Everest Base Camp Day 8

The view from just above Gokyo this morning.

Today starts with a wee climb up this snow covered hill.

The third Gyoko lake from above, as we leave.

Gyoko covered with snow. Yes again it snowed yesterday afternoon and evening.

Once we get over the hill we are into quite different landscape. A valley of rocky piles.

I joked to my companions that this is Gerry Brownlee’s plans for our national parks 🙂

More seriously it is like one huge quarry. Totally natural, but mounds of rocks everywhere. Hard to walk over, but quite special.

The odd rock with a different colour. The rocks piled up on top are placed there by people wanting good luck. You see such rock towers literally everywhere.

Then we head to the far side where we have a 40 minute trek through what they call the rockslide danger area. Obviously made it through okay!

Sadly around this stage, my headaches returned. I though two days in Gyoko had got rid of them. Slightly disturbingly we actually end up 100 metres lower tonight, so not a great sign for tomorrow when we have to climb 650 metres over the Chola Pass. That could be rather painful. All I’ll say is praise be to the drug company that invented Ibuprofen. It doesn’t eliminate the headaches, but does make them more manageable.

The worry is it could develop into the more serious forms of altitude sickness such as HACE but I think the risk is minimal. I don’t have any other symptoms such as nausea, fatigue or loss of appetite (far from it!). Also while by blood oxygen level had dropped to 81% the first night in Gyoko, it was back up to 86% the second night.

A view of where we had passed through once we cleared the top.

Then it is far more standard ground and the yaks are a good sign of civilisation ahead.

And we get to Tangnag, at the start of the Chola Pass. Altitude is 4,700 metres. Tomorrow will be a very early start as we’ll have eight hours or so of trekking.