Entries from Expedition Dispatches

Namaste from the small village of Pheriche.  

I know this might come as a surprise to many of you, but we woke up at the same time as the last 5, ate the same food and packed our bags for another meditative day of trekking.  The departure was a bit more emotional than the previous mornings because I had to say farewell to the host family I so thoroughly enjoyed seeing after so many years but as we all know, time continues to roll, and we will one day see each other again.   

Easing the sadness of leaving Phortse was the crystal blue skies and breathtaking views of the mountains we have been waiting to see. Within 30 minutes of leaving the Phortse Guest House, we were greeted with stunning vistas of three major peaks, one being Ama Dablam, arguably the most iconic peak in all of Nepal. Later in the day Mt. Everest even made a quick showing. Energized from such a powerful landscape we cruised the three hours to Pangboche which is the oldest Sherpa village in the entire region. It is also the location of a very old Monastery where we were lucky enough to arrange a Puja ceremony with the head Lama of the village. This ceremony is a special blessing granting us passage into the mountains with luck and safety.  Shortly after the Puja we had a good lunch giving us strength to polish off the remaining distance to camp.  

Making better time on the second half of the trail, we could focus on the walk and not take a thousand pictures because the clouds moved in and shut down the views. We rolled into our tea house just in time to have the fire warming the great room and hot tea ready. We were also very happy to see the other RMI group and share stories of the adventures already had and the ones to come. Casey Grom is one of my closest friends, so I feel lucky to have gone from one emotional encounter to the next. Although the visits are brief, they are meaningful, nonetheless. 

Now the team is all tucked in and I myself am off to bed, happy to have a rest day tomorrow.  Everyone is in good spirits and doing well.  

We will reconvene tomorrow at the same time.  

RMI Guide Adam Knoff and Team

We left BC today after a very comfortable and enjoyable stay.The team has enjoyed the trek through the Khumbu, but without a doubt, our BC set up had the nicest dining room, cleanest bathroom, and most enjoyable shower we've experienced.

The team enjoyed a few last views of the glacier and surrounding mountains as we retraced our way back down valley, pausing occasionally to allow the Yak trains to pass with their important cargo that help the expeditions succeed.

We hiked for seven hours today and descended more than 3000’ back to Pheriche. Needless to say, the team is feeling good and enjoying the thicker air.

RMI Guides Casey, Hannah and Crew

Today was a special day. If you listen to enough Tony Robbins you will learn that every day is a special day but for us, me in particular, this day was one I have looked forward to for fourteen years. 

Before we get to why that is, I will say the team is doing great going from point A to point B and enjoying every bit this place has to offer along the way.  

Today we did our standard packing, breakfast and launch with the starting point being Namche Bazaar and the ending point being Phortse village. The trail was a bit more difficult today with many ups and downs but in the end, we only gained 1000 feet. Our weather was cloudy so no mind-blowing views but the temps were good for walking, and we could see a long way up the valley so everyone was still in awe of the complete magic of this place.  After a solid seven-mile jaunt, we landed at the Phortse Guest House which is owned by an old friend of mine and the reason this day is meant a lot.  

18 years ago, Conrad Anker asked me to be an instructor for a school in Nepal he had planned in the Khumbu region of Nepal during the month of January.  Back then I knew very little about this place but couldn’t pass up an opportunity to join Conrad Anker, John Krakuer and three other world class climbers to help create a vocational school at the base of Mt. Everest teaching local Sherpa and Nepali climbers more formal skills helping them peruse a career in expedition work.  

Three years later I became the program director of that school but unfortunately passed the torch on when my son was born in 2009.  It has been 14 years since my last visit which seems like an eternity.  But reconnecting with old friends, seeming the new KCC building and sitting around a table eating bahl bot and drinking tea with all the Sherpas makes for an emotional reunion. I could not have asked for a better day.  

Tomorrow we unfortunately leave Phortse and walk a solid 5 hours to Pheriche, our next village.   

Thanks for following.   

RMI Guide Adam Knoff & Team

Hello from Everest Base Camp -

Frosty tents and a frosty camp greeted us in the morning.Mother nature's sparkles made everything glimmer. Hot drinks and pancakes started our day off as the sun warmed everything around us. Today was a well-deserved leisure day. Naps, reading, and a casual walk on to the glacier wrapped up our time at basecamp. It’s been a memorable experience for all one we will all look back on with smiles. With full bellies from another amazing dinner cooked by the talented cook staff, we have all crawled into our sleeping bags for one last sleep at Base Camp.

