Journal of Katharine Atto of Farmington Hills, who was trekking to Mount Everest Base

Camp when the earthquake hit Nepal on April 24:

RUN! he shouted as the Good Luck Hotel in Dingboche, Nepal began to shake. Without hesitation, we
abandoned our lunches in the trembling building and raced for the hotels only exit. As the last of us escaped
from the swaying stone structure, we heard the booming sound of ice and snow separating from the monoliths
to which they had previously clung. Kale, my Sherpa guide, spoke the ominous words that will stay with me
for the rest of my life, This is going to be really bad for Base Camp.
Brian and I had met in college and had spent nearly a year planning our trek to the pinnacle of the world, Mount
Everest. We voraciously read every book we could find about Nepal. We became intimately aware of the
dangers we would face on our trek. Seemingly ignorant in hindsight, we believed our top two concerns to be
the flights into and out of Lukla, often ranked as the worlds most dangerous airport, and falling ill with acute
mountain sickness (AMS). It never crossed our minds that the biggest peril we would face was a 7.8 magnitude
earthquake and its aftershocks, starting on April 25, which would claim the lives of more than 7,000 people in
Nepal.
We arrived in Kathmandu on April 17, 2015 and visited the customary capital sites: the Buddhist temple of
Swayambhunath, the three Durbar Squares (royal plazas), and the narrow tangle of streets and temples of the
old city of Kathmandu. On April 19 our first concern was assuaged when we successfully landed at the
starting point for our Everest Base Camp trek, the Lukla airport. It has an extremely short runway that leaves
no room for error, as its ends are situated precariously between a cliff and a mountainside. After our unnerving,
yet uneventful, landing we began our Base Camp trek.
The first three nights we lodged in the progressively higher mountain villages of Phakding, Namche Bazaar, and
Kyangjuma. The rule of thumb for avoiding altitude sickness is to climb high and sleep low. This practice of
going to a higher altitude during the day, while sleeping at a lower altitude at night, decreases the chance of
being sickened by AMS. AMS is an illness that is caused by the decreased air pressures and oxygen at high
altitudes. Unfortunately, our concerns about AMS proved to be more reasonable than our concerns about the
Lukla airport, because Brian began to suffer from the intractable vomiting and terrible headaches associated
with AMS. Kale rested us an extra day in Kyangjuma to give Brian extra time to adjust to the altitude, but
Brians health deteriorated overnight. On the morning of April 23, Brian was helicoptered off the mountain to
be treated for AMS in a clinic in Kathmandu. Although I had also vomited the previous night, I was feeling
much better by the morning so I proceeded with Kale along the trek toward Base Camp.
We spent the night of April 23 in the village of Tengboche, encircled by a panorama of white-capped
mountains. I awoke to the rhythmic sounds of a Buddhist monk playing music from the top window of the
lovely Tengboche monastery. Kale informed me that Brian, not wishing to spend a week in Kathmandu waiting
for my return, had booked a flight back to the United States for the night of April 24. Although none of us
knew it at the time, his decision to fly out of Kathmandu that night may very well have kept him from being
buried alive in a pile of rubble the following day in Kathmandu.
The night of April 24, Kale and I arrived at the village of Dingboche and were informed that an elderly man had
died earlier that day of AMS. Kale decided that we would spend two nights in Dingboche and that we would
ascend and descend a nearby mountain on April 25, to help my body further acclimatize to the altitude. On
April 25, after that strenuous acclimatization hike, I met Kale for lunch in the dining hall of the Good Luck
Hotel. We had just been served a typical Sherpa lunch of Dal Bhat (rice and lentils) when the building suddenly
began to shake. One of the guides who was also eating lunch with us yelled for everyone to stay seated, which
we did. After nearly 5 seconds of shaking, the same guide changed his mind and yelled for everyone to run,
which we did. I was at the back of the line of people trying to escape from the trembling building and a wave of

relief flowed over me as I fled out the door and up a nearby hill, away from the swaying buildings below.
