Day 11: Gorak Shep to Dzonglha

Approximate Trekking Time: 4 ½ – 5 ½ hrs

Distance: 10.8k / 6.7 miles

Overnight Elevation: 4830m / 15,846ft

Happy Halloween! Today I dressed as a burnt marshmallow, the costume of my big black puffy jacket that I don every day to keep warm.
Our night of sleep was cold and restless, as expected, one of the consequences of sleeping at high altitudes often being shitty sleep. We “woke” (already fairly awake) early at 5am to the noise of a group assembling outside our room to make an early trip up Kala Pattar. Poor suckers.

We had heard their guide explaining the early morning plan to them over dinner last night and, knowing how chilly it had been on the summit even at late morning in the sun yesterday, did not envy their freezing pre-dawn departure to the top.

Later over breakfast, we overheard a conversation between two of the girls in the group, one of which had stayed behind at the lodge while others made the frigid trek up Kala Pattar. The one who stayed behind asked how it was. The other responded almost in shock, “it was so cold.” The other pressed again, “but how were the views?!?”, to which the other responded again dully, “I don’t remember… it was so cold.” I shivered just listening to this conversation. Despite opportunities to perhaps catch amazing sunrise or sunset photos, the latter riskier with cloud cover, I have been perfectly content to make our climbs to peaks during warmer hours of the day.

Following breakfast, we bundled up and headed back down the trail toward Lobuche. Luckily the sections that had been bottlenecked on our way up the previous day weren’t yet too clogged, with mostly only porters along the route thus far. We also ran into Florence, who was revamping her plans to climb Lobuche East, and making the trek up Kala Pattar for the day. Further down the trail, the valley flattened more as it gradually descended into Lobuche. I was also very happy we wouldn’t be spending another night here, and we trekked through, continuing down the valley in the warm sun until the trail toward Dzhonglha branched off from the main trail to the right.

The trail toward Dzhonglha lead through the wide rocky valley floor, which we crossed to join an exposed trail that ascended southwestward along the mountain before leveling out as it curved along the mountainside, making for a very pleasant flat hike with a great view of the valley and surrounding mountains. The trail rounded the mountainside heading back toward the northwest, passing a yak(?) skull on a rock and a beautiful turquoise lake far below, eventually descending across a muddy plain before climbing back up the slope on the other side of the field. It was at this point we went a little wrong.

While, we later discovered, we should have followed the trail up and over the top of the slope, we veered left on a trail along the side of the slope and what began as somewhat trail-looking eventually became less and less so, and soon we were just hiking along the mountainside, blazing our own trail. Eventually, we spotted the trail toward Dzhonglha below and descended through the brush toward it, crossing over a river and making our way up the other side of the valley on a steep dusty trail leading toward toward the village.

Dzhonglha (4830m/15,842ft.) was basically a small collection of less than half a dozen lodges, like most of the villages we’d been in lately, all perched in a natural bowl on the mountainside. After awhile, we saw Dan hiking up with none other than Nathaniel and Erica in tow. Nathaniel had found Erica the previous morning and they’d stayed the night in Dingboche, an easy rest day before making the trek toward Dzhonglha his morning, opting to skip the tourists of Gorak Shep/Kala Pattar/EBC altogether. They’d run into Dan just down the trail and Ube wasn’t far behind. The whole family was back together again!

After lunch, Shawn tested out the shower, which was apparently in another lodge and not too bad. A bucket shower, where heated water was carried to the top of the roof to drain through a shower head in the ceiling, the water had lasted long enough to get clean, the first shower since Namche Bazaar. However, when I went to ask for a shower I was told, “no more water, come back in another hour.” I returned in an hour. No water. “Maybe come back later… maybe water… maybe no…” At this point, I gave up. Better luck at the next lodge. The water for the shower in Dzhonglha was carried up from the river below in large buckets and heated on a solar heater, a process that took a long time. Also, since the river wasn’t directly next to the village, but rather down a steep slope, it took a lot more effort to fill and carry a large bucket up the hill, and it was likely that they weren’t keen on making this effort many times a day. Nothing about living in the mountains of Nepal is easy.

So, we whiled away the afternoon hours in the dining room with tea and lots and lots of people coughing their lungs out, a common sound over the past week as trekkers suffered through the hacking cough and wheezing that often develops in the dry mountain air. The older lady across from me sounded like she might die. I had developed the cough myself not long after Tengboche and was looking forward to its dissipation when we descended from the high elevations.