And, I'm back.

I know I said 8 days and it's been over a month.

We got stuck. Like really stuck. Not on the hike up to Everest. Oh no, that was lovely. We made perfect time, cruising the whole way up and and down.

When we hiked down and got to the village where we were to fly out from , there was monsoon. No one flew in or out for 13 days. We ran out of money (who carries 13 EXTRA days of cash of them?) and there was no power to get more at the bank. Yep, that's right, the rain knocked the power out. It couldn't be fixed until planes could come in with parts. No money = No showers. Or food. We could still afford to sleep in covered shelter. But we were BORED to tears (literally on my part).

Here we are on our last day. We HAD to get home, so although flights weren't coming in or out, we were able to charter a helicopter. From the time we had a helicopter under contract, it took another three days for the fog to clear enough and for the rain to stop.

This picture was taken about 5 minutes after the first picture. This was a HUGE part of the problem. Weather would clear, and then planes would be sent, and then it took about 20 seconds for this fog to roll in and shut everything down. This happened on three separate occasions. Including one day when they sent planes, then upon turning around, one crashed into the side of a mountain killing 14 people, two Utahns included. (Talk about heart attack for my mother. Remember how there was no power? We had no way to communicate home. Disaster.)

After our helicopter landed, it took another 3.5 hours for us to fly out. We had to wait for fog to lift, and even as we took off I wasn't sure we were ACTUALLY going to make it out.

Here is a clear runway at the airport, but you can see a few things that created problems. First, the runway is on a cliff. You can see it end pretty abruptly in the middle of the photo. That combined with the low clouds covering most of the mountain makes it VERY dangerous to land on. This was good enough weather for that ONE 2 person plane to get out in. It didn't come back that day, weather was too bad. This was BY FAR the clearest the weather was during our time there, and we did manage to get out on this day. It wasn't anywhere NEAR this clear when we took off.

Proof that we did actually make it to base camp. :)

All in all, it was kind of a nightmare. But we're alive, and we're home, and we're safe. :) I have no need to return to the mountain, and likely in a few months I'll have better memories of the trip. As for now, I was grateful to spend a weekend in Baltimore this weekend. At home. Doing laundry, and playing games with family.