EBC Day 11: Yet More Yak Trains...

As we continued to walk, the mist came in and obscured the views of the hills, but not of the yaks, of which we encountered many.

Overall, there was a fair bit of uphill, but even more downhill so it was a relatively easy day.

When the clouds cleared, we were once again greeted with amazing views.

This was yet another instance that we were fortunate to be on a wide section of the path and could easily get out of the way.

We should have had a great view from our second-story lunch stop, but it was socked in.

I had garlic soup yet again.

Typical of Nepali Flat, you can see that we still had to go uphill during our descent. We did a little shopping in Namche Bazaar after dropping off our daypacks and visiting the bakery, where I enjoyed a piece of chocolate carrot cake.

We had a big conversation over dinner with Ishor about the plan concerning the helicopter flight. It turned out that no plane or chopper flights had taken off or landed at Lukla for the past two days, which means that our former teammates had been stuck in Lukla for two nights. It didn’t take much discussion for me, Kent and Carlin to agree to hop on Terri’s helicopter. Now the big question is: will it be clear enough for that helicopter to fly? We needed to prepare for another day of hiking and hope that we’ll just need to hike up to the airport from the helipad.

After dinner, of yet more garlic soup, we took Ishor and the porters to the Blues Rock Bar for a celebration drink, our first alcohol in 11 days. The bar was packed with British university students, all of whom were younger than the classic rock being played. The Everest Beer was a basic lager that was well earned. Luckily there was enough light for us to see our way up the uneven steps back to Sherpa Village.

Hard to believe while all this was happening, Ashlynn was on a bus to Paris. She rented a studio apartment in the Latin Quarter. I was so proud of her that she was off on this big adventure on her own.