Good night, all,

RMI Guides Casey, Hannah, and Team

Today was pleasantly uneventful here in the Khumbu.   We are starting to fall into a nice routine up here aided by the familiarity of the food, the daily packing list and what to expect weather wise.  I am very impressed with everyone adjusting so quickly and favorably to the Sherpa menu items often eating porridge for breakfast, noodles and momos for lunch and some kind of sherpa stew or rice dish for dinner.  We are all leaving the fried food and pizza items alone which I think secretly impresses our local guides.  

After that fine bowl of porridge this morning the RMI team, led by Dawn and Denza Sherpa packed our not so heavy day bags and made a lovely two hour trek into the Thame valley to visit an all women’s nunnery which I believe is the only one of its kind in the entire area.  We sat in on a stunning prayer ceremony while sitting mesmerized by the cadence and tone of the prayers, all read from a scripture.  All of us with technology raised fine western children all asked each other how long we thought our kids would last sitting cross legged on the floor praying through a rhythmic chant while reading a bible.   I think the average answer was around 30 seconds.   The Buddhist nuns and monks will pray for three to six hours a day for 30 years.   What a crazy different world we all exist in! 

Once we finished with the monastery we had some tea then retraced our steps back to Namche for lunch and more shopping.  I can’t get over how much the village has changed!  So many new structures and lodges.  I hardly recognized it walking through the gates yesterday at the bottom of the hill.  

By 5 pm were practicing some knots and technical skills on the extreme angles of the lodge’s front steps.  After everyone displayed ample confidence in arm wraps and figure Eights, dinner was on the table so we wrapped up our day sitting by the fire eating exactly what makes us happy.  

Now in bed we are prepped and ready for a nice long hike to Phortse which holds a special place in my heart.  

Find out why tomorrow.  

Namaste from Hotel Camp De Base, Namche Bazaar.   

RMI Guide Adam Knoff

Namaste everyone!

Well, we did it! Everyone successfully made it to Everest Base Camp on a beautiful day. We had a relaxing start to allow the day temperatures to rise enough so that the hike would be pleasant. The team hiked for almost 3 hours to reach base camp or EBC as we call it, stopping along the way many times to take pictures and enjoy the grandiose views.

Once here, we were greeted with the best food, thus far, for lunch and several team members decided to enjoy hot showers while it was still warm and sunny. Although the temperature wasn’t high, the intensity of the sun at this altitude made it feel quite warm to us.

Everyone is doing great and looking forward to a good night’s rest after the day of trekking to get here. We are sleeping on the Khumbu glacier in a campsite chopped out of the ice. Our camp is surrounded by mountains and glaciers in nearly all directions. It’s incredibly stunning to say the least.

Tomorrow the team will make some phone calls to loved ones back home to say hello. So, if you see a bizarre number on your phone appear, please answer. We are calling from our satellite modem since there isn’t WiFi or cell reception here.

That’s all for now!

Casey and Crew

Today proved to be a much less stressful day than yesterday.   Waking up to five thousand vertical feet of relief directly out your window, fabulous crisp Himalayan air and the absence of a bajillion people trying to run you over is pure bliss.  Combine that with French press coffee, pancakes, eggs and homemade chapati bread and the day is off to a good start. 

After breakfast we got our porters loaded up to carry our unneeded gear ahead to our next lodge then hit the trail for our first miles towards Everest Base Camp.  What is so unique about this area is this trail is not only a trail but an interstate, superhighway, autobahn, or backwoods country road; it is the single line on which literally everything in this area gets moved through.   If you want a beer, it came up on a human’s back.  If you want French fries, noodles, toilet paper, clothing, or anything else under the Himalayan sun, it was moved by legs of some kind.  No automobiles have ever driven this path, nor will they.  It is the way things used to be. 

After three delightful hours of walking, we stopped at a small tea house for lunch then polished off the remaining 2 miles to Namche Bazaar, capitol of the Khumbu Region.  This last two miles gained us more elevation than the previous four so by the time we rolled into or lodge we were ready for a rest.   Despite being over 11,000 feet, the team is feeling good and looking forward to an even more mellow day tomorrow.   We are enjoying decent weather in the morning and light rain by the afternoon.   A great combo for walking then drinking tea and beer.  

