Traveling to Nepal to Hike to Everest Base Camp as a Family | Part 3, Backpack Himalayas

We're just a family that wants to fill their lives with extraordinary stories. Over the past few years we've hiked over 3,000 miles doing the Appalachian Trail, John Muir Trail, and many other trails throughout the United States. This year we're going international to the Himalayas where we're going to be hiking up to Mount Everest Base Camp. This trip we plan on not using a porter and we'll carry all of our own gear, but we get the luxury of hiking from village to village where we'll stay in tea houses, their cozy little hotels with restaurants, and of course the Himalayan culture. With over a hundred base camp treks, Bouldery will be our trusted guide and companion as we try to overcome weather, steep terrain, and the potential of altitude sickness. Throughout these episodes we'll be sharing our amazing experiences, family-friendly tips, and all the incredible sights along the way. So come with us to Mount Everest. Good morning. Today is the day that we're leaving Namche Bazaar and we're gonna head up to some higher altitudes, only like 40 degrees here, and in a couple of days we'll probably be bundled up a lot more and get a little bit of chili. We just went to the top of Namche Bazaar, which is a city on a hill, and we are headed over to Tengboche today. It is a monastery, one of the highest in the world, like altitude high, and it snowed last night in the top of the mountain so you can kind of see them. This one looks really cool. Yeah, are you excited to hike in the snow maybe? Yeah, I'm about to have a million snow balls at Bouldery. At Bouldery. See that place down there at the bottom? Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna have lunch there. We're gonna go all the way up to the top with that big zigzag trail and then we're gonna stay at the top of that thing tomorrow. Harvey, tell us what type of bathrooms they have in Nepal. Squatty potty. It's like a hole in a house. Just a hole in the floor? Yeah. And you have to poop in it? Yeah. What do you think of that? Do you like that? No. That was the bridge that you cried on. Look how far you are! And there's one, the one that has a bottom one and a top one. Yeah, can you believe Harvey that that bridge was scary? You thought it was too high and look how high you are now. So cool. It was because if a board broke I would fall to death. That's why I'm scared. Hey, are you getting brave? Yeah. You did it without holding mom's hand? Mom was scareder than me. She had to hold her hand on the side and support. Yes, we're crossing the bridge too! It's so shaky because we're crossing. Finally made it to lunch, right dad? Oh yeah, lunch time. Definitely peppermint tea. Yeah, you think that's a good type of tea? Thumbs in the middle. Look, thumbs in the middle. Hot chocolate is like double thumbs up. Okay, lunch is served. What do you have Harvey? An egg sandwich. Alright, and you mom? I have fried potatoes and eggs. Oh, I also have fried potato and egg. It's exciting. Let's eat up. Okay, so lunch is over. Now we're in the forest heading up the steep, steep climb Harvey. I'm sure I'm tired. Yeah, it's very steep and we got about two or three miles of straight up. How are you feeling Cassie? Pretty good. Definitely me too. Definitely you too? I feel it mega, mega, mega a lot. Yeah, it's really steep. It's amazing. I think this is the last year that Cassie and Harvey are going to be kind of equals. I think once Harvey's eight. Cassie's got an uphill battle to keep up with her son. Harvey's really, really knows how to hike. So we just made it to the top, which was a crazy long climb. Just kept going forever, but now we're getting close to the monastery. That's a boy lion and that's a girl lion and they both are protecting the monastery. We're about to head into the monastery and we're not allowed to take pictures inside. So this is the outside. There's some really cool stupas and everything. Harvey's gonna do lots of prayers. So we just came out of the monastery and there was a huge buddha in there. It's probably like two stories tall and that's where all the monks gather to do their ceremonies. So they didn't have one today because it's off season. They'll have their own personal stuff later. All the walls were like painted very ornately, hand painted, drawn of different stories and buddhism. So it was really beautiful and ornate. Now we're gonna go down the mountain a little bit because it's foggy up here. On to Dibuche and there we're gonna have our night. So it looks like we're almost here. We get to stay at the Good Luck Hotel. It's all the way to that building up there. So Harvey, if we climb up there we're done for the day. You ready Cassie? Oh yeah. Oh where's he going? There he goes. We're finally at higher altitude where every night after five o'clock while we're waiting for dinner they light the wood stove. It was getting kind of cold today because it's so dreary so we were sitting up in a room freezing our butts off and then we come down here and it was nice and toasty. It's the morning of day five. We did a pretty