Almost immediately we heard the terrifying crack of avalanches breaking from the massive peaks surrounding
the village. Kale said that he had been guiding in Nepal for 25 years and that he had never experienced
anything like this before. He was very concerned for the safety of the climbers on Mount Everest, given all the
avalanches that likely had been caused by the earthquake.
Once the lodge finally stopped swaying we rushed inside and scarfed down our Dal Bhat. By this time, a hotel
employee was on the dining room phone crying and screaming, Pheriche, the name of a nearby village. I
scurried out of the lodge to my single-story, wooden hotel room, knowing that aftershocks could start at any
second.
When the first aftershock hit, I raced back to the hill above the buildings, joining the rest of the panicked
trekkers. Kale assured me that I did not need to bother leaving my room for subsequent aftershocks, since my
wooden room would not collapse. He said I was lucky that I was not staying in the stone lodge with some of
the other trekkers, since it would likely kill anyone inside if it collapsed. In spite of Kales reassurance about
the safety of my room, during each subsequent aftershock I leapt out of bed and stood in the doorframe until the
shaking stopped. Kale was right; the walls never fell.
By dinnertime my hunger trumped my fear of the stone lodge collapsing, so I joined the other trekkers in the
warm dining room. Kale was standing in a long line of guides trying to use the phone to contact family and
friends. The phone calls usually resulted in nothing more than a busy signal, since most of the phone lines in
the other villages had been disconnected during the earthquake. When Kale was finally able to reach his family
in Kathmandu, he discovered that everyone was safe, but that his kitchen had sustained some damage. He said
that we were so lucky to be in the countryside during the disaster, since the earthquakes epicenter was just west
of Kathmandu and there were already 800 people confirmed dead there.
Throughout dinner the guides continued to wait in line to use the dining room phone. Of those who were able
to get through to family and friends, many were crying. After dinner, my guide told me to get some sleep and
he would tell me in the morning whether or not we could proceed to Base Camp. There were many aftershocks
that evening, so my night consisted of a fitful sleep interspersed with panicked leaping to cower under the
doorframe to my room.
At breakfast, the lodge was bustling with guests and guides discussing whether to proceed toward Base Camp,
or to return to Lukla. Kale heard that there were already 10 climbers confirmed dead on Everest and more than
100 climbers were still missing. He heard that three people had died near our next destination, the village of
Lobuche, where three teahouses had been shaken to the ground. He told me that Kathmandu had experienced
over 30 aftershocks already and advised that we turn around and head back to Lukla, where we might even have
cellular service and access to wifi. I asked Kale if there would be any point to continuing up toward Base
Camp. His answer was, only more altitude sickness. Most of the other groups decided to turn around as well,
so I concurred.
The morning of April 26, we turned back toward Lukla. Kale said that there were five helicopters waiting in
Lukla to rescue people from Base Camp, but that clouds and bad weather were preventing them from flying. In
spite of the weather, a few helicopters had managed to fly out of Lukla, and those helicopters were transporting
a constant stream of injured people from Base Camp to the village of Pheriche. We heard that one of the few
still-standing hotels in Pheriche had been converted to a makeshift hospital, since the real hospital was
completely full with the injured from Base Camp. Kale led me down the mountain toward Pheriche, and toward
our first glimpses of the true scale of destruction that had been caused by the earthquake.
Most of the buildings in Pheriche had been damaged in the earthquake. In spite of this, there was a steady
stream of wounded climbers being dropped off by helicopter from Base Camp. Volunteers were transporting
them, often by stretcher, to the hotel and the hospital for triage. As we walked toward the villages hospital,

Kale saw someone he knew and said, That man is my friend and now he has no arm. Indeed, the man was
being assisted toward the hospital and there was just a bloody sleeve where his arm had been.
We entered the hotel and saw many wounded Sherpa laying in their sleeping bags, heads and bodies bloodied
and bandaged. Kale said, Its all Sherpa people, because theyre the ones who climb mountains. As Kale met
with friends, I excused myself from the macabre hotel and walked though the village to survey the damage. I
walked past the hotel that I was scheduled to sleep at on April 28. The entire structure had collapsed inward on
itself and large rocks from the walls lay in the beds of the guest rooms. All around the village there were people
huddled in bivouacs, burning fires outside their collapsed homes to stay warm. The misery was overwhelming
and I quietly wept for these kind Sherpa people whose lives had been ruined by this disaster.