Stay tuned for our rest day adventure tale. 

Adam Knoff

Wake up, eat breakfast, hike, drink tea, order dinner, eat dinner, order breakfast, go to sleep, and repeat.

We hit the dusty trail once again, making our way closer and closer to Everest Basecamp. Yaks jingle jangled along the trail letting us know their presence so we could move aside and let them have the right-away. We weaved up and down, right, and left through the boulders in terrain that looks out of this world. We got our first views of the Khumbu glacier and then a great view of Everest. Our best views came on our hike up Kalapatar. Halfway up everyone got views of basecamp and the Khumbu icefall. The whole picture is coming together, and the mirage is disappearing. It’s hard to see where one mountain starts and another ends. Everyone is getting excited to arrive in basecamp, especially now that we have seen it from a far. Tomorrow is the day but for now we will all get a good night’s sleep after a sun-filled dusty day on the trail.

Till Basecamp,

Casey, Hannah, and team

We made it to the Khumbu!  Normally I wouldn’t sound so excited but this was not an average day of travel.  

Our day began with a modest 3:45 am wake-up call from our comfortable air conditioned rooms so we could get all of our luggage and bodies to the airport by 5:15.  Our flight to Lukla was scheduled to depart at 6 which in theory would put us out of the smoggy Kathmandu valley and into the mountains at 7 am.   Everything is good in theory until a human makes a silly mistake or Mother Nature takes the reins.  In our case it was the later that began to send our perfectly good plan into a tail spin.  

Landing in Lukla, which sits at 9,000 feet literally dug into a mountain side is considered one of the most challenging places in the world to land a plane, so conditions need to be just right.  Today they were anything but.   By 10 am we actually loaded a bus, got transported to the plane, sat on that hot and sweaty bus for 30 more minutes then got word the conditions deteriorated suddenly so all flights were on then off again sending us back to the terminal.   By 1pm, 8 hours after arriving in the terminal we had moved a total of 20 feet.   As reports of continuing bad weather reached us, we knew our chances of flying were dwindling.  

So enter Plan B.  If a fixed wing can’t fly, sometimes a helicopter can.  And fly it did!  After another hour and half of finagling we rounded up two birds to take the entire group, with luggage to Phakding, our scheduled place of rest for the evening.   Wait, wasn’t there bad weather up there? Yes, and because of that we had to make an unplanned landing well below our village to avoid sinking clouds and big scary mountains.   So enter Plan C.  

The group flew in separate helicopters with one group making it on their second attempt and myself and Eva still stuck below.   After much head scratching about how to reconvene the next day, our pilot motioned Eva and I to quickly load up so he could make a last ditch attempt at keeping the group together.   By some blessing of karma, the clouds parted just enough to make it happen and we landed literally as the clouds began to close in again.   With blades still running we jumped out, threw the luggage off the helicopter and off he went.   We were both glad to be on the ground and not heading back into the ensuing white out.  

As the bird disappeared we counted our blessings and began our efforts to find the rest of our team.  Twenty-five minutes after landing we were all reunited drinking tea at the Sunrise Hotel in Phakding.   

A warm fire, big dinner and a couple beers prepared us for a well deserved sleep.  

I was impressed how the team kept a positive outlook and rolled with the punches despite an unpredictable outcome.   

Tomorrow we begin our actual trek towards Namche.   Follow along for hopefully a less intense entry tomorrow.  

Cheers, 

RMI Guide Adam Knoff

All is well here on the trek!

Today we left Pheriche and hiked further up valley to Lobuche, we slowly made our way along the winding path that we share with other trekkers, porters heavily laden with loads bound for Base camp, and yaks who aren't as keen to share the trail. We made good time and enjoyed the astounding views before reaching camp for the night.

In the afternoon we were hoping to catch a glimpse of the Khumbu glacier, but sadly the clouds gathered and obscured our views. So we’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

Everyone is currently relaxing in our tea house enjoying the warmth of a yak dung burning stove. There has been plenty of good conversation within our team and other trekkers on the same journey as us.

RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew