Dingboché to Shomaré: The Stats
Distance Walked: 4.6km
Hours and Minutes Taken: 3 hours, 2 minutes
Origin Altitude: Dingboché, 4308m
Destination Altitude: Shomaré, 4064m
Approximate Total Metres Ascended: 73m
Approximate Total Metres Descended: 297m
Weather: Blue skies but very cold and windy.
Morning Temperature in our Tea House Room: 3 degrees Celsius
When we woke up this morning about 5:30am Chris' headache was back with a vengeance. His cough seemed worse and this was the first morning that he'd had a bad headache....another sign of altitude sickness. Could the AMS possibly be getting worse despite the diamox and despite having spent two nights at the same altitude? Chris popped another diamox and we crossed our fingers. We can't have felt too hopeful though as we spent the time before breakfast convincing ourselves that one day we'd come back to Nepal and that we could do other treks in other places in the meantime that would be awesome in different ways. However, we kept going back to something Chris had said right at the beginning of our trek...no other mountains are ever going to compare to these. We had a tough decision to make and with Chris and I both being as stubborn as we are, giving up was not an easy option to take. We could go down for a night then come back up or stay here another night and then go up but still there was no guarantee that Chris would get better or wouldn't get sick again later. Was it really worth it? Seeing him this sick was horrible.
He struggled through some muesli while I tried out the oatmeal porridge and then we all sat around and drank a 'small pot' (which is actually a large thermos which seems never ending) of hot orange tang. On recommendation from the doctor we had seen earlier, tang was full of salts and sugars which would hopefully help Chris in his recovery. Plus, the warmth was soothing on the throat. We paid our bill and had the lovely surprise of being given our rooms for free.
When Chris still wasn't feeling well enough for us to stay in Dingboché we had the big task of packing up our things and starting our descent. Chris was becoming less and less 'with it' as the morning progressed. Taking longer than usual to do anything and forgetting what he was in the middle of were signs of his AMS worsening and were becoming more frequent. We needed to get down.
Once packed I convinced Chris to let me carry his heavy pack, exchanging it for mine. I knew he must have been extremely sick to agree to this. And then we were off. Every little incline between Dingboché and Shomaré felt like a mountain as Chris' fatigue meant every step was a marathon. Back we went through the windy valley, past the yak pastures, back along the Imja Khola river. It took us longer to come down the hill than it had for us to go up.
Once in Shomaré back at Everest View Lodge we ordered up a lunch of fried rice, fried potatoes and momos to see if Chris was feeling well enough to stay at this altitude of whether we would need to descend further.
We decided to spend a night in Shomaré and see how that treated Chris and his AMS. We spent a few hours napping and resting in our room and thought that maybe he would get better here. But, around 4pm, the diamox or the panadene started wearing off, the headache was back and his appetite was once again non existent. It wasn't looking good.
The decision was made. We needed to go down. As much as we had our hearts set on base camp it just wasn't meant to be this time around.
We had dinner around 7pm...vegetable fried noodles, chicken soup and fried potatoes with vegetables. These potatoes are always delicious. While we played our version (the Khumbu versn) of an old card game I sadly questioned what we would possible have to celebrate upon our arrival back in Kathmandu when really we had abandoned our goal. Anando wisely answered that we would celebrate Chris' health as well as the fact that we had been lucky enough to travel as high as we did. Good advice.
Over dinner we chatted with our guesthouse owner. Today he had walked all the way to Khumjung to retrieve his wife and 26 day old baby girl and bring them back to Shomaré. All in on day. That's about 40km up and down the Himalayas. As we chatted somehow the conversation twisted and turned and ended up with a plan for me to give birth to a male, bring him to Nepal and enter him into an arranged marriage with this guy's baby girl. Interesting.
After dinner it was an early night once again. Nepali time had well and truly taken hold of us.
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