In which my trekking plans took an unexpected turn.

Day 8: Gokyo to Phortse (3643m)
We got an early start and headed back down away from Gokyo. The goal for the day was to walk down the valley a little bit so we could cross the valley below the glacier. If the snow stopped early in the day, we had a chance at being able to cross the Cholla pass and get over near EBC. If the weather stayed crappy, we would walk down the other side of the valley and around. We stopped to chat with a group of Irish and French on their way up to Gokyo.

The wind and snow made all the prayer flags over the river look super cool.

At around noon, we were crossing the valley pick up the trail on the other side when the ground started to shake. I'm not sure how long it shook for, but it was enough for us to all look around, realize what was going on and drop our packs. We ran out away from the hill we had just been walking along. As the ground stopped shaking we watched chutes of ice snow and rock tumble down the side of the valley we had just been walking on. Some of them taking out the trail we had just been walking on. We went back and got our bags and continued across the valley up to the other side. It definitely hadn't sunk in for me how badly this had the potential to be. We came across a small guesthouse that had walls collapsed and a massive crack in the path.

Looking back on where we had been walking.

Crack in the trail

We did the math and the earthquake happened around midnight PCT, so people in Washington wouldn't be hearing about it for several hours (if it even made the news). We stopped for lunch and debated staying there for the night, but even though it would be a long day, our guide thought it would be much safer to get to Phortse for the night. He was definitely right, and I think everyone started to realize the significance of the earthquake as the aftershocks rolled in. As we got to Phortse, we had to walk to several guesthouses before finding one with safe rooms and or wasn't damaged. Our guide got cell service and quickly ran off to talk to his family. Wifi was down and even the radio was down so the family running the guesthouse didn't have any information either.

Eep.

A few minutes later our guide came running in paniced and told us that the nine-story Daharahara tower in Kathmandu had toppled to the ground and hundreds were dead. At this point David switched on his phones and was doing everything he could to try to get a call up to Gokyo to check on the Irish and the French we had seen walking. He managed to get some info via text from a friend in Europe who subsequently logged into his facebook. We knew it was bad at this point, but there wasn't much to do except sit around the fire and listen to the family talking in Nepali.

The family was absolutely wonderful to us. The mother of the family murmered Tibetan prayers most of the evening and would jump and start to run outside if someone set a bag down too hard and she thought it was an aftershock. See, the way buildings are built here, you don't stay inside, you get out of the structure you're in in case it collapses. But they made sure we were fed, warm, and entertained while also trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Not the most useful door anymore.

After we had our dinner, a Nepali who had been up near/at (he never actually told me in English) EBC. We found out that the families relatives were all just fine, but a couple of them were trapped on Everest above Base Camp. (They rescued all of these folks by helicopter the next morning.)

After dinner we went to bed and got a few hours of sleep. We scooted our beds away from the outer stone walls and figured we would know more in the morning.

Day 9: Phortse to Namche Bazaar

View of Namche from the helipad.

The next morning the radio was up and running, so we spent breakfast listening to BBC. This might be one of the most surreal breakfasts of my life. I just kept mentally pinching myself. There's no way. There just isn't. And then, the BBC announced that the USA had pledged $10 million in aid. Every Nepali head in the room looked at me and smiled this huge thankful smile. I straight up didn't know what to do. You always read about that in the news, pledging money for this and that, but I had never in a million years realized what a simple statement like that could mean to someone.

Our guide had spent all morning on the phone with his family (all fine) and was told that all trekkers were being told to return to Namche Bazaar. So that's where we were headed. We were told the trails were in decent condition, and there was food, water and electricity in Namche no problem. After exchanging contact info with the family, we headed off. There were still aftershocks happening, so this was definitely the fastest day of walking. There were bits of the trail where we could see where large rocks had rolled down from above and smashed onto the trail. We walked really quickly through those bits. I think the aftershocks were worse for me than the initial earthquake. It was the first big one I'd ever been in, so I spent a lot more of that one thinking 'wtf is this business?' For the subsequent quakes, I know what exactly was happening so it was much more nerve wracking.

