Day 6: Dingboche to Lobuche

This morning didn't start well with Patti, the new porter-guide, half an hour late. Where on earth could this guy be? I wondered. I got my answer soon enough: instead of staying in Dingboche, he walked down the mountain to his teahouse in Shomare to sleep for the night. So not only was he taking his daily pay and not using it for the intended purpose, but he was leaving his clients alone in a village while he slept elsewhere.

While waiting for him to arrive, I cast my eyes upward to a hill and watched trekkers setting off. The sound of jangling bells pierced through the morning calm and I saw two horses, one black and one butterscotch-and-white, tearing up the hill. One trekker in a bright red jacket didn't take heed of the bells — anytime you hear bells on the trail, it means there's an animal coming through and you move uphill of them and make way — and was knocked down by the butterscotch horse, tumbling down the side of the hill a bit. They invariably drew a crowd, which stayed huddled around for almost 10 minutes. Part of me felt bad for them and wondered if they were okay, and the other part couldn't understand why they didn't leap out of the way. No matter how far away or slow-moving the animal wearing the bells seems to be, you always treat it with something that deserves immediate attention.

It also momentarily took my mind off Patti, who was still M.I.A. and eventually showed up, apologizing as though he didn't mean it at all. Frustration aside, we set off in the direction of Lobuche (pronounced "LOW-boo-chay"), making our way across a wide open scrubby plain. Right at the beginning, we had to scale a big hill and with the altitude, it took quite a while! But the shortest distance between two points is a straight line and as much as it made my lungs burn, it didn't last forever before transforming into something a lot nicer. The walk gently undulated up and down in a very easy way, making the trek quite a pleasant change from the more severe up-and-down hilliness of days past. But there was one woman who irritated me and I totally admit to it being on me. She was plodding along really slowly, putting one stick and one foot in front of the other at a glacial pace. Of course, I had to hop in front of her like a caffeinated bunny but every time I paused to blow my nose (which happened a lot) or catch my breath or gulp a bit of water, she'd pass me! That's not supposed to happen!

The terrain changed quite dramatically on the way to Lobuche, too. We passed past the tree line and into the snow line, and with the sun boring down with no clouds to buffet it, the snow and yak hooves made for quite a slushy mess underfoot. Walking through a bit of a gully also made for some pretty windy conditions, but with my over pants and windbreaker, I was feeling fine. There was a section between Tukla and Lobuche where I veered off the marked trail and scampered up the rocks instead, once again adhering to the "shortest distance between two points is a straight line" maxim. It was tough work, but I kept eyeballing the sherpas ahead of me and focused on how fun scrambling over rocks and boulders was. At this point in the trek and altitude, my brain started to fold into a simpler survival mode where one persistent thought would stay with me for hours, occupying the time beautifully. On this day, it was looking at the shadows cast by me and the mountain and thinking about how people used shadows to measure super tall objects. They'd wait until their shadows were the same length as their height, and then measure buildings and pyramids quite easily.

I almost forgot about the stone memorials at the Tukla Pass. After you finish huffing up the hill, you're rewarded with a bit of a flat stretch with plenty of big rocks to sit on and take a break. But it's difficult to want to sit down when there are so many memorials to gaze at, all of which are sobering reminders to the power of the mountain. One of the hardest ones to look at was Scott Fischer, a Mountain Madness guide who died in the 1996 Everest disaster. It made me stop and think, If this hugely accomplished and capable guy came up short against the mountain, what does that mean for me? And it also made me think of things I'd said previously, like telling my doctor I'm prepared to die on the mountain because that's how much I want this, cringe because of how silly and shortsighted it was at the time. To me, trekking/climbing Everest is like being in the palm of a giant hand. As you get higher, the fingers of this hand start to curl inward. Your goal is to get up and down as quickly as possible before the fingers tighten into a crushing fist and hope that you don't get caught.

So, at this point, I'm at 4,940m (about 16,000ft) and super excited at being so close to cracking 5,000m. It's also cold, dry, dusty and windy and I'm coughing worse than ever, which is especially bad at night when I cough so hard my eyes bug and I want to throw up. During the day, I can't stop my nose from running and at night, I can't loosen it if my life depended on it. Because I'm mouth breathing all the time, swallowing and speaking hurt, no matter how many fluids I'm downing. Sleeping doesn't really happen, as I'm not sure if my mind is wandering through thoughts crazily or I'm actually dreaming during the night. And I'm also starting to lose my appetite, forcing myself to eat twice a day or else I know I'll be suffering even more. I haven't showered since I left Kathmandu, but I'm strangely okay with this and have happily discovere just how long a pair of socks can really last without needing to be changed.