Someone was very concerned about snoring last night. Everytime either Ben or I started to snore we got a sudden, loud, and quite frankly, violent knock on the wall. At this time it seems prudent to remind my dear readers that everything man-made you see in the Himalayas has came up on the back of a man or beast. This includes all of the building materials for the tea houses. So the walls are thin. When this person pounded on the walls I legitimately feared his fist would go through the wall. At one point I got up to use the bathroom and Ben heard me moving around the room and thought the pounder had come to the room to rumble. The following day, no one fessed up to the violent knocking.
The snow storm had knocked out their solar power so their was no electric lights in the teahouse. It was strictly a headlamp affair.
Breakfast was gruel, toast, and hard boiled eggs. I had brought a foil pouch of tuna fish. I had not found an opportunity to eat it or share it before now and since this was our last day of hiking I had a tuna fish sandwich for breakfast.
The hike was a long one. We were starting at Duglha and were going to hike all the way to Namche Bazaar. Karma estimated we had 12 hours of hiking, Bishnu thought we could do it in 10. For the morning the ground was talus covered with snow. The hike was quick. We quickly hiked off the moraine and then cruised through the meadow we hiked through after leaving Dengboche. Pheriche where we picked up American Paul, who had stayed behind at Dingboche three days earlier. After we crossed the Dudh Cosi (again) the snow melted and we had a fast level walk into a tea break and then into lunch.
There was a lot of porter, yak and mule traffic on the trail. And if you looked at the loads they were all addressed to Everest Basecamp. During climbing season there will be 1,500 to 2,000 people living on the edge of that glacier and we were seeing there beginnings of the tent city slowly make its way up the mountain.
After lunch we climbed the ridge to Tengboche. This was a long continuous hike up but only a warm up to the main event. After cruising into Tengboche we had a 2,500 foot descent to the river. It was steep and long. Dropping half a mile, even when steep takes a long time. My knees were barking by the time we reached river level. At the river we came to the bakery that 4 days earlier had no donuts. Well, today they had donuts. They had the oldest, dustiest, stalest donuts. This did not stop me from eating one. And it was good.
After the world’s worst bakery we had one last climb of the trip. I think it was about 2,000 feet vertical. It started steep and then eased into a steady gradual climb for an hour or so.
I finished the hike with Ben, Jen, and Ellen. We finished with headlights. Eleven hours. A rolling hike with a total descent from 15,000 to 11,000 feet with two significant climbs. A fine end to a fine trek through the Himalayas.
