September 29, 2019 from the Itinerary: Visit Everest Base Camp; overnight at Gorak Shep Today is a very long, hard day as we leave very early, following the Khumbu Glacier northwards to Gorak Shep (5,184m). The trail undulates up and down the moraine with some short steep sections. The trail is rocky in places as we are now on the lateral moraine of the Khumbu Glacier. It will take us about 3 hours to reach Gorak Shep where we will have a rest and something to eat. From here to base camp and back there are no lodges so we will fill our water bottles and take some snacks for the walk to Everest Base Camp. We start by walking across the sandy flat at Gorak Shep and climb onto the lateral moraine of the Khumbu glacier. The trail ascends the side of the glacier for a couple of hours before finally descending onto the rocky glacial moraine itself. The trail winds up and down through fascinating ice seracs to the area known as Everest Base Camp, where in spring, we might see in the distance some of the expedition teams as they prepare to climb the mountain. From the Base Camp we get fantastic close up views of the Khumbu Ice Fall and we can appreciate just how difficult it is for the climbers to negotiate a route through the huge blocks of ice. Nuptse towers above us and Pumori rears up behind us. After a short photo stop by the Base Camp rock we retrace our steps to Gorak Shep. Our Tea-house sleeping altitude is 5,184m. This is an 8 mile day with 250 M elevation increase.
Last night we had our first casualty. Julian has been weaker and weaker. The guides assumed this was an altitude issue. Last night after dinner he got so bad that they made a call he shouldn't summit this morning. The rest of us went outside the tea house and the day was overcast and very cold. I had on everything I owned.
We left the tea house area and saw some horses on the way out.
We walked along to the fork to go up and the snow started coming down. Now I wish I had brought my yak traks for more traction.
The snow whited out all the views, so not a lot to take pictures of.
The trail is rocky and rather icy.
The glacier is not visible, but you can see the lake next to it.
It's important to keep hydrated.
As we got closer the number of people on the trail increased a lot. Trails had been pretty empty up to today and we had been lucky. Our tour was one of the first in the season and so not crowded - until today.
The actual base camp itself is a bit of a disappointment because we couldn't see a lot. We weren't allowed to get very close to the actual climbing groups and could only see the tents from a distance.
Snow was coming down heavily at this point and we had to jockey to get a position at the rock to get our picture taken.
We couldn't see the ice fall due to weather. We couldn't see Everest due to weather.
After our few minutes at the rock and pictures all around
we started back to the tea house and our celebratory dinner.
The bad news was that Julian was med-evac'd and Jon went with him. It turns out he had dengue fever from a mosquito bite he got at the Lukla Airport - an unusual place because of the high altitude.
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