good job sleeping last night. Did you sleep good? I did. Harvey, did you sleep good? Yes, we're freezing right now. You have to eat your egg sandwich. All right Cassie, what's the schedule today? Today we are in Dibuche and then we are gonna walk to Dingboche later on today. Oh that's exciting. Yeah. All right, eat up Harvey. After I get the ketchup. Oh good idea. All right, we're off. Look, I think a little blue sky. Harvey, did you see that? It's on fire. Oh we might be lucky. Oh almost. I know. After walking in the rain yesterday and all these clouds this morning I think we're gonna might have a good day. Hopefully. All right, let's hike. Too much blue sky now. So we're at another cool swinging bridge and Harvey's practicing doing it all by himself. Dude, you're looking good. Hey Harvey, look down. Whoa, that's a long way down. No it's not. It isn't. Okay, keep going. All the way down would be like from Spain. Okay. Kind of funny. So our guide had booked a porter to come with us just in case he needed help to carry Harvey because he knew they were bringing a seven-year-old. So now we have a porter carrying all of our stuff. Just hanging out doing the trek with us. All paid for. Which I don't mind supporting the local economy. I think that's pretty cool. And Harvey's really putting them wrong. The whole time they keep, he keeps saying, wow, wow, Harvey's so good. And Harvey's really crushing it. Frankly, he's doing better than all of us. He keeps running up the mountains. And these short days help. I mean, we're used to these long 15 mile days. So now we're only doing six, eight miles a day. Like, I know it's high altitude but... You see that mountain right there in the clouds? That's Lhotse. And Mount Everest is right behind her. It's the fifth biggest mountain. Fifth. Fifth. Look, it's a human school. I guess the Yeti won't be here. We're just about to get to tree line here. As you can see, the trees kind of stop. It's starting to feel a little bit like the John Muir Trail. Except for the fact that these mountains are like, so, so, so huge. So every once in a while we'll see Lhotse or Amadablan poke up above. Our pace has crawled to almost a halt because of Harvey's puppy. He keeps slowing way down so his dog can keep up with him. Is he coming? Yeah. What do you think about this cool river? It'll be a fun water slide. Harvey, we just found a Himalayan beach. You want to go for a cold challenge? No cold challenge? Okay, skip the rock. Oh, no good. Try again. Oh, that one kind of skipped. Three, two, one. There's something insanely cold about that water. Look how red my skin is. It's like, I don't know if the camera can see it. I think it's glacier water. It's definitely glacier water, kid. Oh, man. Good job, guys. Good job for going in, Harvey. I did my cold challenge for the day. I did mine. Mom did not do hers. Where's Dingboche? There. Over there? Yeah, and I'm getting it. All right, you go. All right, we just made it to our hotel. Harvey, what do you think? This is so fancy. Yeah, we got a wood stove so we can stay warm. That'll be nice tonight. It's like a tree house. We have all the windows. So look, it's inside there. I guess this is our room, Cassie. Wow, we get a full bed. Me and Josh can sleep together and Harvey can sleep. Yeah, that's nice. We have our own toilet. Wow. So I think since it's the off season and there's not many people here, Boultry's been able to find us all the nicest hotels and all the little towns because last time we were here, our accommodations were not this nice. So this is quite a luxury trip. So it's a lot of fun as a family to be able to do that and enjoy. You guys wash your hands? Yeah. Good. Good morning, everybody. Harvey, what are you having for breakfast? Toast and eggs. We tried to take a quick video at breakfast today, but then a whole bunch of porters came in and they kind of made a lot of noise. I just turned off the camera. But Harvey, did you know that we slept last night at the same height as Mount Whitney? Never, ever, never in my whole entire life. You're funny. But today we're going to stay here one more night, but we're going to do an acclimation hike. We're going to hike up about 2,000 feet, so we should be close to what? Almost 17,000 feet? Yeah. How's everyone feeling today, Cassie? We're doing pretty good. I have a slight headache, so if I move too fast, then it gets worse. So we're just going to take it slow today. What do you think, Harvey? How's your head feeling this morning? Good. Yesterday when I was like running, it happened, but now it's all gone. Good. So Harvey's feeling pretty good. I'm feeling great. One other thing is, today we don't even know it, but they're doing the Mount Everest Base Camp marathon today. Apparently there's 300 runners that start at Mount Everest Base Camp, and they run all the way down to Namche Bazaar, which is the highest marathon in the whole world. It probably will take them six or seven hours to complete the whole thing. All right, we're coming up our acclimation trail. We see one of the runners running through town. Would you do a marathon at this high altitude, Harvey? Nope. I