Day 24: Everest Base Camp

Time for a much overdue footprint if phone signal permits. Our experience of Lobuche was relatively pleasant and the night nowhere near as cold as we'd expected.

Our first mission getting going for the day: get to Gorak Shep. Gorak Shep is the highest settlement anywhere before Everest Base Camp at an altitude of 5150 m, where atmospheric oxygen levels are 50% what they are at sea level, so as you can imagine, everything feels a lot more lethargic up there.

This section was split into two parts: the first, a gentle amble up the valley; the second, a tiring scramble up, down, forward, and back over the glacier's scattered scree. After a few draining hours, we reached Gorak Shep and whacked down our big bags into our room, before slumping into the dining room for some lunch. At this point, Thomas confessed his questionable condition (altitude sickness is a bit like that, you can feel decidedly unwell but sort of confused as to how?), while I was also showing some signs of being worse for wear (namely, extreme tiredness and an aggravated cough famously dubbed as the Khumbu cough.) Anyhow, we mustered our strength and decided to push onto Base Camp while we still had the chance.

By this point in the day, the regular afternoon clouds had begun to roll in, and the mild-sounding 2 miles onto Base Camp was beginning to drag, as we again navigated haphazard boulder fields which mounted the glacier. Turning a corner, you get your first glimpse of Base Camp itself, practically a vast city of yellow and orange tents which sprawl precariously all the way up to the Khumbu icefall. With our destination in line of sight, we descended a ridge and just like that, we'd made it!

We afforded some subdued celebrations, hugging each other and enjoying the 5,364 m altitude as our trek's main objective. We then joined the queue (yes, queue) to get a picture with the famous 'Everest Base Camp' boulder and newly installed Hillary and Norgay sign where we commemorated our place under the world's tallest mountain with some quietly pleased pics.

As we still mooched around at Base Camp, the heavy clouds began to spew spatterings of snow down: the start of the 5 cm of snowfall forecast for the afternoon! Fearing a blizzard, we lumbered our way back to Gorak Shep, admiring the surroundings as they turned from snow-dusted to snow-buried. Still, we got back in one piece (or two pieces), tucked away some food, and hunkered down for the coldest night yet: Gorak Shep is so high and so cold that they don't even have water.Read more