Home > Eight Days Roundtrip to EBC

Day#6

The guide knocked on my door at 5am, and informed me the cloud is thick, after raining and snowing the previous night. The chance of seeing Everest is next to zero at Kalapattar, which is a platform above Gorakshep at about 5546m. There will be about 350m elevation gain to scale before 7am, when is supposed to be the ideal time to view the Everest, if there is an opening in the cloud.

My headache is much lighter than the previous time when I was at 5000m in 2007 when I was trying to scale YuZhuFeng. The gradual gain in elevation perhaps helped a good deal this time. The sleep is good last night. I thought long and hard and decided to try my luck.

It turned out that my luck was not with me. The cloud would gradually get thicker. I managed to get a very dim picture of Everest just before the cloud made the visibility to less than 10 meters. I climbed to about 5500m by around 7am. The cloud made sure there is no point of keeping going up any further. I turned around and returned to the Gorakshep.

We packed our stuff and started descending to Dangboche. It is said that the temple at Dangboche offers the best view of Everest. Eventually, the rain stopped us at Pheriche, at 4250m elevation, at 1:30pm. We failed to reach Dangboche, by about 2.5 hours.

I really wanted to take a shower. The shower is also available, for about 400Rupee, or about 40RMB. Eventually my better judgment took control. Kumar also informed me he or any of his clients never took showers at more than 4000m elevation. I decided to take the shower at the next stop.