Mt. Everest Base Camp:

April 2nd, 2005 - April 3rd, 2005

Our fourth day began in our ice box of a hotel with a pre-dawn noodle breakfast. Noodles are good in Tibet because each hotel gives you a thermos of hot water at night and in the morning so you can always make noodles if there is no other food around.

We got off to a slow start because we couldn't find one guy in our group. While the rest of us suffered in the cold of our concrete rooms with steel door, Dan had passed out drinking in the restaurant next to the big fire.

We were all out in the cold and dark yelling his name for almost half an hour before we finally started banging on the windows of the restaurant. We woke him up, but he was locked in and couldn't get out.

He finally got out of the restaurant and we got a late start to our most important day, the day we would reach Everest Base Camp.

Apparently Dan was not the only one looking for sleep because when we reached the checkpoint at the town of Chay, the guard was fast asleep in his house. Our drivers had to wake him so that he could lift the gate for us to pass.

Along the way our Land Cruisers climbed through Pang-La Pass (5120m) and we saw most of the world's biggest peaks including Cho Ouy (8153m), Gyachung (7922m), Everest (8848m), Lhotse (8511m), and Makalu (8481m).

Back down from the pass our drivers decided to off road it and cut down the switchbacks. Save for a massive patch of ice and water we did pretty well.

Sadly, that would be the last we would see of our drivers for about 24 hours as the government here just installed a new policy two weeks ago prohibiting Land Cruisers from getting within about 30km of Everest Base Camp.

So, we were thrown on a piece of shit 1980's Dodge Ram that seated 12 people and bore the logo of China Telecom on the side.

Whoever sold off the vans from China Telecom must be laughing his ass off right now because it was the biggest steal of the century.

In the bus parking lot, all but two buses were up on blocks being repaired. Clearly, they were no match for the hilly and rocky road to Everest Base Camp.

For the hour long ride to Rongphu Monastery it felt like the bus was going to disintegrate. Piece kept fall off the interior and the thing stalled 4 times. Somehow, by the grace of God or Buddha we made it to Rongphu.

At Rongphu we had a choice of two places to stay. The first was a crappy old guest house with hole-in-the-floor toilets with a Mt. Everest sized pile of crap sticking out of one of the holes or a more modern guest house with no bathrooms except the great outdoors.

We chose the latter.

After unloading our gear, nine of the ten of us set off on the 8km hike from Rongphu to Base Camp. 8km doesn't sound like much, except when you are climbing from an altitude of 4950m to 5200m.

Along the gravel road, breaks were frequent and snacks were aplenty. 2 hours and 45 minutes later we reached our summit - Everest Base Camp.

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