Namche to Phortse

On Friday we trekked from Namche to Phortse, the home of most of the Sherpa guides employed by IMG.  It was a solid 7 hour walk with amazing views along the way.  Phortse sits on a high plateau at almost 13,000 ft overlooking the confluence of two rivers below.  It's an amazing setting and the town itself is a traditional mix of homes, a few guest houses and farmers' fields.

We are staying at the house of Karma Rita Sherpa tonight.  He's a long-time guide for IMG with an impressive resume of summits.  The guest house seems fairly new and is comfortable.  Our experiences here in Phortse seem just a little bit special since there's a strong connection between IMG and the Sherpa guides.  We feel welcomed and are given a tour around town.

First stop was the school.  It's on the site of the first schoolhouse built by Sir Edmond Hillary in the early 1960's. The photo below shows the school with a rubble pile below it that was the Hillary school.  It was damaged beyond repair from the earthquakes and was recently demolished.  The stones will be used to construct two more rooms onto the new school in the background.. We were able to look into the three small classrooms with their minimal supplies and long benches where the students sit.  Kriss was in seventh heaven peeking into the rooms and wished that school was in session.

Our next stop was to check out the new prayer wheel and building that was financed with donations collected by IMG for it's reconstruction after the earthquake.  It's among the largest wheels we've seen on our trek and quite impressive for this small town of about 800 residents.  Again, it's obvious how connected we are to Phortse.

From the prayer wheel, we headed down to check out one of the two town Stupas (shrines) that were badly damaged and are in need of reconstruction.  IMG has set up a fund to help raise the money necessary for this effort and are hopeful to get it done this year.  

The last stop on our town tour was to the construction site for the new Khumbu Climbing Center.  This project has been planned for years and is now in full swing.  We met the construction manager, a westerner, who told us they have about 40 people working on the building now.  It's primarily stone construction with steel beam reinforcement and looks quite modern.  As with other construction projects we've seen in the Khumbu, all of the stone is hand chiseled into properly sized rectangular shapes. The amount of labor hours and effort required to complete the project is staggering and reminds us of what it must have been like hundreds of years ago in the west.

  A short walk and a warm dinner back in the guest house topped off a fantastic day.  We learned that the Sherpa House restaurant in Golden employs a few climbing guides from Phortse during the summer and fall.  It's a favorite place of ours to visit and will now have a special meaning.