Our Virtual Everest Trek, Day Seven

Brigantes Everest Expedition Day 7

A rest day today! I suppose we need it, though I sense most of us are fretting and eager to get on. But there are aches to nurse and the altitude to get used to. The morning was spent re-checking and re-packing equipment on the Yaks. Amazing animals!  Big, hairy cattle adapted to live at high altitudes and capable of carrying enormous loads. Apparently when Linnaeus designated them as a species in the late 18th century he named them bos grunniens, which means grunting ox, and is highly appropriate!  If you meet them coming the other way down a track you learn very quickly to step aside – they’re quite happy to walk all over you. They’re slightly different from the wild yaks – which we saw for the first time today – a whole herd of them on the mountain side – magical! 

Then in the afternoon a few of us made a little trip (to keep ourselves fit) to one of the personal monuments to unlucky climbers that dot the landscape. Food for thought. This is not a game and we’ll need to take care, especially at our age! 

Dingboche is a bit of a surprise – it’s quite a big, little place, if you know what I mean – which is unexpected after yesterday’s rather lonely trek. But it’s barren and windswept here and we had our first snow shower – definitely weather for getting out the down jacket and gloves!

Monument to Scott Eugene Fisher who died on Everest on 11 May 1996

Soon the sun was setting and it was back to camp for a chilly al fresco meal. Very tasty dal bhat (lentils and rice) again!  You have to get used to liking it here in Nepal! 

Luke N Brightside

Expedition Communications Officer

Well, we limped in to our second acclimatisation camp much in need of a day’s rest. What a lot of wheezing and groaning and plastering and anointing last night! At least they’ve now had a good sight of Everest. How much nearer any of them get is anyone’s bet. I am, though confident I won’t need to eat my hat.  And as for helping with checking the equipment – what a joke! After half an hour of “Ah, that’s what happened to my sticks/spare boots/cake tin/toilet roll etc. they wandered off for sight-seeing leaving us Sherpas to do all the work.  

Sherpa Dowting

Head Porter