think I would. What about you? Maybe if I was acclimatized. Not today. We decided we want to get video of the marathon runners, right Harvey? Yeah. So we already hiked up way up here. So I'm gonna head down back to the village, try to get some videos, and then I'm gonna try to run up this high altitude mountain to meet you guys. Okay. Think I can do it? Yeah. Okay, Harvey, you be safe. Watch out for your mom, okay? Okay. Bye. Bye. Bye. So I'm doing a little bit of a jog here so I can catch up with maybe I'm gonna have to come back and do this marathon one day. It's kind of fun though to do a small section of the course to see if I can catch some videos of them coming back through the town. All right, they're about to start. This is a half marathon starting point I actually found. Oh, so glad I decided to run down the mountain and catch up with those guys. So now I get to run all the way back up this mountain and hopefully catch up with the family. Okay, so running up a hill at 5,000, I mean, sorry, 15,000 feet almost, it sucks. If I ever want to do that marathon, I have to train a lot. Holy crap. I ran for probably 0.2 of a mile and I'm gassed. Well, I made it back up to this ridge here and I see my family. I don't know if you can see them. Let me zoom in even further. And there's Harvey casting the porter all there. Now I just gotta go up there and check them out. So I caught back up with the family. Hey, Harvey. This is your new record. You're about almost a thousand feet higher than Mount Whitney. How do you feel? Is it hard to breathe? Yeah, it's really hard. It's different, isn't it? Ama Dablam looks really cool. Yeah, let's see here. Oh yeah, that one does look really cool. If you go too fast, Harvey, you're going to have a hard to breathe. Well, that's what he thinks about that. I go slow. How's your breathing? Slow and labored. Labored? Hard. So we're about 16,000 feet now. What are you guys gonna do? Going back down. We're gonna head back down. We're starting to feel the Yeah, I'm gonna try to summon a mountain. I never summoned a mountain in the Himalayas before, so it'd be nice if I could make it. But you guys did really good, Harvey. 16,000 foot. You proud of yourself? Yeah. So we're leaving the family and now Chidon is gonna hike with me to the top. We're gonna see if we can make it. It's definitely a big jump in altitude from where we slept and where we have been so far. But that's okay. We'll go slow, right, Chidon? Yes. Go slowly. We're done with the grassy section. Now we're on all these rocks that are really steep. So basically we're just scrambling up these rocks. A mountain goat that's hanging on the side of the cliff way up here. That's pretty neat. It's pretty far away from us though. There's the mountain goat and we are way up here. So we're up here trying to cross the Very dangerous on both sides. Very long ways down. So we made it to the top. Look at this view around me, guys. This is nice. This is amazing. The problem is we got cliffs on both sides of me, so I don't want to move much because if you fall, you die. Very high up here. So going down is really fun. Very enjoyable. So I get to enjoy the views a lot more now that I'm going downhill rather than when I was heading up. The whole trek we've been meeting some friends, but I forgot to introduce Alan. Hello from Hong Kong. Alan's from Hong Kong. He's been traveling around the world. He's been visiting all types of different countries and enjoying life, but he's been fun and we've been seeing him at many hostels. I made it to the crosswalk. I can see Harvey and Cassie at the hotel already. I'm gonna wait for some more marathon runners and see if I can get anyone to talk to me. Here comes one right now. Can I ask you your name and where you're from? Oh, you live in the UK. From Nepal. Iceland. France. India. The Netherlands. From Argentina. Well, you're doing good. Yeah, happy marathon. Harvey! I made it. I know I was running down. I was running. I was running. Guess what Harvey? What? We saw a mountain goat up on the cliffs. But guess what? Follow me. Mom, we saw a mountain goat. That's pretty awesome. Look over here. We found a stray dog on the mountain and he came down with us. We named him Brownie. Brownie? Can I say hi to Brownie? Yeah, but don't wake him up. Oh, hi Brownie. How are you? We've been here for about an hour, so we're just about, you just took an extra hour. Not too bad. Since we got the afternoon off, for the most part, I'm exploring Dingbocheng a little bit. Trying to enjoy myself. Last time I was here, it was pretty frustrating because I was so out of shape. By the time we got to this point, my head hurt, my body hurt, my lungs hurt, but man, I feel so good. I've been working out really hard, running a lot, and I think that made the big difference is the fact that I've been running so much. I am just on top of the world right now. I'm just so proud of us and our fitness and how well we're doing compared to what we did. So, good job to myself, to Cassie, and an amazing job to Harvey. If you haven't seen my other videos before, like, subscribe, and click that bell.