Kale found me a few minutes later by the helicopter landing pad, as I was watching the injured pour into
Pheriche. He told me that he kept feeling the earth shake, and yet, when he looked around, no one else seemed
to feel it. I told him that I had experienced the same phenomenon. Previously, if I had ever felt unsteady, I
knew that I was the problem; I had never before been in a situation where I could not trust the ground on which
I stood. It was very unsettling.
As we continued our walk to Lukla, it seemed that all the stone walls we had seen on the trek up had collapsed
during the earthquake. Kale was quick to note that if we had been walking near these walls when the
earthquake hit, the stones would have easily broken our legs. Indeed we saw a handful of places along the trail
where giant rocks had covered or even ripped away the trail. So many of the teahouses were damaged or closed
that we had difficulty finding a place to eat lunch.
In spite of all devastation around them, we saw the occasional group heading up the mountain toward Base
Camp. I asked Kale what they were doing and he said, trying to kill themselves. Kale had taken some video
of the rescue helicopters in Pheriche and he showed it to every guide who was going the wrong way, trying to
convince them that it was unsafe to proceed.
By now the weather had cleared and the Lukla helicopters were performing search and rescue missions all along
the mountain. I saw the first of many corpses being helicoptered off the mountain, again from AMS. We
stopped at multiple villages along the trail, looking for a room or a tent in which to spend the night. However,
there were no vacancies since almost everyone was attempting to evacuate down the mountain along with us.
Kale was hoping we would be able to stay the night in Deboche. However, again by the time we arrived, there
were no vacancies. Less than five minutes after we had left Deboche, having failed in our quest to secure a
room, a major aftershock hit. I felt like I was standing atop a washing machine, as the trail lurched beneath my
feet. We could no longer see Deboche, but we could easily imagine what was happening from the sounds of
people screaming and rocks falling. It is unnerving to know that, had a room been available for me, I would
likely have been inside the crumbling building when that aftershock hit. Neither Kale nor I had the heart to go
back to Deboche to see what had happened, so we just continued to plod along toward the next village,
Tengboche.
When we got to Tengboche, its beautiful monastery had been seriously damaged. The monks were either
staying in tents or in the hotel that I had stayed in three days earlier. Again, there were no rooms available, but
Kale was able to secure a dining tent in which I could spend the night. I was relieved to not have a room, since
I felt much safer in the soft-sided dining tent. At dinner I had the pleasure of meeting the son of Tenzing
Norgay, the Sherpa who accompanied Sir Edmund Hillary during the first successful summit of Everest. He
was leading a group of Indian girls who had won a national competition to have him as their Base Camp guide,
to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Indias first summit of Mount Everest. Unfortunately, due to the earthquake,
the Indian girls were never able to make it to Base Camp either.
On April 27, after another night of aftershocks, I was surprised to awaken to the sound of rhythmic music
coming from the upstairs monastery window again. In spite of the missing walls and the damage to the

buildings integrity, the monks proceeded with their normal routines. I even saw a monk playing a rousing
game of volleyball with some of the Sherpas to pass the time. At breakfast we heard about another man who
had died of AMS in Tengboche. I told Kale that I was shocked by how many people had died of AMS during
my few days on the trail and asked him if the number of deaths was unusually high this season. He said, no, the
numbers were normal.
We descended from Tengboche to Namche Bazaar on April 27. This city that had had a bustling commercial
center only six days earlier, was now just streets of closed shops and empty merchandise stalls. I was offered
the chance to stay in a room for the night, but I declined, preferring to stay in a soft-sided tent. There were tents
pitched all over the village, as others were also too afraid to sleep inside.
I met an icefall doctor, the Sherpa specialist who determines the best route up Everest, who had survived the
avalanche at Base Camp. I asked him whether he planned to do the same job next climbing season, after
watching many of his friends hurt or killed during this years avalanche. He said, Yes. What else should I do?
