Guest Blog: Mark on Everest Base Camp Trek

Greetings Blog Readers and welcome to the best entry yet! I'm your guest reporter, Mark, taking over from Brendan and Kate who are currently off chasing a guy down the street who said something about cheap food.

To describe the Everest Base Camp Trek is to do it an injustice, but I will try. Days of creeping up and down pine-tree-lined valleys above a raging river to ancient monasteries overlooking the highest mountain on Earth, then moving through lifeless rocky plains gouged between collossal ranges towards a pile of constantly moving boulders resting above a glacier leading up to Everest itself.

We found ourselves with a great group of people, of all about the same age, but totally different walks of life. Some seasoned travellers, some wide-eyed newbies (like me), some flesh-eating ogres (I made that one up), but all interesting, fun and supportive people.

We started slow, moving our way along a dusty rocky path between cute little Himalayan tourist villages, where teams of yaks are guided by Sherpas and carry huge loads. The track is also populated by Sherpas who aren't lazy animal-torturers, carrying ridiculously massive loads slowly but certainly not breathlessly.

As we climbed higher, the air got thinner. Just sitting around the breakfast table in the morning, you could find yourself out of breath, let alone trying to get to the top of a hill, 300 metres up. Slowly, the group started to notice the altitude. Some had headaches, some vomited, some grew moose horns, started foaming at the mouth, and had to be euthanased. Aside from the moose-people though, we all kept on going.

The conditions were, on their face, comfortable. However, most of us found it impossible to sleep because of the altitude. While usually it's a good feeling to be completely breathless in bed, it was not on this occasion. Getting up in the middle of the night wasn't fun either. The air was like ice, the ground was like ice and the water in the taps was, well, ice.

As we moved closer to Base Camp, most of us could feel our bodies slowing down as our excitement grew. The trees thinned out and eventually disappeared. And the landscape was like a massive quarry. Nothing but boulders and sand everywhere. We were, by now, surrounded by massive snow-capped peaks. We had been watching Everest get closer slowly and by the last day, it had actually disappeared behind the immediate ridge.

The day of our heroic assault on Base Camp was filled with grit, determination and bitching. I learned that, in Nepal, they have a 5:00 IN THE MORNING, which is a new one for me. Anyway, we got up then and crawled over this moonscape for about three hours to our accommodation for the night. We then collected our resolve and started to make our way towards the base of Mount Everest. It was tough. Between us we were sufferring breathlessness, headaches, nausea, fatigue and erectile disfunction. However, we made it.

One by one, we stagged up to the top of an insignificant looking pile of rocks that was Everest Base Camp. Not being climbing season, there was no-one there, no focused-looking climbers, no tents, hardly any yetis, but it didn't matter. We spent about an hour taking in the majesty of the Khumbu Glacier which sprawled past us and around a ridge to the now completely unseen Everest. The valley we were in was just a mass of boulders, which was actually an ever moving and changing procession of broken rock, given life by the ancient icefall, that is Khumbu. We congratulated ourselves and took it in for about an hour, then made the two-and-a-half hour hike back along the rocks, to the teahouse.

We had done it.

The trip back was a bit easier and much warm alcohol was consumed (particularly on Australia Day). We celebrated Brendan and Kate's 4th Wedding Anniversary on the 29th (yes, it's been that long!) and worked out way back to the last town and ultimately Kathmandu.

Certainly the greatest trip I've ever done and one I'd recommend to anyone with an interest in Everest, challenge and being cold.

Thanks to Brendan and Kate for inviting me to join their amazing trip and for giving me the opportunity to see a truly iconic part of the world.

Author: Mark Todhunter

Produced and made pretty by Kate (please check out the album link for Nepal - we have put a heap more photos in there!)