Because the best travel stories don't end with ". . . and everything went according to plan"
Nov 10 2024 – Gorak Shep to Lobouche Tonight I’m sleeping in a Himalayan Bond Villain Lair. It’s known informally along the trail as the “Italian Pyramid”, but it’s formal name is “Pyramid International Laboratory-Observatory”. Its story is interesting. 20 something years ago the government of Italy wanted to build a climate monitoring station in …
Nov 9 2024 – Everest Base Camp (Almost) One of the more bizarre things that happens to the human body in hypoxic conditions is you have really weird dreams. You also don’t necessarily have full control over your bodily functions. I had a dream in which I went to the bathroom, and woke up to …
Nov 8 2024 – Lobouche to Gorak Shep Super weird dreams aside, I woke up feeling mostly okay today, so I decided to head up. The topographic map I have basically showed today being 800 vertical feet of elevation gain over 3.5 miles, which would’ve made today the easiest day of the trip. Sadly, the …
Nov 7 2024 – Lobouche Day 2 Last night after dinner I played cards for a while with a girl from Germany and a guy from Israel and then I went to bed. Woke up a few hours later with a pounding headache and a powerful wave of nausea overtook me. Ended up vomiting in …
Nov 6 2024 – Dengbouche to Lobouche Got a later start this morning than I have been. Didn’t hit the trail until 8am. Was stuck behind a long conga line of people on a narrow trail heading up to the ridge above Dengboche, which was pretty frustrating. Fortunately once over the top of the ridge …
Nov 5 2025 – Dingbouche Rest Day So last night it snowed. My plan for today was a hike up the 16,662 foot Nagkarshang peak. But I was dubious about it because the weather forecast said it was supposed to snow all day today too. Instead, the clouds cleared. So I started hiking. I ended …
Nov 4 2024 – Tengbouche to Dingbouche It was a cold slog of a day. Basically followed the imja khola river all day. Last night before I went to bed my SpO2 measured 74%. When I was planning this trip I made a completely uninformed rule that I’d turn around and head for lower altitude …
Nov 3 2024 – Namche to Tengbouche The trails up here are marked with signs which list distances to places in hours. They’re all wrong. And every sign pointing to Tengbouche says it’s 2 hours, no matter where the sign is or how far away from Tengbouche it actually is. It actually took me 6. …
Nov 2 2024 – Namche to Khumjung to Khunde to Namche My sleep schedule since I’ve been in Nepal has basically been nowhere time. I crash after dinner and wake up in the absurd wee AM hours. I haven’t actually found a downside to that though. Upside is I hit the trail running before other …
Nov 1 2024 – Monjo to Namche Bazar Yesterday was the day I started going up, today is the day I stated going UP. Most days on this trek, by design for altitude acclimation purposes, don’t involve gaining more than 1000 feet in elevation per day. This is one of the few days that’s an …