Sun 31 Oct 2010 16:43 » Jon
We had a pretty relaxed start today, leaving base camp at around 09:00, by which time I’d managed to wash (in a bowl again), eat and sort out my kit.
There was a small amount of blue sky when I crawled out of the tent but the change in the weather that Andy first spotted from the summit of Lobouje East has continued today. The blue sky disappeared pretty quickly and the walk down to Pheriche was pretty cold, then after lunch it began snowing. It’s been very light all afternoon but began properly dumping once we’d arrived in Pangboche and were safely inside our lodge. The fir trees now have a layer of snow on them and it’s beginning to settle on the ground, but nothing too serious to affect our little walk yet. The only question is whether the airport in Lukla will cope…
Thu 28 Oct 2010 11:01 » Jon
After days avoiding the crowds, we were back on the Everest Base Camp trail this morning, and I realised how lucky we’ve been the last few days. We’ve paused for lunch in Dughla, a settlement which consists simply of two lodges, feeding about six million trekkers (Acute Mountain Snobbery again).
The route from Dingboche to Dughla took us over the shoulder of the ridge that comes off Pokalde, separating the Imja Khola valley (where we’ve been for the last week or so) from the Lobouje Khola (which leads up to the Khumbu Glacier and Everest Base Camp). As we reached the top of the ridge we passed a little stupa and had our last look back at Island Peak. Someone commented that we could see Lobouje East up the other valley, but I could only see enormous summits with huge rock faces, so assumed they were joking and ignored them. Andy has since confirmed, however, that one of the most ominous-looking is indeed Lobouje. It looks pretty terrifying from what we’ve seen so far, with a huge south face of rock and snow. Several of us have asked Andy about the route, assuming it’s somewhere we haven’t seen yet, like up a nice grassy slope round the back, but it isn’t - it’s straight up the south face.
