Day 11: Gorak Shep to Pangboche

Woke up early feeling great after my best nights sleep since Namchee. Our room was still incredibly cold, around -10 Celsius, but I think I had finally acclimatised to the 5140m of Gorak Shep.

We hit the road with a plan to get at least as far as Pheriche (4240m) on our decent down the valley. Our plan is to head up the Dudh Koshi River to Gokyo within the next 5 days. We travelled really well (fast) and got to Pheriche by 2pm so we had lunch then continued walking till we got to Pangboche (3930m). In total we descended over 1200m in about 6 hours. We would have continued further but it was starting to get dark and we were unsure about accommodation at Phorse. The lodge owners at Pangboche were  very impressed with our trek as most people would do this in 2-3 days.

The walk was beautiful,  we started well above the snowline, followed the Khumbu Glacier all the way down to its end near Dughla where we crossed the terminal moraine and then headed through a beautiful riverbed which led down through the snow line to Pheriche. After this we had a small ascent up to the Pheriche Pass before we continued down the valley to Pangboche. Trees suddenly appeared out of nowhere and we realised that it had been a few days since we had seen anything green at all. Passed some paintings on a rock face that were pretty interesting, possibly done by monks as they appeared Buddhist in nature. Got held up by groups of yaks all the way but it was nice to have the change of pace.

After our horrible accommodation in Gorak Shep we were amazed with our rooms in Pangboche. Not only were they clean, warm, painted and spacious, they also had windows that opened out to incredible views of the mountains (our window in our room at Gorak Shep was basically buried in snow).

We were able to sun out our clothes a little, change, have a good wash and even dry our socks! Its been a good day!!!

Day 10: Gorak Shep to Everest Base Camp to Gorak Shep

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.