Date: 2018-10-18
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: clear sky

Frodo:  Scout is off hiking up 2200 feet to Ama Dablam Base Camp with the rest of our group and I, having decided that it would be best if I harbor my strength for the big days ahead, am staying at the lodge to rest.So let me tell you about what a typical day is like for us. At 6:00 am two Sherpas greet us with cries of "Good morning" outside our door, then make us cups of hot black tea with a little sugar. Breakfast is at 7:00, but we dress and pack up by 6:45 because the Sherpas appreciate it if they can start loading up the yaks a little early. They take our duffels and stuff our double sleeping bags. Until we get to the lodge this afternoon, we have only the clothes we wear and what we've put in our day packs. My day pack is rather small. That's good because it can't be too heavy, but it's difficult to shove my jacket in. It's hard to know what to wear because conditions change with the time of day, whether we're in the sun or not, whether we are going uphill or down or both. Plus you feel bad stopping to make clothing adjustments and making at least some of the group wait for you.Breakfast starts with  porridge of some sort --oat or wheat or corn - or muesli with warm milk. Then we each get a plate of some sort of eggs, some sort of bread, and usually some sort of potato. Very filling. Pemba makes good coffee and there's hot water for tea or cocoa or hot Tang. Then after running back to the room to use the toilet one last time, we set out up the trail.We often hike as a group for much of the morning, with Ming-Ma in the lead and Pemba as sweep, and Pasaang or Jomba somewhere in the middle. We stop occasionally to drink water, use the facilities (sometimes a bush), and rest a bit.  Sometimes we only hike for the morning and we reach our lodge by lunchtime. Other times we stop at a lodge for lunch. In either case, our cook and the four kitchen boys have schlepped all the kitchen stuff to our lunch spot after quickly cleaning up breakfast, and now they serve us a hot lunch. Lunch is carb-heavy (potatoes, pasta, rice, or breads), includes some vegetables (saut©ed peppers or green beans), and a protein (salami or chicken or tuna). We also get hot Tang of some flavor and hot water.When we arrive at the lodge we're shown our rooms, where our sleeping bags are laid out and our duffels have been dropped off. So far, all but one of the lodges has provided attached private bathrooms, usually with a non-enclosed shower.  (We're told that the next several lodges will have shared bathrooms and a separate shower you have to sign up for and pay for.)At 4:00 we have tea time. We can have Sherpa tea (tea with milk and sugar) or hot water.  (Our kitchen staff brings all our own dishes, food, condiments, tea bags, and drink powders from lodge to lodge.). We also have bowls of popcorn at tea time, as well as crackers and slices of yak cheese, which is surprisingly good. Instead of cheese and crackers today, we get cinnamon rolls. Somehow the cook is able to make cakes and breads without a real oven.At each lodge, the cook and kitchen boys work in a spare workroom or in a tent. Sometimes they have to carry food and dishes quite a ways between the cook area and the dining room, where we have a long table reserved.Before dinner at 6:30, we are given hot wet scented washcloths for our hands and faces. Dinner is much like lunch, but it includes a bowl of soup and also dessert of some kind.We usually hang out together for a bit after dinner, but we're back to our rooms by 8:30 and generally asleep by 9:00.. We sleep pretty soundly, though Scout and I have separate beds.Then 6:00 am rolls around again...Scout: It is10:33 am. My phone gps altimeter says 14,770 feet. It is the highest my feet have ever carried me on dear Mother Earth. Whoo Hoo. And I still have another four hundred feet to climb on our day hike this morning.Picture in your mind what a big mountain base camp should look like. Picture what the climb up to it should be. Ama Dablam Base Camp fit the bill in both particulars. You have to earn your way there and the 2200 foot climb Was exactly that, the first half of it every bit as tough as climbing up Mount Katahdin last year, except we are 10,000 feet higher. And base camp was an array of grouped tents with prayer flags in the shadow of a mountain that looked to me every bit as impressive as the face of El Capitan in Yosemite. What is the Guinness Book of Records for the highest a rubber ducky has been on the earth? Princesses can you find out? Here is a photo of Quacky at Ama Dablam Base Camp, 15,200 feet.