Travels with TRASKA — Mt Everest Base Camp

In 2023, Esbjorn Torstensson uploaded a video review of the Venturer GMT. In the video, he announced his intention to wear the watch during an upcoming trip with his son to Mt Everest Base Camp in Nepal. We reached out and sent a Venturer to his son, Sam, so he’d have one for the journey as well. This is the story of their pilgrimage to the world’s highest mountain.

Unsafe landings

Situated on a cliff face at 9,337 ft / 2,846 m above sea level, Lukla airport is the starting point for journeys to Mt Everest Base Camp. It’s also been rated the most dangerous airport in the world. Pilots have to judge their landing perfectly and over the years, many have failed. Before the flight, you feel excitement mixed with fear — knowledge of the physical hardships ahead, as well as the risks you have decided to take on in pursuit of adventure… and something more.

Rites of passage

Ever since his first son was born over 20 years ago, Esbjorn started thinking about the transition from boyhood to manhood. Ancient cultures throughout the world have practiced rites of passage which mark the symbolic end of childhood and the former boy’s arrival into the world of responsibility and autonomy. When his first son, Max, crossed the threshold into adulthood in 2019, they visited Annapurna Mountain in Nepal. Four years later, Esbjorn returned to Nepal with his youngest son, Sam. This time, the goal was to visit Mt Everest Base Camp— 5,364 meters (17,598 ft) above sea level and a 9 day hike from Lukla airport.

 

Into thin air

The first symptoms of altitude sickness can already be felt at 2800 meters, the height at which most quests to Base Camp begin. Some experience headaches. Others, shortness of breath. Nausea is common. In extreme cases, confusion, loss of consciousness and worse. Helicopters are on standby to evacuate hikers who show signs of rapid deterioration, but Esbjorn and Sam were well prepared, taking medication to thin their blood and increase their bodies’ capacity to retain oxygen. Even so, their physical and psychological endurance would be pushed beyond anything they had experienced before.

The first sighting

Namche Bazaar stands 3,440 meters above sea level and is home to almost 2,000 people in high season. It's the hometown to many sherpas, denizens of the mountains. Here, behind a statue of their most famous son, Tenzing Norgay who, alongside Edmund Hilary, was the first to summit Mt Everest, was where Esbjorn and Sam got their first true look at the highest point on planet earth. It's hard to describe that feeling — it goes beyond beauty. It’s a feeling of awe, wonder. Even when glimpsed for the first time, it seems somehow familiar, like recognizing a face from a distant dream. You're seeing a monarch of nature, an immortal celebrity, a fact anchored in the minds of every child with a yearning for discovery and adventure.

The mountain loomed impossibly large, signposting the way ahead, but Base Camp was still 5 days' march away. The air was growing thinner with every step.

Among the mountains

Esbjorn and Sam undertook their journey in December. It’s off season, largely free from the adventurers who undertake the famous hike to the world’s highest peak. It’s also deathly cold. By day, the sun pierces the sky, the thin air enhancing visibility, rendering the blue sky in vivid, infinite color. The Himalayas are endless, gargantuan mountains against each horizon, so the locals scarcely bother naming those shorter than 6,000. Everest itself stands at 8,849 m.

Less than zero

Nights are spent at ever smaller teahouses, tiny rooms clustered around a central fire. Wood becomes scarce at high altitude where trees cannot survive, so fires are fueled by dried yak dung. Each day as they climbed higher the air grew thinner and the weather drew colder. Esbjorn would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, gasping for air as if he’d just sprinted up a flight of stairs. Despite the cold he’d open the window and drink in the icy mountain air. Checking the time on the luminous watch face, he’d see that he’d have to be up again in a couple of hours for another full day of hiking.

Across the glacier

Hiking across a glacier is an auditory as well as a physical experience. The ice creaks and cracks with gunshot sounds stirring the imaginations of weary hikers. They were physically exhausted, Esbjorn had come down with a cold, the result of open windows at night, and Sam had been battling some of the confusion and lightheadedness associated with mild altitude sickness. And yet both pushed on. At the otherside of the glacier was the destination they had been striving towards. In the off season, there’s little there — just a rock spray painted with the words Mt Everest Base Camp. But it’s the meaning that we give to these objects that makes them significant.

The end of the beginning

A father and son had set out to reckon with physical discomfort, exhaustion, danger, and fear. A man and a boy set out on the journey. Two men turned around, and began the long march back home.

  

Got a story to share? Epic or absurd, daring or disastrous, Travels with TRASKA celebrates the adventures we experience with a watch on the wrist. Let us know your story with an email to info@traskwatch.com and the subject line “Travels with TRASKA’