Everybody's working for the weekend

For those who follow Xtreme Everest here: www.xtreme-everest.co.uk or on facebook and/or Twitter (pick your poison) you should know that the Base Camp research team is now on their way up the mountain to set up the lab there. Their departure marks the next phase of this immense project. For the Namche lab, it meant a few days of testing and tidying and some much needed days off. 

The first order of business was the trail towering above our hotel. The village of Namche Bazaar is essentially a number of buildings arranged stadium-seating-style perched on the side of a steep canyon. The ridge that defines Namche's Eastern border continues steeply out of the high side of the village about 900 vertical feet up to the Syangboche airstrip. It is a steep and beautiful climb up stone steps and has been calling my name ever since we got here. The current record is 12 minutes 40 seconds (pretty sure I can cut it to under 10).

I snapped this gem on an early morning blast up the hill

If you're up for a morning trail run but you're not in the mood for trying to decide if your legs or your lungs burn more, you can take the trail that wanders along the slopes of the Khumbu valley:

It is probably worth mentioning that the afore-mentioned trail stares straight into the face of the tallest mountain in the world. Everest is the leftmost peak, Lhotse is next to the right, and the incredibly picturesque summit on the far right is Ama Dablam.

These views are best in the morning because the weather around here runs like clockwork: beautiful sunrises and clear blues skies in the morning followed by wind and hazy dust in the afternoon followed by the occasional late clouds just before dusk. If there were ever a time for the weather to mix things up, however, it would have to be our day off. After a long day of working hard in the lab on Saturday with the sun shining through the windows, we woke up the next day to dreary cloudy skies. So we had to go for a quick day trek in through stunning Himalayan villages without the sun smiling gently upon us (cry me a river, right?)

From Namche we headed straight up the Khumbu for a little less than an hour before hanging a left towards two villages called Khumjung and Khunde (fun fact, jung = lowland and de = highland - as you may suspect Khunde is immediately above Khumjung). This area is considered the middle of the Khumbu region (thus the use of the "khum-" root). The area has been heavily influenced by Sir Edmund Hillary who spent a lot of time here both before and after he and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa became the first two men to summit Everest in 1953. In Khumjung, he helped the people immensely building schools and hospitals like these:

If anyone can think of an accomplishment worthy of having my golden face put atop a concrete wall painted with characters like Mr. Football and Miss Bat, please post in the comments section.

The hospital usually gives tours but when we arrived there was a long line of people waiting out front and no doctors in sight. We took some quick pictures and made our way back down.

Taking an alternate route back down to Namche, we found it a bit difficult to navigate until we spotted a few yaks wandering untended over a ridge. They were kind enough to show us the way back to the airstrip above the village and we made it back for mealtime before the snow kicked in. They really are quite personable, yaks. We have spent a lot of time explaining to people trekking through what Xtreme Everest is all about, but this guy here was the first member of the animal kingdom to show any interest:

All in all, it was a beautiful couple of days off. This morning we awoke to 2-3 inches of freshly fallen snow which quickly melted off under the sunny blue skies. The bad weather delayed flights into Lukla so we'll have a couple days to get ready for our first group of Sherpa study participants to arrive in a few days. Y'all come back real soon now, you hear?

Namche coated (briefly) in this morning's snowfall

Namaste