Lobuche East (17.11.2008)
Written by hmsv1 (Hannah Vickers)
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| Ascents | Lobuche East (6,119m) | 17.11.2008 |
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Lobuche East was a memorable summit of a 4-week trip in Nepal. I joined a trip organised by a UK-based company (Adventure Peaks), it involved a lots of ups and downs (both physical and in the psychological sense!), much laughing and of course, spectacular views. But for me Lobuche East was the highlight of the trip because the ascent coincided with my 25th birthday .-)
Sunday, 16th November 2008
Our approach walk to Lobuche East base camp was from Lobuche village, which was on the other side of the mountain. We had spent 2 days at Lobuche village after walking from Dzonghla, which was where we had stayed after our descent from the Cho La Pass. So to get back to the base camp, we were effectively retracing our steps from 2 days earlier, but not going as far back as Dzonghla. The base camp was situated at around 4800m, on the southern side of Lobuche East in a nice, open grassy area. It was actually rather pleasant and gave us some really jaw-droppingly good views of the very impressive northern side of Cholatse, on the other side of the valley. Mingma, our sirdar had told us also that we would not be going to establish a high camp on this mountain, so even though it was a little warmer and also more comfortable to sleep on the grass at base camp than amongst the rocks at the usual site of the high camp (around 5200m), the main disadvantage of sleeping low was that we would have a relatively large 1300m climb to undertake the next morning to get to the summit. This of course could only mean that we were going to have a very early start - and I really didn’t look forward to this!!
Some of the porters, with the help of Lhakpa had set up some fixed ropes on the crags above the campsite during the afternoon, so this gave us the opportunity to get some practice in jumaring, in preparation for the steeper snow sections higher up on the mountain which we would be encountering on our summit day. We did a little over one hour of ascending the ropes using our jumars, followed by some descending as well and making sure the transfers between each anchor were done absolutely correctly and efficiently. But after that was done, we returned back to base camp and ate an early dinner in the mess tent at around 5pm, which was a tasty affair of spaghetti and tomato sauce. After that there wasn't much else to do other than pack our rucksacks for the next morning, and we drifted off to the tents to get some sleep. It wasn’t going to be long again till we had to get up at the very unsocial time of 1.30am, so an early bed time beckoned more than usual.
Monday, 17th November 2008
Surprisingly, despite being 1am and also my birthday too, I got up in a strangely excited and optimistic mood. The prospect of climbing the mountain was clearly keeping me cheerful. But the bad news was that our party of 6 had rapidly shrunk to just 3, when Rocio found out that Syam was unwell with diarrhoea, and both Bev and Dave had contracted some nasty chest infection overnight. So that left only Alys, Rocio and me to go out and climb with Lhakpa and another climbing Sherpa called Nuru. Inside the mess tent, we ate some porridge/cornflakes/muesli/toast for a quick breakfast, after which ‘Team Faff’ was quickly established, with Alys keeping up standards for us and spending a ridiculous amount of time in the tent after breakfast trying to figure out (and later sort out) what she was taking in her rucksack – something which should have been done before going to bed the previous evening!
After the initial ‘faff’, we eventually pulled on harnesses and rucksacks in readiness for the slog up the path toward the site of high camp at 5200m. We made quite good progress, albeit in silence, and passed HC within about 1 ½ hours from BC. The rock above here was really nice and grippy and the route we took followed a series of slabs up to the snow line. The sun was just beginning to rise as we stopped to eat, drink and put on helmets, more clothes and crampons. At about the time we were starting to move again, the sky was filled with a magical array of colours, ranging from pinks and oranges to light purples and deep blues. My camera photos were never going to do it justice. And it was even more beautiful with the iridescent clouds overhead, as we progressed to climbing over some mixed ground to get onto slopes of perfect crunchy neve. In what felt like almost no time at all, we were marching out onto sunlit snow slopes and being surrounded by magnificent Himalayan peaks. At that point I don’t think I would have wanted to be spending my birthday anywhere else in the world. It was a superb feeling – and even better was that I wasn’t suffering any altitude-induced headaches or nausea.
