Trek to Everest Base Camp: Final Diary Entry

We reached Base Camp!?

Final Diary Entry:

The higher we got on Everest the patchier Wi-Fi access became, so I have been unable to share a diary update until now. It’s actually amazing how far you can ascend Everest before Wi-Fi becomes less readily available – it can be found at nearly every teahouse along the way.

After my last entry, we left Lobouche and followed the gap between the mountain wall and glacial moraine – the views were breath-taking and I'm extremely proud to say that our entire team successfully reached Everest Base Camp on Sunday 9, October 2022 – 5,364 meters altitude.

Impressively, John Davis from our Singapore office woke up at 4am the next day to hike even further up to the Kala Pathar summit with one of our guides – that’s 5,550m altitude.

Then began the descent!

You might think that reaching Base Camp was the most challenging element, and you'd be forgiven for not even considering what it takes to get back down again! The second day of our descent we trekked almost 20km (in the dark) which took the group between 8 to 12 hours and was probably one of the most difficult days we had on the entire trip. It was nighttime, very windy, extremely cold and raining most of the time - so a really tough day for us all with some starting to feel unwell. We completed that day all very tired but feeling evermore united as a team.

We trekked down from Namche bazaar to Lukla – where we saw memorials of people who had passed away during their climb, and we paused to read the stories which were both interesting and inspiring - it reinforced the physicality of the challenge we were undertaking along with our respect for the power of the elements around us.

Our final day of hiking in the Himalayas found us in really bad weather - it was raining a lot which made the already rocky path extremely slippery and challenging to navigate. One of our team was not feeling well so had to be carried by a horse to come down as he couldn’t walk. All in all it took us 2 days instead of half a day to get back to Kathmandu.

That was our last day in the Himalayas – due to the weather conditions we took a helicopter back to Kathmandu where we celebrated our achievement as a team and our safe return.

Our team was made up of 4 women and 13 men, between the ages of 29 to 54 – with people originating from 18 different locations around the world - including America, the Netherlands, the Philippines, England, Ireland, Jersey Channel Islands, Luxembourg, India, Nepal, Australia, Singapore, France, Bahrain, Hong Kong, the Congo, Cameroun and Mexico.

I would like to extend a huge thank you to my colleague Valérie Mantot - Groene without whom this trip wouldn't have happened - and to thank very single team member that took this challenge on with me. The strength of comradery and bond we developed is not something I will forget easily.

I couldn't be prouder of what we achieved together. Please help support our cause by donating to my JustGiving page: Peter Hughes is fundraising for Friends Of Maiti Nepal A Non-Profit Corporation (justgiving.com)