We all set off from Namche Bazaar with sore heads this morning either from a lack of sleep last night or alcohol induced. Some had both!!! Everyone had enjoyed last nights party.
The walk back took around six hours and I remembered the final hill up to Lukla which is a real sting in the tail from when I climbed Ama Dablam in 2009.
It started to rain just as we entered Lukla and this was a precursor to negotiations which have just finished at 10.00pm.
Unfortunately there have been no fixed wing flights out of Lukla for the last three days and the forecast is for more poor weather until Sunday- the day of our flights home to the uk!
The fixed wing air craft need a much higher cloud base and horizontal visibility than helicopters. So we've been trying to find three helicopters to fly all of us and our kit out in the morning. Finally we think we've succeeded but we will find out in the morning as its impossible to get anything in writing or even something resembling a ticket out of the Nepalese here. We've just got to hope its not thick cloud or even the helicopters won't be flying. After ten weeks everyone is understandably very very keen to get back to civilisation! Yes it's going to be quite expensive but in the scheme of things not too bad.
I've almost finished the summit day post so hope to have that up by the close of play tomorrow.
As for the summit photo, yes it is me and whilst it's sunny what you can't see is the 30 mph winds and probable -40 to 50 wind chill - I wasn't going to be exposing anything!
Not the dreaded Lukla cloud. Fingers crossed for a helicopter exit - else you could always walk to Jiri and get the bus back?
ReplyDeleteHelen