Since our summit of Lobuche East, we've been without WiFi in the villages of Lobuche and then in Chukhung for the better part of a week, hence our total lack of communication for a while now.
As we trekked further up valley, we got closer and closer to our first peak climb. On Thursday morning we headed towards Lobuche East base camp. Upon arrival Jennifer started having intense nausea, and was not able to eat the plentiful dinner or breakfast that was provided at base camp. She did manage to choke down a few tea biscuits and a pop tart prior to the start. Intense nausea persisted throughout summit day, making it a very tough 24 hours for her.
We were incredibly fortunate to have a perfect summit day on Friday, April 10. After leaving base camp at 4:00am and a very challenging and exposed climb, we topped out around 9:00am to a cloudless, mild and windless summit. We were able to lay back on our packs and along with a jubilant South Korean team, enjoy the astounding views and enjoy our pack lunches of grilled nak (yak cow) cheese, pineapple juice and Mars Bars.
What an incredible experience! The views were amazing, as you can see in the video linked here. We learned valuable new skills for high altitude alpine climbing and rapelling, experienced our first base camp hospitality and enjoyed great teamwork. We also got a serious taste of the epic commitment, strength, endurance and hardship that must be endured to tackle an 8000 meter peak expedition...way beyond this, and this was hard!
Namaste
2 comments:
OMG - Just listening to you trying to breathe and talk.....simply exhausting.
I guess that's why they say it's a breath taking view!
Congrats to both of you on such an amazing journey - keep the photos and posts coming!
Glad you're enjoying the updates, Kerr! We just got to Lukla in a rainstorm. Drenched and hoping to get to Kathmandu tomorrow. Fingers crossed!
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