Mount Everest Base Camp Trek.
In February and March 2012 Neil Cottam, David Slater, and hopefully one other person, all from Derbyshire, are undertaking a difficult and unsupported, late-winter trek to the Mount Everest Base Camp area in Nepal.
Flying in to Kathmandu at the start of February we will have a couple of days acclimatizing to the time difference and the altitude before catching a bus to Jiri. From here we will start the trek on to Lukla and through the region taking in such iconic places as Namche Bazaar before winding up at Gorak Shep. We will then ascend to the Kala Pattar viewpoint (5554m) to take in the sight of world famous Mount Everest summit pyramid (you know the one, the classic photo with the plume trailing away from the summit!). Hopefully the weather will be clear and we can experience a great moment.
Weather and time permitting we will then have an extra day's trekking to visit the Base camp itself, after which we will descend back to Lukla for a return flight to Kathmandu. We anticipate that the trek will take around 21 days, unless of course the passes are blocked with snow! :)
The other guys will then be returning to the UK, leaving me to prepare for "The Worlds Highest Mountain Bike Race", suitably acclimatized for the altitude I hope.
The Yak Attack Starts with registration at the Kathmandu Guesthouse on March 2nd.
Commencing on March 3rd the race is a 12 day, Eleven stage event over 400km with 11000m of ascent! (but what goes up must come down! Whee!) With stages ranging from 17km to 67km; unfortunately not all the terrain is rideable and I will be shouldering the bike and hiking up some very difficult sections of 11km or more :( Why am I doing this??? :D
Only 30 competitors are allowed to enter; 15 Nepalese riders and 15 International riders. Only 8 international riders have finished The Yak-Attack unsupported in 5 years. My goal is to finish it, preferably unsupported but just to finish it will do.
I have no illusions about winning this event because I won't. In fact it's unlikely that an international rider will ever win it. The altitude problem is a huge barrier.
We will be adding links for our chosen charities shortly and a Justgiving page for each one so that you can donate to our causes if you wish to. Please! :D
I will be blogging regularly on what we are up to and how our training is going before the event and hopefully during our time in Nepal too, that does depend on access to and reliability of the internet in Nepal though!
We will also be adding a Twitter microblog shortly as well.
Welcome to Chase the Rainbow :)
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