The view from Lobuche East false peak - 6090m (19,980ft). We woke up at midnight after a few hours of sleep and quickly consumed some tea and soup before climbing Lobuche East in Nepal. After a quick check of our gear and a prayer to our God and our Nepali guide, Naresh, asking the mountain Gods for their blessing, we left basecamp (4910m) at 1245am. The weather had been stormy with snow every evening for the last week and we found a fresh layer over the rock slabs leading up to the base of the glacier on the mountain. After a few hours of slow scrambling and some great lead climbing by our guide, we reached the spot to switch to crampons (around 18,600ft) just before 5am. At this point, the sun was starting to rise and Grant was filling up his memory cards with the spectacular views of the Himalayas. After securing our crampons and Naresh warming up Andrews toes in the most uncomfortable way, we started across an ice layer towards the 45 degree slope where we were going to switch to fixed rope all the way to the peak. Since we were the first climbers on Lobuche after the stormy week, we were breaking trail the whole day in shin to knee deep snow. The first pitch we climbed ropeless looking for the buried fixed lines, which Elliott spotted near the top of the slope. After securing our ascenders, we continued up the mountain with Naresh in front pulling up the buried rope. The day ended up being the most beautiful day of the two weeks we had been there and the sun burned warmly with no wind, making the snow a little softer. The less than solid steps and lack of oxygen slowed our progress over the next 6 pitches but we finally reached the false summit (6090m - 19,980ft) around 9am. As you can see from the video, the views were incredible from Lobuche East false peak. After taking a few pictures, only a knife ridge and 29 vertical meters stood between us and the true summit. We decided to not go any further as the fresh snow on the ridge and the abnormally warm temperatures made for some sketchy conditions. Oh, and Grant was hanging on the rope in the fetal position 50 feet below us on the 50 degree slope having a coming to Jesus talk with the altitude. The altitude won and we quickly got back to his slumping body and helped him rappel down the mountain as his mind and motor skills began to fail him. The lower we got the better he felt and the end result was just a bad headache and a few minutes vomiting at basecamp. We arrived back at camp around 2pm exhausted and happy to lay down in our tents. With more than 8000ft of vertical gain/loss and a 13hr day, Lobuche East was a perfect ending to our 3 week trek through the Himalayas. Grant took a lot of amazing pictures (we think), Im apparently going through a midlife crisis hanging out with these young guys, and Andrew and Elliott ate twice as much, smelled twice as bad, chit chatted twice as much, and hiked twice as fast as Grant and I combined. Nepal is beautiful and the people are amazing, but we are all looking forward to being home.
Posted on: Sat, 10 May 2014 14:37:58 +0000
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