Berg Adventures International: Everest Base Camp Expedition Cybercast

October 5 - Acclimatizing in Dingboche

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Today is the 5th of October. James birthday party last night was actually quite subdued, everyone was very tired from that full day of hiking but it was fun all the same. The cook staff prepared a birthday cake and we had a nice evening and then slept very well. This morning we woke up a little later than usual, we took our bed tea at 7am rather than 6am at Ang Temba’s Highland Sherpa Resort lodge. Then we had a big pancake breakfast.

We relaxed for most of the morning, most folks made some satellite phone calls to check in with folks back home. A number of the team visited the Pangboche monastery, which is actually the oldest monastery, at 450 years old, in this region. Then we had to say good-bye to Amelie and her guide Chung Karma as they took off for their little excursion for a week into Gokyo valley. We will meet them in Namche after we have been up to Everest Base Camp. We wished them well and they walked off down the trail with big smiles on their faces.

Now we have arrived at Dingboche at 14,000 ft (4267m) where we have moved into our lodge here and this will be a two night stay for us. An important acclimatization stop as we prepare to move higher towards Everest Base Camp. I should mention that we got our first view of the big peaks today. We have had a lot of cloudy, misty weather. Today’s walk had a mysterious feel to it as we walked up the trails with gorges below us and ridges off in the distance through the mist. But we haven’t seen much of the high peaks.

This morning though, everyone who was up early ran back to their rooms for their cameras because Everest, Lhotse and Ama Dablam were glorious out the window of the lodge and most of us ran out in the early morning light and got some photographs of those beautiful peaks. We’ll see more of them certainly, but that was the first taste and has us all excited.

So now we are relaxing, our first night in Dingboche. We’ll report to you from higher camps above, just know that we will be acclimatizing and enjoying the company of our Sherpa staff and we are going to be taking it easy. We have sore muscles; we’ve been doing some pretty long days of hiking so it will be good to recuperate tomorrow.