Saturday was a day for progressing our acclimatisation. Having gained around 700m on Friday with the move up from Pangboche (pronounced: pang-bow-chay) to Chukhung (chook-oong) today we climbed to the summit of Chukhung Ri which stands at 5530m. This was a further 800m of height gain giving a total since leaving Pangboche of 1500m (about a vertical mile in old money). Not an inconsiderable achievement this being higher than base camp and over 500m higher than Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Western Europe.
The climbing commenced straight out of the Panorama Lodge where we had spent a chilly night. The stony track crossed a small mountain steam before becoming the more familiar dirt track strewn with rock and pebbles and angling upwards. The track continued to angle upwards for the next 2 hrs 30 mins. It was relentless. While it's nature varied from dry sand through damp sand and with varying degrees of rockiness it was ever upwards. After about 1 hr 45 mins of climbing, which challenged not only our Achilles' tendons but due to the altitude our lungs and leg muscles too, a col was reached. This presented a choice between climbing 170m to the full summit or 40m or so to a subsidiary summit. Needless to say we elected for the full summit, not least as this would offer a rocky scramble to the top rather than a continuation of the sandy path that we had been enjoying for long enough! Thus it was that after around 30 mins of scrambling, with immense relief and pleasure I stepped onto the top, marked by several prayer-flag adorned chortens. A chorten is a religious monument and can be an elaborate affair or akin to a cairn. The wind was blowing a gale so our pleasure was as short-lived as our stay on the top. Despite having fairly tired legs the return down-climb to the col served to refresh them. So much so that we then climbed the subsidiary peak too. The return to Chukhung village was a fair romp downhill and more than once somebody commented on how steep it was. Indeed it was and given the height at which we were operating without being acclimatised to it, we felt we'd done ok.
Lunch was served at the lodge when we arrived about 12:30 after which we packed our gear and left, walking into the teeth of a bitter wind laced with snow. Within 5 minutes the 'lacing' had become 'laden' as we bent our backs into it. Thankfully after 20 minutes or so the amount of snow reduced so we could at least see where we were going. Nonetheless we were mighty pleased to reach the Mountain Paradise lodge in Dingboche (ding-bow-chay) after a fairly miserable hours trek. Lunch was a welcome warmer, and I stuck with the winning formula of 2 fried eggs on a mountain of chips, and a pot of ginger tea. Instant restoration.
I then set about sending the blog. Hmm. It had been so cold the previous night that the available battery power in my iPad, on which the blog had been drafted, had reduced to just 5%. This despite it having been in bed with me and stuffed up my fleece which I also wore in bed. As an aside I also enjoyed the overnight company of my water bottle the contents of which would have frozen otherwise, and my mobile phone which serves as the alarm clock. Anyway back to the iPad power issue. I was concerned that there was insufficient juice left in the machine to complete a blog posting so I sought a charge-up from the hostel and several other places offering this service. my enquiries all drew a blank. There is no mains electricity this far into the Khumbu, and even if a generator could be 'yakked' this far there was no fuel (the roadhead being well to the south with difficult terrain thereafter). Thus the only form of power is solar, and the weather had been so bad today that the solar-charged batteries were too low to provide a usable output. As you will know if you have read it I did after all manage to get the blog out but now have a completely dead iPad. I appreciate this isn't the end of the world but this story serves to illustrate the reality of life in the Khumbu. While on the subject of life in the Khumbu, or at least this part of it, the telephone network has been down for 2 days and is not expected to be back until Monday. So the only means of electronic communication is via wi-fi which is available at a price (around £3 for 30 mins), in some villages but not all, and even then only intermittently due to an ongoing problem in Kathmandu (apparently). It is worth emphasising once more that there are no roads here and no-one can afford a helicopter. Everything - wood, milk, clothes, food, babies nappies, and everything else you can think of except potatoes has to be carried in by yak or on the backs of porters. In light of this the fact that I am able to get blogs out from time to time is nothing short of remarkable.
And so it is that after a dinner of Dal Baht (yet again - I love it!), at just past 8 Saturday evening, I am in bed wearing a fleece and wooly hat trying to get warm, writing this blog with a very cold finger on the tiny screen of my iPhone as it still has 10% of its battery remaining. The Internet cafe opens at 8 in the morning and if you are able to read this on Sunday morning then you may assume that I reserved enough power to send the blog and the wi-fi was working. It also means that I'm now on my way to Lobuche (lob-oo-chay) even further up the trail. Heaven only knows what I'll find not working there, but given what I said about the remoteness of this place frankly I'm amazed anything ever works.
That is not a criticism but a huge compliment to the extraordinary fortitude of the Sherpa people whose country I am privileged to be able to tell you about. If the 'comms work of course!