After 7 hours of sleep (best yet), I woke up to snow on the ground. Nothing heavy, but a good dusting. The temperature in our lodge room was 40 degree F.

O2 levels hanging around 90-91%, so that seems good to me. The expedition Dr. had said the numbers don’t matter until you start to feel bad, but to me it is still a good metric to watch my progression (or regression) as altitude increases.

We started off the day with breakfast (apple pancake for me). I am seriously beginning to wonder if I am going to gain weight on this trip. After breakfast, we went to the local gompa (monastery) and observed a blessing ceremony where the lama blessed the climbing team; the climbers will have another ceremony at base camp. These ceremonies are traditional for the climbers.

After this, we got our gear together and started the day’s trek to Pheriche. This was going to be a shooter hike (3-4 hours), so we did not have to get in as much of a hurry.

We basically followed the river deeper into the valley. There were are lot more trekkers on the trail today than the previous day, not sure what the difference was.

Stopped for a late morning snack and “hot lemon” about halfway at a village. I had Tibetan bread here for the first time. It was basically a big fried bread pancake. If you added powdered sugar, it would be dang near a funnel cake.

It was clear we were on the main path; helicopters buzzed by us going back and forth all afternoon long. I believe most of them were sightseeing tours. I believe we had learned earlier in the journey such a flight would run in the neighborhood of $4500 per person. They do in less than an hour what it will take us 14 days to do. But there is no way those on such a sightseeing flight experience anything near what we will earn on our foot journey.

Onwards we went. It was not far past here we lost any hope of cellular coverage. However, it was a happy trade for our first view of Everest. The path from this point was fairly easy in comparison to some of our previous day’s. Some minor elevation changes, but not very many steep climbs or narrow paths.

Not far from Pheriche, we stopped to rest on a gentle hill in the sun. It was one of the most pleasant moments of the trip; I could have sat there for hours happily.

Got to the lodge and had a late lunch/afternoon snack. This is by far the nicest lodge we have stayed in, which is surprising seeing how deep we are in the mountains. My 02 levels now sitting around 88-89%. We’ll see what they are in the morning.

After walking around the village a bit, I returned back to the lodge, entered my previous day’s blogs and walked over to the restaurant. I have to say, I never thought I’d be eating dinner at 14,000+ feet with Guns and Roses, Aerosmith, and Bryan Adams playing in the background. I equally wouldn’t have thought I would have been at a birthday party in the same environment; it was one of our teammate’s birthday, so we had a signed card for her. Our guide had also arranged to have a cake made at a bakery in The nearby village of Dingboche – they even delivered. Cake was excellent, especially considering where we were.

After dinner and cake, there was only one thing left to do – get in my sleeping bag and catch some Z’s.