Become a farmer?
Our last day of hiking, on April 28, took us from Namche Bazaar to our final destination of Lukla. This was the
worst part of the trail from Base Camp. One large section had been destroyed in a landslide and we had to blaze
our own path around the damaged trail. Other sections of the trail had huge holes where giant rocks had fallen
and broken through the path, continuing down to the bottom of the mountain. Many parts of the trail were
intact, but were covered with fallen stones that we had to scramble over, all the while watching for falling rocks
above our heads.
By the time we arrived in Lukla it was too late for the airplanes to fly. By this time nearly all the injured had
been evacuated from Base Camp and the helicopter pilots were now tasked with returning the deceased to
Kathmandu, from which their bodies would be sent back to their home countries. We watched as the bodies,
wrapped in plastic, were loaded onto helicopters and flown off the mountain.
By now there were only a few aftershocks each day, so I went back to sleeping in an actual room again. There
were still tents pitched all over Lukla, so apparently not everyone was as confident as I was that the big
earthquakes were finished. I had access to wifi in Lukla and Kale could use his cell phone. I was able to
contact Brian and find out that he had arrived home safely, as the earthquake occurred when he was flying over
the Atlantic. I was surprised to find out that, even though I was experiencing the disaster first hand, the people
back home knew so much more than I did about what was happening; communication was very limited before
we arrived in Lukla, and most of the information we received was unsubstantiated information transmitted
between people passing each other along the trail.
That night, at dinner, I felt the booth I was sitting in start to shake. My face must have paled just before I
jumped out of my seat to run away, because Kale grabbed my arm, held me down, and said, no earthquake.
In hindsight, I think it was just another trekker kicking the long bench that we shared along the back wall of the
dining room. I talked to other trekkers who had experienced similar earthquake false alarms when animals
knocked down pots in the kitchen, or when a low-flying helicopter shook the dining area where patrons were
having their dinner.
Everyone I talked to or overheard in Lukla had a story to tell. For example, I met a man who had been walking
under a high overhanging rock when the earthquake hit. He heard the rock break, turned to run but tripped and
fell, dropping his hiking poles next to him. He swiftly regained his footing and ran out of the way as the rock
tumbled down the mountainside, crushing his hiking poles as it passed. Another example is a story I overheard
from a U.S. soldier. He told of a Nepali who was killed by a search and rescue helicopter. Apparently the
helicopter pilot was going to evacuate some tourists before rescuing him. The Nepali man was so desperate to
be evacuated that he ran at the helicopter and was killed by the helicopters rotor blades.

On April 29, at breakfast, everyone cheered when we saw the first planes arrive from Kathmandu. We stopped
by the airport immediately after breakfast and it was absolutely packed with people trying to leave. Kale told
me that some people who had plane tickets as far back as April 24 were still trying to leave. Apparently the
weather had been bad on April 24, so not everyone with a ticket was able to leave that day. I asked Kale if I
could pay a helicopter pilot to take me to Kathmandu. His answer was no, since the government had
commandeered all the helicopters for search and rescue.
Kale tried all day to get me on a flight out of Lukla, but to no avail. My actual flight to Kathmandu was
scheduled for May 3. The airlines were already so far behind that I doubted I would even get off the mountain
on May 3. I spent the day just milling around Lukla, watching the helicopters come and go. The weather was
cloudy, so not many planes went in and out of Lukla that day. I drank tea, ate Dal Bhat, and shared stories with
the other trekkers.
Kale asked me to be ready to spend the day at the airport starting at 5:30 am on April 30. By 6 am I was in the
airport with our luggage, while Kale talked to airport personnel. The hours ticked away as I watched those
lucky passengers who had gotten plane tickets get their luggage weighed, searched and transferred to the
airplanes cargo hold. There were two young girls wandering around the airport, one of whom had bandages
over her eyes. They were telling everyone who would listen about how they had been waiting to fly out since
April 24 and that the one with bandages badly needed to see a doctor for her eyes. It was so disheartening that
none of us could do anything to help her or her friend.
