Everest Trek Day 7: Dingboche to Dughla

  Dughla, Nepal
Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Dingboche (4410m) to Dughla (4620m).

"That does it. Let's just high-tail it back down to Lukla and get ourselves out of here and back to Kathmandu."

That was my atitude when I woke up this morning. I think much of this came from the relatively bad day I had yesterday being caught up on the hill when the clouds rolled in with the cold intesifying and the blowing snow. But also I think part of it came from the fact that when we woke up we discovered that Mazen's water left in his water bottle was frozen. My hands were freezing too. I looked at the thermometer: -5 degrees Celsius.

It's a bit funny how you can trek and every day be amazed at the wonderful, ever-changing scenary but at the same time, on a different level, be misearable. Today would be our 7th day of our trek so that can really wear on the body especially considering the altitude, the cold, and even the fact that we haven't seen a shower in a week now.

I think another thing that was wearing on me were the eggs. I was so sick of eggs. Granted, they are a good source of protein and we would eat eggs especially if we didn't feel comfortable eating whatever meat that some of these dodgy places may provide. But after eating some form of eggs maybe two meals a day I was certainly getting loathesome of them. We had them fried, in an omelette, alone, with toast, boiled, sometimes on rice, whatever. I was sure that after the trek I would never eat them again.

Anyways, all of this was wearing on me so much that even though I was half-joking about turning back, I was seriously questioning whether base camp was something I still really wanted to do. But this is a question I will have to ask myself later as I'm too busy packing up and preparing to trek upwards.

I have to admit, this morning it was an absolute winter wonderland outside. Even though it may be cold at least it had stopped snowing some time in the middle of the night and what was left was a snow-covered landscape. Even the mountains around us had had some fresh snow as we could see as the morning wind blew it from their sides and peaks. Actually it truly looked magical to watch these gentle mists of snow billowing from the mountains as the sun began to work it's own magic.

Mountain1

Mountain2

This morning with breakfast we tried some local seabuckthorn juice (i.e. from the seabuckthorn berry of course). Actually, I had never heard of this berry until two days ago. It's kind of an orange colour and is very high in protein, vitamins C and E, and organic acids. It has also been called the Siberian pineapple, Sea Berry, Sandthorn or Swallowthorn. Anyways, what was important to me at the time was that it was served hot and it was delicious.

Powered on by this mystical seabuckthorn juice, we started from Dingboche with our target for the day being Lobuche (4910m). This would be a fairly aggresive altitude gain of 500m so we would have to monitor ourselves carefully to ensure that we were both handling this adequately.

We hadn't even left the limits of the town when we bumped into an Alaskan couple whom we had initially met a couple of days back while we were both trekking upwards. The only difference this time was that they were going back now. The woman in particular seemed quite eager to be out of this cold, windy and now snowy place. As we parted ways and the distance between us slowly grew it occurred to me that if the couple from Alaska was turning back were we fools ourselves for continuing up?

Snow covered Dingboche

As mystical and beautiful and magical this scene was with the snow wisping off the mountains, it was still cold. Actually, we didn't feel much in the way of warmth at all until the sun fully came out from behind the mountain and we felt its full force. Of course with the sun out then the snow began to disappear. Surprisingly there really wasn't much accumulation of snow from yesterdays storm so it wouldn't take long for it all to melt away leaving only the random shrub in this otherwise barren landscape.

Mazen was not having a good day. At the top of the initial hill out of the town he mentioned that he thought that Noori and myself had trekked a little fast. Maybe we did climb fast but I think in my case part of that was to keep warm. Regardless, it was not difficult to see that he was having a challenging time even as we marched onwards. No matter how beautiful the scenary is how does one enjoy it when having a lot of trouble?

Our path forward

Mid-morning or so Mazen really needed to stop for a while so we stopped in a place named Dughla (4620m). Actually, it was hard to believe that this place even had a name as there were only 2 small lodges here and there was literally nothing else. Anyways, we had only gone up a couple of hundred meters and trekked for a couple of hours or so but if he was having trouble then it was important to take a break.

After eating an early lunch and having a hot drink he continued to feel physically bad and couldn't seem to get enough oxygen perhaps. Moreover, he had a headache now too. He was certain that he couldn't continue today so Dughla would turn out to be our stop for the night instead of Lobuche. But that was fine as we were ahead of schedule anyways and we could always go to Lobuche tomorrow. So we booked a room here while there was still vacancy.

This was one of the busiest lodges that we stayed at so far as there were many trekkers here from various countries. Most were on there way up still. It was actually a nice change being in a bustling lodge. Well, as bustling as it could get as we all compete for real estate around a yak-dung-burning-stove. Our porter Noori did not gain popularity with the other trekkers as he pretty much hogged much of the stove real estate but that was more due to a communication problem as no one spoke his language and he didn't speak ours. And no amount of charades or sign language was clarifying the situation any. In any case it was all rather amusing.

Flowing frozen stream

Tomorrow we would head to Lobuche.