Four men want to climb Mount Everest in a week using this ambitious method.
The method for climbing Everest in a week that has doctors up in arms: ‘Its inappropriate use can be dangerous’
A pilot, a politician, a businessman and an entrepreneur are climbing Everest. It sounds like the start of your uncle’s new joke he saw on FaceBook, but it’s true.
“I reckon I can climb Mount Everest in a week.” We’ve all been there in the pub, saying we can climb the world’s highest peak in just 7 days, but for four UK army veterans, was a real conversation (more or less) in the local boozer and they really are going to do it. Here’s how.
Al Carns, a British lawmaker, told CNN that the idea to climb Everest in a week came from the fact that the gang are “all busy people”.
“My response was, ‘No way I can spend four to six, maybe even eight weeks out climbing Everest — it’s just almost impossible", he said. Like that’s the crazy part of the idea.
It was a stroke of good luck then, that of the friends had an idea: he had come across a cutting-edge method that may well dramatically speed up the acclimatisation process: simply inhaling a noble gas called xenon before the expedition, something that potentially will allow the foursome to summit the 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) peak in under a week.
‘Weeks of acclimatising’ needed for Everest mission
They will inhale xenon gas 10 days in advance as part of a program run by Furtenbach Adventures before travelling from the UK to Kathmandu where they will then take a helicopter straight to base camp. The aim is to reach the summit within just a few days, before heading home in what could mark a historic first.
Several factors can lead to fatalities on Everest. Climbers who ascend above 8,000 meters (26,000 feet) — an area ominously known as the mountain’s “death zone” — encounter dangerously low oxygen levels, as explained by experts:
“Before you can go to climb Mount Everest, you need to adapt your body to the low levels of oxygen,” Lukas Furtenbach, CEO of Furtenbach Adventures, told CNN Travel. “You can do this in a traditional way — trekking to base camp and then several rotations on the mountain, and then, after weeks of acclimatising, your body is ready to build enough red blood cells, and then you can start your summit attempt,” he added.
However, while the on-paper science might be there, doctors remain skeptical: “You become oxygen depleted, and this affects all of the body, particularly the brain and the lungs,” Andrew Peacock, emeritus professor in medicine at the University of Glasgow’s School of Cardiovascular & Metabolic Health, told CNN.
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The International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation (The UIAA), also expressed concern, saying that there is no evidence that breathing in xenon improves performance in the mountains. “Although a single inhalation of xenon can measurably increase the release of erythropoietin, this increase is not sustained over four weeks’ use, nor is it associated with any changes in red blood cells. According to the literature, the effects on performance are unclear and probably non-existent.”
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