Wow, what a day & a few anti-biotics will do for one’s spirits. Mostly back on the mend, which makes a big difference for the morale, and performance.

We got to sleep in again, and have breakfast about 7:30 this morning. French Toast again. Can’t go wrong here. We also got lucky enough to get the roast chicken dinner again last night, which was just as amazing. Unfortunately, they’re all out and tonight we’ll have to find some other tasty meal to gorge on.

I know I’m feeling well when I’m back to ordering two meals each time we eat. Fried rice and then hash browns with eggs for lunch. I’m back in the game! I think I’m down 7-8lbs though, so I guess it was a killer weight loss program I signed up for.

We headed out on a harder acclimatization hike today, mostly to see how the group would do and push us just a bit. We cruised up the valley, about half way to where we went yesterday, crossed the river, then started traversing the hill opposite Dingboche. It was quite a nice stroll up the hill, and ended the last few hundred feet by scrambling up some big boulders topping out at about 16,500ft. We were on a sub-ridge of Ama Dablam, which was pretty impressive to get even closer than we had before.

We almost literally flew down the hill, and were actually running at several points on the way down. Scott wasn’t super keen on hiking back up the valley to get to the log bridge we had originally crossed the river, so I tagged along with him and we headed straight down the hill to find the “most crossable” section of the river. Of course, John, Trudy and Manoj quickly decided that they didn’t want to walk back up hill as well and followed suit. John made a bet that the last person, or the wettest one back had to buy latte’s for the other. Game on John, game on. We bolted down the hill, and fortunately, I spotted a “bridge” which was simply two, maybe two and a half logs tied together laid across the river. Naturally, I had to go first, as I wasn’t about to be buying lattes, and with a bit of shaky logs and quick steps, I made it across. Now that the rest of the group knew that the bridge was sturdy enough for at least one person, everyone else made it across one by one.

Once we got to within eyeshot of the lodge, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that John started picking up the pace a bit, and before we knew it, we were both in an all out sprint back. I beat him by a gnat’s eyelash. Victory is mine.

Took advantage of the hot, endless shower again, and now I’m just sipping on the sweet taste of success, aka a free latte.

Tomorrow we are leaving the comforts of the Snow Lion lodge and are heading up valley to Lobouche, which is around 16,000ft I think. I guess it’s going to be one of the harder days of the trek so far. We’ll see how it goes. Then we’ll be there for two days before we head straight to basecamp. Looks like right now we should be at base camp on Saturday!