Ryan Verrall – trek to Everest Base Camp
Here at Bamboo, one of our core beliefs is ‘We, not I’! We are super proud of our Bamboo family and love celebrating each others work and personal achievements.
This week we caught up with one of our customer service representatives who ticked a huge achievement off his bucket list and we couldn’t be more proud of him. So here’s a little shout out to Ryan Verral who trekked to Everest base camp and got a personal achievement award for it.
Here’s more from Ryan on what he calls, “the best experience of my life without a shadow of doubt“:
My trek to Everest Base Camp
The trek itself took 14 days to complete but we actually got stuck there for 17 days as during the last 3 days the weather got so bad, no planes were able to land. That ended up delaying all inbound and outbound flights.
We ended up having to wait 3 days, trek down 3 hours to a lower altitude, and then managed to get evacuated by a helicopter. Even at that point, the weather was still really bad making it extremely scary being on a helicopter in torrential rain and wind!
The trek itself was 14 days of hard trekking – we ate local food and stayed at a tea house (a very basic guest house).
We had to get all our gear before, hand trekking poles, sleeping bags, down jackets in case temperatures would drop at night to around -5, etc.
Each day we were walking for around 6-8 hours which sometimes actually felt like 12!! There were parts of the trek that followed the stream high above on a small windy path and other parts that were almost vertical. At that height the altitude really does wear your body down and you can get altitude sickness if u climb too high too fast. The altitudes main effect was fatigue and heavy breathing, making some climbs almost impossible.
The views throughout the trek were unbelievable, and we got very lucky with the weather. With the exception of a few days of rain at the beginning of our trek, the weather otherwise was perfect with clear views of the mountains.
When you’re up at 5000m and you see peaks of 7/8000m you know you’re high up! Our tour guide stopped us one morning in the open and said, “look around you”, we saw something like 4/5 of the top 10 highest peaks in the world. It was spectacular!
Basecamp trek began at 6 am, we were the first to get there and had it all to ourselves! I cannot describe the feelings of achieving a life long dream and goal, along with it being so surreal, still knowing you’re only at the base of the mountain.
Basecamp was hands down the best achievement of my life, the trek was tough, gruelling but manageable with the right equipment and support from the team and guides. It was the best experience of my life without a shadow of a doubt!
For more on the Bamboo Team, check out our ‘Inside Bamboo Loans‘ blog series.
- Author The Bamboo Team
- Posted 20 February 2020