The next part of the ascent did feel generally more strenuous though, as we reached the steeper ground where the fixed lines had been set up. There were a series of maybe 6 or 7 sections to negotiate, and as the sunshine intensified, the climb became more exhausting. I followed behind Lhakpa, and behind me was Rocio and Alys, and then Nuru. A potato break ensued shortly before the final 200m (ish) of the climb to the summit. Some mental determination was definitely going to be needed to get there now. But I suppose the knowledge that it wasn’t too far away, and the fact there was no way I was going to allow any failure on my birthday, especially in such good weather, eventually got us there. Like most ‘commercial’ groups, we didn’t actually go to the true summit of Lobuche East, but stopped at the false summit, which was a little lower and didn’t require the same technicalities as the true summit. It was good enough for me. And it was such a special moment to finally be gazing out over a huge expanse of mountains under crystal clear, blue skies. The only problem we had was that Alys was experiencing some excruciating stomach cramps, and quite literally crawled up onto the summit ridge while bent over in agony. Apart from that, both Rocio and I were feeling OK, and very hungry! To celebrate both the summit success and my birthday, I whipped out the remainder of my golden syrup cake for the occasion and we all (except Alys) enjoyed a bit of high altitude picnic-ing.
More high altitude entertainment followed though, when Alys decided that the cause of her stomach pains was because she quite possibly needed to relieve herself right there and then. In emergency mode, Rocio and I hacked away at the snow to dig out a pit as Alys was hurriedly trying to take off her harness, which was amusing Lhakpa and Nuru no end, and especially because they were talking to Mingma down at BC at the same time via the radios! Although probably not amusing to Alys, those summit events seemed achingly funny to the rest of us, and became even funnier when a French team came into sight on the slopes shortly below, midway through Alys’ toilet stop!!
Finally, after the commotion was over, we began the descent down the fixed lines again at about 11am. It was hugely tiring work under the hot sun – and more because we’d all pretty much run out of drink after only 1/3 of the way back down. Nevertheless, we took the pace slowly and carefully to reach the rocks just above HC again at about 2pm. Fortunately for us, we got a very nice surprise when a couple of porters met us with hot pineapple drink around the high camp site. It was immensely appreciated and just what we needed to quench our thirsts with some extra sugar to get us the rest of the way back to BC. I think we eventually arrived at 3pm, shattered but very satisfied. And we were greeted by the smell of vegetable soup (cabbage and carrot) which had been cooked by Mingma. For the rest of the evening, Rocio, Alys and me parked our bums inside the cooking tent and devoured as much soup and hot drinks as was physically possible before being served an amazingly tasty dinner of pasta and vegetables at 4.30pm. To finish it all off, there was even a birthday cake which Mingma had made (I was very impressed by this – they didn’t have any ovens to bake it in so I can only guess they used the pans). I was handed a remarkably dangerous-looking knife to cut it though! It was probably the most perfect end to what had been an utterly satisfying and really fantastic (for most of us) mountain day. We hopped into bed after dinner as soon as we could!
Tuesday, 18th November 2008
Alys discovered she’d lost her camera on the previous day and was understandably gutted as we packed up camp and mooched our way back down the trail toward Dingboche. Syam, Bev and Dave had all descended down to Dingboche to sleep whilst we’d been climbing the mountain, so we were heading there to meet them for lunch.
It was an easy 2-hour warm walk downhill, and joined the ‘main’ Everest trail. Lots of trekkers were bombing their way up the path and there were probably an equal number of porters to match so it was quite busy with people. Nevertheless, we rocked up at the tea house in Dingboche at about 11.30am and met the other 3 there, who weren’t fully recovered but were feeling slightly better than at Lobuche base camp. From Dingboche, it was only another 2 hours walk at a leisurely pace up the valley to get to the tea house we would be staying at, in Chukhung, which was at an altitude of about 4700-4800m. The rooms were the usual tea house standard, but there was the added luxury here of having some shelves to store kit on, which came in very handy. I went off to bed ridiculously early at around 7pm, as I was still feeling tired after the previous day’s exertion and the fact that both Alys and I had both also woken up in the morning at 4.30am feeling extremely ravenous (we rectified this with early morning munchies!)
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