Talk about exhausted.

We slept in till 7, had a leisurely breakfast and walked to Everest Base Camp. Though nowhere near as difficult as Kala Pattar, we were exhausted from the few days before, combined with poor nights sleep (common at this altitude), and the two and a half hours there was exhausting. It only ascended 300m from Gorak Shep but it went up and down, up and down. For the first time since we started almost ten days ago, I had to sit down to rest, frequently. And, like many will tell you, Everest Base Camp was a bit anti-climactic, especially compared to the views up Kala Pattar. For one thing, which may not be known to most, is you can barely see Everest at EBC. You get only a view of the tip. And the actual base camp is just a bunch of tents scattered amongst a huge field of rocks.

What is awesome at EBC though, is the Khumbu Glacier icefall. This unstable and dangerous thoroughfare is the initial ascent up the South Col. Climbers have to scramble over carefully placed ladders to get to Camp 1. The icefall is regarded as one of, if not the most, dangerous parts of the trek to the summit. For one thing the glacier moves at such rapid speeds, not only can crevasses open up without warning, but the carefully placed ladders can just fall through, unable to support your weight. Also avalanches ranging from basketball size to automobiles can fall with little to no warning. In "Into Thin Air", Jon Krakauer claims it is the most fear provoking and life threatening part of the whole ascent up the South Col.

At EBC we also noticed many climbers practicing their ice climbing on small walls along the glacier. Very cool. Other than that, there was not much going on. We walked around for an hour then left, knowing we had about 4 hours of hiking ahead of us.

Those hours went by slowly as we hiked back down to Lobuche. We had a cold uneventful dinner (I opted for a fried egg sandwich--delicious and downed in about 2 minutes) and then off to bed, ready for a 6-7 hour hike downhill tomorrow.

Till then.