Phortse

This morning started with the decision to abort our attempt to cross the Cho La pass due to inclimate weather and descend from Dragnag at 4,700m to Phortse at 3,900m.  This was a long day of trekking through a very beautiful valley (the same one that we hiked up through a few days earlier on our way to Gokyo, but on the opposite side).

As we descended in altitude, the forest returned and we again felt more human as the oxygen content increased.  We moved fast and made the descent easily by 2PM.  After a short rest we walked down to the Khumbu Climbing Center.

The KCC was one of the highlights planned on this trip for me.  It is a school to teach proper and safe high altitude mountaineering techniques to Nepalese sherpas and guides.  It has been more than 15 years in the building and will have its grand opening on June 13th of this year. 

The school was the brainchild of Jenni Lowe-Anker and her husband Conrad Anker when they founded the Alex Lowe foundation in memorial of Jenni's late husband and Conrad's climbing partner who was killed in an avalanche.

The school's build not only serves to teach mountaineering, it also serves as a community center and a library.  After the 2015 earthquake, the structural design included seismic reinforcements to enable it to provide a shelter to the community in case of another significant earthquake in the area.  The building's design was produced by the Montana State University school of Architecture.