Day 13 - Phortse - " The Everest Tradition"

After our days acclimatization in Namache it was a chilly & misty morning departure with a front of bad weather beginning to work its way through.

The first two hours were great walking with views through the mist of this astounding Mtn range. More amazing was the number of helicopters working through the valley in poor visibility supplying the Everest trail villages !

Our baptism of fire soon came with an extended steep uphill climb to Mongla at 4,000 metres. This was tough, not just the steepness of the incline but the unwillingness of the major muscle groups to work at more than just shuffle pace. I expect we will have more days of this as we work our way to 5,200 metres at base camp.

Lunch at Mongla was at the appropriately named Hill Top guest house where trekkers crowded inside to avoid the chilly whiteout !

Replenished with warm soup it was all the way down the valley to Dute Kosi river on steep rocky sections that we have become so accustomed to

Our climb following was only 45 minutes but boy what a tough time - self doing only 50 metre spells before becoming fatigued !

Monika arrived not too long after (amazingly we were both in before 3pm) at the small village of
Phortse which has an amazing tradition where all of the adult males, including our guest house owner and son have, have actually sumitted Everest - amazing !

Father & Son - both conquerors of Everest ! 

With the sun setting it was freezing in our room and hallway toilet making sitting around the dung fuelled heater and listening to the owners wife chant Tibetan style prayers mandatory !

Michael -

Wow who left the refrigerator door open - sweating while wearing layers is not a good feeling - at least  today we were wearing fresh clothes courtesy of some poor sod having to scrape off 10 days of dirt  in Namache

It is hard to tell whether our walking from Jiri has helped or not as our first taste of hills at altitude was not memorable - at this rate we may get round to arguing about who gets to carry the 6 AAA batteries we have - only 4 days to Everest !

Monika -

I thought after so many days walking I'd be stronger but the altitude really knocked me around to a walking pace that wouldn't have even registered on a treadmill !

After days of beautiful weather we finally had some average stuff with cold misty weather almost obscuring the surrounding mountains

Still hanging in there although a couple of knee replacements might be on the agenda when back in Melbourne