Time Spent On The Mountain -- Summiting Everest

"[There exists no evidence that xenon gas improves performance]; inappropriate use can be dangerous."

"Use without a scientific basis and with unknown health risks must be rejected." 

International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation

 

"So, what these people claim to have done is basically found a way to switch on the adaptation [of xenon gas] to low oxygen levels."

"Are we missing out on the sacrifice you sometimes have to make to get the achievement?"

Hugh Montgomery, professor of intensive care medicine, University College London 

 

"It [use of xenon gas to speed up ascents] is a provocation, especially for traditional mountaineers, who feel bad about this idea that you can climb Everest in less than a week."

"This May demonstration with four Brits, acclimatized prior to ascent] showed that it can work."

Lukas Furtenbach, expedition organizer 

Four British climbers pose on the summit of Mount Everest in Nepal. The mountain guide who arranged their trek said he and the team had inhaled xenon gas in Germany before embarking on the expedition where they reached the 8,848 metre peak of Everest less than five days after departing London. (Sandro Gromen/The Associated Press)

 

There are traditions born of necessity in acknowledging nature's supreme challenges and the logical physiological steps that must be undertaken in preparatory work to meet those challenges. And aspirants to ascend Mount Everest know that to achieve the summit, careful adherence to tried-and-true methods although not guaranteeing success, go a long way to improving opportunities. So to climb Mount Everest acclimatization time must be set aside to optimum success, which translates to weeks spent at base camp to allow one's body to familiarize itself with less oxygen than is normal at lower elevations.

 

From base camp, a slow progression to a number of camps, each where time is spent to enable the body to adjust to ever thinner atmospheres where oxygen is gradually diminished, until the final camp closest to the summit is reached, before the final push on to the summit. Most climbers as well make use of supplemental oxygen to enable them to fully adjust to conditions. In May of this year, an expedition of four men traveled from London to Everest, on to the summit and back in under a week. 

 

Research established that xenon gas can effectively acclimatize people to high altitudes, but on the other hand, there are some experts who feel benefits if any, are negligible, and it is as yet unknown what the use of the gas's side effects might be. According to Lukas Furtenbach, who organized the expedition, he has plans to offer two-week round-trip excursions to Mount Everest with the use of xenon gas, to cut typical time required to scale the mountain by several weeks' time.

 

A long line of mountain climbers wait just below camp four, the final camp before the summit push on Mount Everest in Nepal on May 22, 2019. Eleven people died on Everest during that year's climbing season. (Rizza Alee/The Associated Press)

 

The need to take the time to acclimatize is to ensure the prevention of altitude sickness, whose symptoms include nausea, headaches, disrupted sleep, physical decline and the threat of potential swelling of the brain that can lead to death. The higher one climbs, the less oxygen is absorbed into the bloodstream. Which explains the common conventional use of supplemental oxygen. 

 

Some doctors have made use of the gas to 'precondition' patients to low oxygen levels prior to surgery but  because "it hasn't been as protective as one would hope", its use for that purpose has been limited, according to Professor Montgomery, at University College London, himself a mountaineer. Xenon gas is similar to the use of anesthesia; its use could lead to overdose or death according to some experts.

 

The reason for the tradition of weeks of training and acclimation on the slopes of Everest on the mountain's lower levels is an accepted practice understood to be typically required in the avoidance of unwanted complications and survival in the area above 7,925 meters on Everest, known as the 'death zone'. 

 

Akash Negi sits in a hypoxic tent set up in his New Jersey living room in April 2021. Mountaineers use the low-oxygen tents, which mimic thin air at high altitudes, to prepare themselves for the atmosphere they'll experience while climbing Mount Everest. ( Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images )

 

Weeks before launching themselves on the expedition the British group began sleeping in hypoxic tents to lower oxygen levels in the air to gradually acclimatize themselves to conditions on Mount Everest. Several weeks prior to the excursion they flew to Limburg, Germany where a doctor who had experimented with inhaled gases in his clinic supervised the men hooked up to ventilators while an anesthesiologist gradually introduced higher levels of xenon into their systems. 

 

Once arrived at the Everest base camp, the group ascended to the summit in less than three days. The Nepalese government's response to the group's use of gas leading to their rapid ascent was less than congratulatory.  Himal Gautam, director of Nepal's tourism department declared that using the gas was "against climbing ethics", that it would harm the tourism industry and the Sherpas who guide and assist climbers.

 

The response was that Mr. Furtenbach argued his expeditions were still making use of Sherpas, and shorter times on the mountain were safer, reducing the chance that climbers would be exposed to other health threats, including avalanches, hypothermia or falls. An argument that is questionable in its presumed merits, since accelerating the time to achieve the goal also means pushing on beyond normal endurance to meet the shorter time schedule, and as for avalanches, hypothermia or falls, they occur irrespective of time spend on the mountain.  

"[Making the mountain easier to summit, will likely attract more climbers], exacerbating the already serious overcrowding problem."

 "It just seems very, very risky at this onset, right at the beginning. It's really hard for me to think about ... using  a new type of technique. What type of safety protocol is involved with that?"

"You're not training the traditional way of being on the mountain for a month and a half, two months to acclimatize in the natural environment."

Chris Dare, Canadian Mountaineer  

Rob Casserley was among a team of climbers who survived avalanches on Mount Everest in 2015 that were caused by earthquakes in Nepal. He says climbers who aren't prepared for the psychological aspect of scaling the mountain could endanger themselves and others. (Rob Casserley/Facebook)