Relative Something

The view on Friday morning, 10 April, was breathtaking with the fresh white of the overnight snow reflecting the early rays of sun. The sky was as clear as could be and presented a range of colors as dawn progressed to daylight, culminating in the purest looking deep blue. The tents were a bit crunchy with frozen snow. When I emerged from my tent I found that the little snowman that I hastily assembled in the dark the night before, and positioned near the door of Pam and Bonnie’s tent, was tipped over in front of their door and where his head should have been there was a clear footprint. I think it got in the way of the Sherpa who was brushing the accumulating snow off our tents. I quickly stood him back up, replaced the head, and poked the sticks back in for arms. I claimed it to be the Yeti, but I’m afraid he was a bit too small to make that kind of an impression.

Walking in the snow didn’t prove to be any trouble at all and I was amazed that the trail never really got wet or messy as the day progressed. I think it was just so dry that the snow evaporated more than melted. Along the way we spotted a rather large paw print in the snow that looked like it came from a big cat and we had a hard time getting the Sherpas to confirm or deny the possibility that it was a snow leopard. The older Lhakpa (we started referring to them as “Lhakpa 1” and “Lhakpa 2” amongst ourselves) was fooling with Pam by using his hand to make similar prints in the snow to the point we began to question the validity of the first prints we found. I still think they were genuine prints from some big cat-like animal because when I first spotted them, there were several impressions in the area, not just one lone print.

We also had a lot of eagles in the sky that morning. They were much more inspiring than the other things that were flying that day: helicopters. The sound of them coming up the valley between the peaks stood out dramatically, the quickness of their coming and going a likely indicator it was for evacuations.

It was a long day of hiking at high elevation and we did it with a lot of baby steps. There were so many photo opportunities it was overwhelming. The perennial view of the peak of Everest, with a plume of snow blowing off against the blue sky, appeared before us. It was an absolutely perfect day to get to this spot and be rewarded with this clear image. I needed to make a point to myself that I was actually standing there seeing it with my own eyes because it looked so like a picture in a book.

Even though we were at pretty high altitudes now, there was still some hiking in beautiful forest and through sections of rhododendron trees. By mid to late afternoon we reach the Tengboche Monastery. We find our tents set up in what feels like the center of a rather public square. There are a lot of other groups milling about, but they appear to be using the lodges. There is a cyber-cafe here and I finally give in and use a computer to send a note to my family that all is well. That is all I do, regardless the many incoming messages visible.

We have a wonderful dinner of spagetti and meatballs. Yak meatballs. We got plenty of mileage out of the sophomoric humor over yak balls for dinner. The laughter is oh so welcome for the endorphins. The hard work of getting here is taking a toll. Jim reports that sore knees will move him to take a shortcut tomorrow and Gary will take that route, too. My cough appears to have settled in for the long haul. None of this diminishes how precious it is for me to be here in this amazing place.