Girl Gotta Hike The Podcast · Melissa Goodwin

27. Mount Everest Base Camp, Part 1

·33 min·2 clips

Kancha Sherpa describes carrying coins, washing Tenzing Norgay’s clothes, and setting ropes for Hillary’s 1953 ascent.

1. Girl Gotta Hike the Podcast episode 27 centers on Melissa Goodwin’s Mount Everest Base Camp trek and the first seven days from Kathmandu to Namche Bazaar. 2. Melissa Goodwin is the host, an outdoor guide, photographer, and founder of Girl Gotta Hike, and William Vasquez of Camera Voyages joins the story as the trip organizer who invited her to Everest. 3. The episode asks what it felt like to go from New York City to Everest Base Camp, with Melissa framing the trek as a departure from her usual hiking and guiding life. 4. She describes getting a December invitation to join a small group of photographers and later paying a $900 deposit after a one-hour conversation with two people who had already been to base camp. 5. The trip begins with a Qatar Airways layover in Doha, where the group takes a sponsored city tour and notices the city’s quiet streets, clean surfaces, and images of Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. 6. Melissa lands in Kathmandu on May 1, reports almost no sleep, and spends 6.4 city miles walking through the Tamil neighborhood and Durbar Square. 7. She visits Pathan Durbar Square in Lalitpur, Pashupatinath Temple, and the Bhutanath Stupa before packing for the move to Lukla. 8. The transfer to the mountains becomes a long logistics test when the group faces weather delays, a 33-pound luggage limit, and a last-minute switch from plane to helicopter. 9. Melissa says Lukla’s runway is 1,729 feet long, one of the shortest in the world, and that the flight finally gives them sweeping views of ridgelines, terraced farms, and glacial rivers. 10. By the time they reach Padh King, the group still has to walk in the dark with headlamps, cross a suspension bridge, and arrive at Royal Sherpa Resort exhausted. 11. On day 6, Melissa describes the first clear mountain views, the Dudkoshi River, and the long steel suspension bridge decorated with Buddhist prayer flags. 12. She notices porters carrying rice, cooking pots, propane, and building materials because the Khumbu region has no cars or roads, only foot and animal paths. 13. A conversation with an older American woman leads her to ask Abaya about clothing norms, and she learns that covering her knees is better in the villages. 14. The group enters Sagarmatha National Park, gets trekking permits, and passes signs against cutting trees, littering, anger, jealousy, and taking life. 15. Namche Bazaar appears as a mountain town with tea houses, hotels, bars, restaurants, and even a North Face store, plus a stupa dedicated to Pasang Lamu Sherpa. 16. Melissa and her companions also hear about Kancha Sherpa, the 85-year-old father-in-law of the proprietress, who worked with Edmund Hillary and now supports the Kancha Sherpa Foundation. 17. The tone stays observational and reflective, with Melissa mixing travel diary details, altitude notes, and personal reactions to scolding, jet lag, and mountain logistics. 18. The format alternates between narrated day-by-day account and short moments of local history, including translation-based conversation over tea and cake in Namche Bazaar. 19. Listeners who like trekking logistics, Sherpa history, and Kathmandu-to-Everest travel will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting fast action without travel detail may skip it. 21. Melissa repeatedly emphasizes the physical and ethical scale of the journey, from a 17,598-foot destination to her comments about being a respectful traveler. 22. She contrasts her own New York City life with the labor of porters, local lodge owners, and mountain workers who carry supplies in the Khumbu region. 23. The episode includes practical trail details such as day packs, duffel bags, headlamps, acclimatization, and the 12,729-foot Everest View Hotel stop. 24. It also highlights the social side of the trek, including birthday cake for Abaya and shared tea with Kami Sherpa and Kancha Sherpa. 25. Melissa closes by thanking William Vasquez, Shari, Cady, Dani, Abaya, and Heather and points listeners toward part two of the Base Camp story.

As heard by us

A reflective trek story that pairs mountain logistics with the emotional shape of departure.

Melissa Goodwin turns a hiking episode into a quiet origin story, circling back to the time before Girl Gotta Hike was fully underway. The path runs from New York City to an invitation to Mt.

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Want the prelude to an Everest Base Camp trek, told from the ground up?

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