Everest Base Camp Trek - From Phakding to Namche Bazaar

As cold as it was in our sleeping bags that night in our Spartan room, the true bite of the cold hit exceptionally hard the next morning while filtering the icy water for our day’s travel. Fortunately, as the sun rose its glow warmed us considerably. The beginning of the day’s trek from Phakding to Namche Bazaar wasn’t challenging at all.

Not too far into the day we officially entered Sagarmatha National Park. Seeing the park visitation chart we were amazed to discover that in February the average was barely 500 trekkers entering the park. By March this increased to over 2,000 and by the peak month of October there were over 6,000 people hitting the trail.

This relaxation was short lived because once we resumed hiking we had a rude awaking. The jump from 2,620m / 8,594’ to almost 3,445m / 11,300’ all occurred in the latter part of the day’s hike. This was the single biggest altitude gain in a day. As we began the lung-sucking climb to reach the village of Namche Bazaar, the center of commerce and tourism for the region, my group’s pace slowed to a crawl.

The story continues...