My lovely hosts.

Once we got checked into our hotel, I wandered around and looked in a couple of the bars to see if I could find any of the other trekkers I'd met on the way up. I also managed to find wifi. Facebook had that nifty 'check in as safe' feature that let me see that most of my other friends from Nepal were checked in already. What a great feature. Kudos to you bookface.

Harder to see, but this big prayer wheel was knocked off center and parts of the building had fallen in on it.

Days 10-14: Namche Bazaar
As I explained at the beginning, Lukla has a tiny airport. Teeny tiny. And that's pretty much the only way to get to Kathmandu unless you walk by way of a town called Jiri, which adds several more days. As many of you may know, there was an avalanche that covered part of basecamp and killed 18 people. The only way to evacuate them was by helicopter to the Lukla airport. As we were walking to and around Namche Bazaar we counted at least 20 helicopter trips down the valley. Because Namche was safe, I decided to stay put. It seemed like a majority of the trekkers decided they needed to get out of the mountains (and out of Nepal) as soon as possible. It still upsets me the number of able-bodied hikers that felt it was necessary to pay for helicopters to get them out while people with injuries were still being evacuated. It was a very scary time, I understand, but I have a very hard time not judging that somewhat.

Helipad in Namche

There were several of us (we had met on the way up mostly) that decided it would be better to stay for at least a couple days until things were less chaotic. We knew that with so many people trying to fly out, Lukla and the airport would be a mess of stressed people. No thank you. We told our porter and guide that they were free to go to their families and not to worry about us, so they left early in the morning. It was amazing the number of rumors that flew around this little town. "The paths are destroyed!" "The paths are totally fine!!" "They're sending helicopters for all the people!" "We're trapped on the tallest mountain in the world!!"

It was hard to explain to people that we were sitting around reading books, drinking coffees, eating pastries, and playing cards. We had reliable wifi that was actually strong enough to video-chat on. I can't tell you how good it was to talk to a couple of folks from back home. Talk about grounding and reassuring.

There was one cafe that had great wifi, and the family that ran it let me come and go whenever I wanted. He just kept track of how many coffees I drank and let me use wifi and charge my devices as much as I wanted. He had a three year old son that didn't speak much english but loved to play. His dad spoke great English and I learned that he loved to cook and had gone to cooking school in Cypress for a year or so before coming back to his family to get married and work in the coffee shop during tourist seasons.

Alphabet practice by space heater.

Day 15: Namche Bazaar to Lukla
After a few days, we heard that the airport was much calmer and that the weather report was good for the next few days. We decided to head down to Lukla. When we started the trek,  it took us two days to hike from Lukla to Namche Bazaar. But we decided to do it in one day going down. And forgot that parts of the last half of the trail were pretty steep uphills to reach Lukla. Not really so much down. So that was by far the most exhausting day of hiking. And it was after we had all been sitting around for several days. Phew.

More damage on the way out of Namche.

Okay, so the trail's weren't all totally fine. 

Day 16: Lukla to Kathmandu
The next morning we got up early and all went to the airport to see about flights. Most of us had tickets (with different airlines and different dates) so it seemed pretty random which people got on which flights. I only had to wait for a couple hours before my flight was called and our plane was loaded up. The way the planes take off from this runway is pretty nerve wracking. The planes back up to the very end of the runway and keep the brakes pressed until the propellers are going at full speed. Then the planes shoot forward, and they hope the plane takes off before the runway runs out and becomes the steep mountainside-cliff. Okay maybe that's a little bit dramatic, but not much!!!

Flying over the towns and also the city of Kathmandu was a sobering experience. You could see buildings that had just crumbled, and the landscape was spotted with orange and blue tents set up as peoples' temporary homes. When we landed, I was able to check in with people from the US Embassy and I was given a ride to the hostel I had stayed at when I was previously in Kathmandu. It had sustained hardly any damage and was still open for business.