Call it luck, call it timing - but things have had a way of working out well for us this entire trip. Even the delays for the altitude sickness helped, as we met up with some cool folks, and had even more time to get used to the altitude.
The climb up Kala Pathar was no different.
We got up around 5:30am to start up - only Dawa and myself this time, as David and Kristin wanted to just crash and recover. Sissies.
Weather played even more critical of a role here - if there was clouds or even mist, Everest would be hidden from view, and all our efforts would be a waste.
However, it looked pretty good - so we started climbing. Up, and up, and UP! In terms of difficulty, this was by far the hardest part of the whole trek as it was essentially going to be two hours of straight slogging uphill.
There were some immediate rewards - with the peak of Everest peeking through for a minute:
...which kept me going and fired up to finish the damn climb, even as the last 1/3rd was through fairly deep and slippery snow.
It all paid off though - reaching the top, strewn with prayer flags from previous expeditions training for the actual Everest ascent. The weather continued to tease us, covering us in clouds, then parting for brilliant sunshine every 5-10 minutes, so we ended up with mind-blowing views of the surrounding peaks:
...plus some great looks back at Everest (even if my camera let me down a bit):
The other cool part was the props I got from Dawa. The climb was supposed to take about 2-3 hours - we did it in 1 hour 20 minutes. Not bad for a *sigh* soon to be 37 year old!
The rest of the day - man, we just started blazing down the trail on the way back. Our acclimatization work paid off, as we saw one group with a pretty severely sick man having to stagger back down to lower elevation.
We ended up reaching Pheriche in mid afternoon, covering in a mere one day what took us three on the way up. With altitude no longer an issue, beers were soooo on. At first, I spied a dusty Budweiser and figured that'd be a pretty funny beer to have so far from home - but as its 'born on date' was 2 years ago, I decided to be safe with a locally brewed Tuborg.
Mmm... beer.
Slightly buzzed after a mere one beer (stoopid altitude), we chilled out, ended up playing with baby Maya again, and then hit the trail the next day.
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