Nepal: Heading Back Down (Sort Of)

For April 13

Sunrise from Kala Pattar.  The summit of Nuptse is just getting it's first light.  Everest is the darker mountain slightly to the left.

While Renee, Louie, Anil, and Pemba trekked up to Kala Pattar in the early hours of the morning, Amy and I slept.  After breakfast in Gorak Shep, we started the trip back down to Lukla.  After we summited Kilimanjaro, the way back down was, well, down.  But our way down this time was filled with ups and downs over and over again.  With my trusty knee brace on just as a precaution, I slowly made my way back down.  

We had roughly 30 miles to trek to get back to Lukla.  Because we were heading back down, instead of up, there was no worries about going slow for acclimation reasons.  You wanted to go as fast as you could, but also not too fast because it was going to be a long day, or really a long couple of days.  Our original plan called for us to trek down to Pheriche, but Anil wanted for us to push to Pangboche instead because it would mean a shorter day the following day.  In all, on day 9 of trekking we walked just over 11.3 miles.  Our day started at 17,000 feet and ended at 12,800 feet, so we dropped a total of 4,200 vertical feet in our day’s hike…but it wasn’t all downhill…of course!

Our last moments hiking view a view like this before we dropped down to lower elevations.

The first hour or so of our hike was fairly flat, with small ups and downs through the ankle-twisting rocks.  The same ones we had hiked through just the morning before.  I was certainly glad for my knee brace and hiking poles.  Typically I’m not a fan of downhill because it’s harder on the knees, but the good news was our downhill to start wasn’t super steep, just a gentle slope.  And then we hit that steep section (up to Thukla Pass, but now we were going down) that two days earlier had been our steep uphill.  Here, to our surprise, we ran across Valentin, the guy who we met the first day on the trail in Phakding, who was sick.  He said he had rested for a few days before slowly making his way up.  He definitely looked like he was still struggling.  We later heard that he was flown out the following day from Lobuche because his body had decided it was done.

What a place for a nap!  Our porters stopped for a nap until they knew whether we were going to be spending the night in Pheriche or Pangboche.

After lunching at the same place we had eaten lunch a few days earlier, we continued down to Pheriche.  We were back in that really windy section of the trail, but this time instead of heading to Dingboche, we headed down to Pheriche.  It was a steep downhill, but we were able to keep a real good pace as we went.  Going down was something my body was definitely able to handle much more easily and I was feeling much better the further down we went.

We passed a pasture shortly before Pheriche where there was a yak and a baby yak!  So cute.  This one was on the early end of birthing season.  If we were there a few weeks to a month or two later, we would likely have seen a lot more baby yaks.  In Pheriche we took a brief break while debating whether to spend the night in Pheriche or keep going.  Renee and Louie were definitely starting to feel the effects of their early morning trip up to Kala Pattar.  Amy and I were doing alright since we had slept and didn’t do that hiking.  We eventually decided on continuing…which might have not been the best idea. 

Baby Yak!

Shortly after passing through Pheriche we crossed a river and started going up over a hill.  As we neared the top, it started to sprinkle.  Then we started hearing rumbles of thunder, which is rather frightening when you’re up on the side of a mountain that is still high enough that you’re in scrub brush land.  The rain continued for about an hour of our last hour and a half of hiking.  It was never really hard, but enough that my pants were wet (because of course this was the one day that I packed my rain pants in my duffel!).  

It did stop raining before we reached Pangboche, which did mean that my pants and rain coat had started to dry, though they certainly weren’t totally dry.  The tea house we were staying in was low on electricity that night because of the storm.  They relied on solar power to provide electricity, and with all the clouds, the battery wasn’t fully able to charge up.  The common space had only one light lit, and the hallways upstairs were dark, but thankfully there was light in the rooms.  The darkness meant no UNO.