When I say that functioning at this altitude is difficult and painful I’m not kidding. At some point in the middle of the night I actually bolted up in bed having a mini panic attack because I couldn’t breathe. I ripped off my scarf and hat and just sat there gasping for breath and breathing in short, rapid succession. It took me a few moments to calm myself down, to remind myself that I could in fact still breathe, and eventually my breathing returned to a somewhat normal level. Slightly scary but not uncommon for sleeping at such a high altitude. I’m seriously done with this altitude crap and ready to go down.

Come morning the alarm went off at 4:40 am. Us crazy folk were going to climb/summit the nearby Kala Patthar for sunrise (our highest elevation yet at 5545 m or 18,192 feet) .

We dragged our frozen asses out of bed, strapped on our head lamps, and set off into the icy black. We weren’t the only people out there, so there were plenty of bobbing white lights to follow along the path.

It was damn cold (about -20 C or about -4 F) and no amount of layers could keep you warm. Not even the crazy huffing and puffing as you attempted to breathe in the noticeably thin air. I had to stop about every 20 feet or so to catch my breath as I scrambled up the steep and sometimes icy slope.

The long, steep, and icy way up

After about 45 minutes it was light enough to see without the head torch, and the view as I was gasping for breath was…wait for it…breathtaking. #notsorryforthebadpun

Everest is the dark one in the middle, Nuptse on the right

You could see Everest, Lhotse, and Nuptse as well as all the other Himalayan mountains back-lit by the slowly rising sun.

It took us about two hours to make it to the summit - two agonizing hours where I almost turned back many times wondering if it was worth it to make it to the top as I still had spectacular views from even half way up.

But I kept going and scrambled to the top as a human popsicle.

I can’t feel any part of my body - not even the head lamp clearly squishing my face

I couldn’t breathe well at all, I couldn’t feel my fingers or my cheeks, I had to be careful not to slip and fall off the side of the mountain, and I barely cared if I took any pictures (I couldn’t feel my fingers anyway…every time I took out my camera I was pretty sure I was going to drop it since my fingers refused to grip it with any semblance of strength).

But the views, as always, were worth it.

There’s just something about Everest. You look at it and you just know it’s not a mountain you mess with. All the surrounding ones are covered in snow and look all majestic like you imagine a mountain should be. But Everest is surprisingly void of most snow. It’s black against the surrounding peaks and has an ominous look/feel about it. Almost like it knows it’s the tallest mountain in the world and is just daring you to try.

Finally, frozen to the point where my hands were actually in a fair bit of physical pain, Jenny (who I’d met up with at the top) and I carefully made our way down Kala Patthar.

The road down…yikes

It took us about an hour and a half to descend, and only when we were about halfway down the mountain did the sun actually make an appearance above the Himalayas.

At the bottom we found a sign that we hadn’t been able to see in the dark on the way up pointing us towards the path to Kala Patthar. Jenny took her picture with it first, and when it was my turn I promptly broke the precariously hung sign. Thanks to Jenny’s photo skills you can see the full progression below.

I didn’t really break it. It just came off from where it was hung and I had difficulties getting it back on, but it made a huge banging sound as it hit the rocks and people stared as I scrambled to reattach it. Typical.

When we got back to our guest house we had to check out but hung around for a bit to have some breakfast before hitting the road. We got walking around 10 am and arrived in Pheriche around 3:30 pm - a walk that had previously taken us 2 days to traverse going up.

Starting home

The road through a valley to Pheriche

We found a nice guest house that doubled as a bakery and had a TV with HBO! We sat around the common room and watched The Prestige (even though the audio and video didn’t match up) like kids seeing a television for the first time. And we ate pizza. Lots of pizza.

Spoilers for next time: the final post on the long journey home

For all my Everest Base Camp trek posts visit here!