October 29-November 1 Back from Everest to Lukla

10/29 we had hoped to hike up to the top of Kala Pattar before heading back down, but Jeff wasn't feeling that great and Liz was also tired. It was actually quite scary as come to find out Jeff had pulled a pec muscle on his left side that was giving him considerable chest pain. Liz freaked out and started making him take diamox when it wasn't related to altitude at all. We quickly boogied down from Gorak Shep to Lobuje where there were Americans doctors conducting a high altitude study. Jeff got checked out and it was determined to be muscular. Relief! However, during our brief trip up and back we saw 2 helicopters rushing down patients, heard the blades of a 3rd, and heard talks of a 4th chopper being called in. AMS (acute mountain sickness), HAPE (high alititude pulmonary edema) and HACE (cerebral edema) are all very serious and common at these altitudes.

From Gorak Shep we continued down to Dingboche. Spent the 29th there and got our bag which we left. It was much warmer this time. With heavier packs we left Dingboche on 10/30 and went to Namche stopping in Tengboche for a mediocre lunchtime doughnut. 10/31 we left Namche for Phakding, of course not before making our packes even heavier. Jeff bought to "fo-original" ice axes which were taken from previous Everest expeditions in Namache. They are both really neat - one is from France the other Poland - which we think we can use as decorations, and in Phakding Jeff decided that since he couldn't get the Everest beer labels off the bottles that he'd carry out two bottles as souveneirs.

In Namche we were able to make flight reservations back to KTM for 11/2, but we arrived to Lukla on 11/1 early enough that we could still get a flight. That was a scary flight - not only was there turbulence, but we were flying with about 4-5 vocal Maoists on the flight. Security isn't that good - Jeff was able to hand carry the two large glass beer bottles on the plane along with our first aid kit that has scissors and a small scapel.