Sleep was understandably hard to come by last night at the 5,200 altitude. The adrenalin though made up for it as we set off in the dark (always a strange sensation) at 4.30 for the climb up to the summit. It was a mirror replay of the weather conditions for Gokyo-Ri with still and clear skies and the instructions to follow the long line of torches for the 2 hours of effort concentrating on the glutes and calfs screaming all over again.
Half way up we feasted on Nuptse, Everest, Ama et al. This time Nuptse replacing Lhotse as per Gokyo Ri. It was then that we caught a glimpse of the sherpa head torches who were fixing the ropes on Everest camp #1 all of 6 weeks before the westerners get anywhere close. That was pretty cool.
At the summit I made sure I did the final scramble on the rock to get to the very peak. The surface was icy and to be honest it was slightly dicey. I had to cling to the preyer flag rope for comfort. Sherpa Pemanuri then took the obligatory photo with me standing a-top with the Pumori 7,000 peak summit as the backdrop. Scintillating views.
Too cold to hang around we descended back to the tea house within an hour.
Today I enjoyed the march up tremendously getting there in just under 2 hours. Sheilesh got the timing smack on again with the sunrise over Everest breaking 15 minutes after we arrived at the summit. Absolutely breathtaking and probably my favourite part of the whole trip.
After lunch at the sick infested Gorak we descended further down the valley on the Everest highway passing the memorial grounds of all the shrines representing those that have lost their lives on Everest. The most moving perhaps was Scott Fischer’s who died in the infamous 1996 disaster which has been widely documented most notably by John Krakauer’s ‘Into thin air’. Eerily the cloud came in and the wind whipped up as we were there.
Pushing on down the valley it started getting very dusty and I became paranoid of picking up a chest infection and so went with the full on buff scarf over my mouth and nose.
We arrived at Pheriche (4,230m) around 4.30 all of us exhausted having walked for 8-9 hours for roughly 18k. Throw in an average altitude of 5,000m, > 1km of vertical climbing, a heavy rucksack equates to no walk in the park. Fatigue is also setting in with the glycogen levels generally low as well as the immune system, sleep deprivation and lingering cold. Generally depleted in every regard.
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