar, since the typical hike is up to Base Camp this afternoon.  Given that there are no summits going on at the moment (wrong season), there would only be rubbish and the glacier to see from there.  Since the weather was nice now and could change at any moment, and given how crappy I was feeling, we decided to head up there now and see the sights.

The climb was really steep - ~400m ascent over ~2 km of trail.  However, the views are staggering, and I will let the pictures tell the story.  It was tough to get the whole Panorama in one shot, so hopefully Photoshop comes to my rescue!  The view is insanely majestic with all the snowcaps and glaciers surrounding Kala Pattar.  We could see the glacier at Everest Base Camp from Kala Pattar, so it made even less sense to head an extra couple of kms to see it up close (especially since I had just climbed Franz Josef glacier in NZ).

It took 1 1/2 hours to get up to the top of Kala Pattar, but only 1/2 hour to get back down.  I was feeling much better when I got to the bottom, so maybe the climb helped!  At the bottom, we ran into the Indian-American guy that I met the first day.  I thought he had either turned back or was a few days behind at this point, but here he was.  Some things had changed - he had bought a lot of new gear and hired a guide to lead him and carry his little backpack.

They had come a long way that day (from Pheriche) since he had taken a rest day in Namche Bazar, but they moved quickly thereafter.  Ended up doing a bit of catching up with him, but to be honest, given how I was feeling I didn't want to deal with him for too long... 

Later that afternoon, the British couple that we had met on the plane on the way to Lukla, also appeared at our teahouse.  They also took the rest day in Namche Bazar and then raced up to Gorak Shep, but were feeling worse for wear having done so.  Somehow the American guy seemed fine but the rest of us weren't feeling so well.  Strange.

Sat around for much of the evening and had a few laughs, but given our collective states, we decided to call it an early one and get some rest to head back down quickly.