The trek to Everest Base Camp was no where near as lame or boring as we were led to believe. It was not an anticlimax in any way. Perhaps this was due to the heavy dump of snow that had left everything in brilliant white. The trek there took nearly 2.5 hours and travelled along the lateral moraine of the Khumbu Glacier.
Just as we were about to cross the glacier we looked up and realized that we had to cross a section of track about 100m long that passed under some incredibly overhung rocks about 30m above us. Right before our eyes rocks were tumbling down the slope, one of them was as big as a television. Some of the rocks at the top were the size of small houses and though they may well have been secure we had no way of knowing. We plucked up the courage and dashed through this "kill zone" as fast as our altitude effected lungs could take us... Thankfully making it through with no injury (or death).
We then set across the glacier taking time to look at the beautiful lakes and deep crevasses that were scattered along it and then we reached the prayer flags that symbolised "Everest Base Camp". Many people don't know this but there are actually two base camps, one is for the day trekkers and one is for the actual expedition teams that are climbing Everest.
On account of the heavy snow all expeditions had pulled out of the climbers camp except one, the Korean Expedition. They would not let the snow defeat them and were determined to make a summit attempt. As there was no one around to object we trekked the extra 300m and took some photos around the real Base Camp and the awesome views of the Khumbu Icefall before heading for home.
We again had to cross the "kill zone" which we again managed without incident. The walk back to Gorak Shep was nice and easy and took around 1 hour.
Anyone who comes up this far and skips Base Camp is making a huge mistake in my opinion, it was one of my favourite things so far.
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