Everest Base Camp Trek — Lukla Bound

May 1, 2009 EBC — Pheriche

The morn­ing in base camp was nice and sun­ny, unlike the snow we encoun­tered the day/​night before. I have to say the Ice Fall has to be one of the top views I have ever seen after step­ping out of a tent. While impres­sive, it did­nt seem to incred­i­ble until you see how small the climbers on it were. Dur­ing break­fast we talked to one of the old­er climbers of the group for awhile who had an inter­est­ing per­spec­tive. Liv­ing in Gold­en, Col­orado, he has climbed all of the 14ers along with all of the ​“Sev­en Sum­mits.” We wished the group luck on the climb and head­ed back out down the valley.

The towns / vil­lages seemed much small­er on our way back through, maybe because just pass­ing by you dont get the per­spec­tive from the peo­ple and every­thing going on with­in. Hard to believe how much faster we were mak­ing it back down, but we by-passed two placeas we had stayed before stop­ping in Pheriche for the night. The trek for the day was­nt too bad with the excep­tion of some wind / rain lat­er in the day. The final few miles to Pheriche were through a flat val­ley along­side a creek and out of the wind, which was nice com­pared to the trails ear­li­er in the day. The lodge for the night was by far the nicest yet, which includ­ed a hot show­er (for some of us) for the first time in almost a week. Din­ner includ­ed Yak steaks and snick­ers and mars pies, which made the stay that much bet­ter. It’s hard to believe we are already on our way back down as we spent so much time com­ing up. At least we have tons of pic­tures and expe­ri­ences to remem­ber it by!!

Beer me, Jon Freed