Kale stopped by every few hours to check on me. He said that all airplanes out of Lukla were now flying to
Biratnagar instead of to Kathmandu. Air traffic control in Kathmandu was busy with international flights in and
out of the city, which was one reason that we had seen so few planes at Lukla that day. The plan was to send
several small airplanes from Lukla to the much larger Biratnagar airport, which could accommodate larger
planes and evening flights. From Biratnagar, a larger plane would fly passengers to Kathmandu.
At one point, an enormous military helicopter landed at Luklas tiny airport. It had been sent by a foreign
country to evacuate its stranded citizens from the Lukla airport. All of us watched with envy, our faces pressed
against the terminal glass, as the lucky passengers boarded the giant helicopter and flew off the mountain to
safety.
Around 3 pm, just as I was giving up hope of flying out that day, Kale bolted up to me, grabbed our luggage and
told me to follow him. We ran through the airport, pushing through mobs of people waiting near the exit to the
airports apron. Someone tried to grab Kale to stop him, but Kale just pushed him aside (Kale actually sprained
his thumb in that tiff). A lady yelled for me to stop as I followed Kale out of the terminal and onto the apron. I
never made eye contact with her, so I cant say whether she worked for the airline or not, but I just pushed past
her and followed Kale toward what would likely be the last airplane leaving from Lukla that day. We raced
toward the airplane and the stewardess waved me hurriedly toward inside. Kale jumped on the plane behind
me, still holding all of our luggage. Strangely enough, none of our luggage was ever weighed, searched or
stowed. The plane took off from the airport and we had an unbelievably choppy and nauseating flight to
Biratnagar airport. Im still wondering whether that terrible flight had something to do with the unaccounted
weight of from me, Kale and our luggage.
Amazingly, our plane landed safely at Biratnagar airport. I waited patiently again, while Kale tried to secure us
a flight to Kathmandu. We got on the 6:30 pm flight, along with people who had been waiting in Biratnagar
since 9:30 am. Kale said the other guides were angry with him for having secured a flight to Kathmandu so
quickly. I, on the other hand, was very grateful. I asked Kale how he was able to get us on these flights so
quickly. His cryptic answer was simply, I have friends everywhere.
Flying into the airport in Kathmandu was like flying into an army air force Base; huge military helicopters were
parked next to military transport aircraft and there were packages of humanitarian aid supplies spread all over

the airport. Kale took me by taxi to a house in Kathmandu, since the hotel that I was supposed to stay at had
been damaged during the earthquake. I thanked Kale repeatedly for taking such good care of me and for not
deserting me on the mountain. He told me that he had a duty to return me safely to Kathmandu and he would
not stop until that was done. The husband and wife I stayed with, Tek and Bishnu, fed me dinner and showed
me the shed in which the three of us would spend the night; they were still too frightened to sleep inside their
Kathmandu house. That night, the night of April 30, there were three aftershocks, one of which was so violent
that it shook the roof of the shed and caused us to leap from our sleeping bags and run outside for safety.
On May 1, I asked Bishnu if I should stay to help with the relief effort and she bluntly replied, We dont have
enough food and water to feed our own people, let alone to feed foreigners. Therefore, I simply left some
clothes and medicine with her, and secured an evening flight out of Kathmandu. I spent the day walking the
streets of Kathmandu and surveying the damage. There were plenty of cracked buildings still standing, but they
were interspersed with buildings that had become nothing but piles of stone, brick or wood. Many of the
beautiful temples and architecture I had admired just two weeks earlier had been reduced to rubble. There were
tractors clearing debris from the streets and people sheltering in tents in every open area of the city. I
commented to Bishnu that there was less damage than what I had expected. She said that the damage wasnt so
bad where we were, but that it was much worse in other parts of Kathmandu.
As I sat in the departure terminal, I recalled the stories I had heard in Lukla, where coincidences and luck had
brought folks safely down the mountain. I realized it was my narrative as well. In spite of all the danger and
close calls we had experienced, we were the fortunate ones, the ones able to tell our own stories.