Kathmandu; gear sort
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We had one full day in Kathmandu before heading to the mountains.
It was largely consumed with gear organization.
We had managed to get all our gear over to Nepal without paying extra luggage
charges by maxing out the luggage weight on each piece (most airlines allow any
individual bag to weigh up to 70 lb., though some allow just 50 lb.) Now we had
to reorganize the bags into “porter loads” that were at most 15 kilograms
(33 lb.) We went out and bought a bunch of extra duffles, did a sort for what items
we could leave behind at the hotel, and repacked pretty much every single thing we had
brought along. We had a scale to verify bag weights, and also we had numbered luggage
tags to attach to each bag so we could keep track of what was where. 
Some bags would
go directly to Pumori, some would come along with us to Island Peak. Each had to be
tough enough to be carried by porters or yaks and thrown around for a month.
We ended up with 45 bags to transport, and over 1000 lbs of gear total. We were a bit appalled at how much stuff this amounted to, but the outfitters we hired to get us into the mountains seemed to take it all in stride. I guess compared with some of the Everest climbers we were traveling pretty light!