Everest Base Camp

That night at Rongphu, standing right in front of Everest being lit up by the moonlight was the most amazing site. I wish we had a tripod to try to capture the moment with. It was so peaceful. The mountain so white with snow. I could only imagine the expeditioners trying to decide whether or not to go for a summit push. From what we saw on discovery, anyone at Camp 4 would get up at 10:00 pm, trek for 18 hours to summit Everest the next afternoon.

Jenni and I were secretly willing them to go since it was such a beautiful and clear night! For us, it was enough to be where we were knowing it will be the highest point in the world we will ever go!

Sleep that night was terrible. A combination of a really bad bed, cold weather and lack of oxygen. The entire night, when I thought I was falling asleep, I would be jolted awake feeling like I couldn't breathe! A few seconds to take deep breaths to get over that brutal feeling and the cycle would begin again. Morning couldn't come soon enough for me....

Next morning we had our snickers bars and started our 8 km hike to base camp. But when I say hike, I mean, follow the horse cart road...

The sun hadn't come over the mountain yet, so the valley was very cold still. My batteries in my camera were almost dead (real smooth) and Jenni's was down due to the cold but we still got some enroute shots.


I think Jenni has some mountain goat genes cause she really kicked my butt up here in the high altitudes. While I'm huffing and puffing, she's slow and steadily making it there!

In any case, about 2 and a quarter hours later, EBC comes in to view. It wasn't quite what I thought or what you'd see on TV. There were hotels after hotels...restaurants, souvenier shops and the famous highest post office in the world.

We were thinking, where are the expeditions? We soon found out that they are at a more advanced base camp. This one is for the tourists! And if you try to go to the advanced camp (like we did) you get fined $200 USD! We we're warned so we turned back.

I thought we should try out our oxygen that we bought here so after figuring out how it worked, we took a few breaths to be met with indifference. We weren't sure if it worked or not. Oh well, let's ham it up for the camera. You'll have to read Jenni's blog for some pics.

A couple hours at base camp and we headed back to Rongphu for the next leg of the trip...