Climbing Everest in A Week with Xenon gas

Leaving home on Monday morning. To reach the summit of Everest on Thursday night, and return home on Sunday… That’s the dream of a client on Everest next spring. Doing Everest in a week is not a joke, but the very serious announcement of an Austrian guide, Lukas Furtenbach, who markets expeditions to Everest. This spring, for the hefty sum of 150,000 euros, a small group of his VIP clients will use xenon, a rare gas used to stimulate the production of red blood cells, before heading up the mountain. Yes, the same rare gas used to manufacture ultra-bright car headlight bulbs. The same rare gas used in anesthesia.

Climb to the top of Mount Everest in three days, in one go

Furtenbach and his company claim to be the first to market expeditions with hypoxic preparation, i.e. a period of several weeks during which customers, at home, combine sleep in a hypoxic tent or physical activity (exercise bike) under hypoxia.

The idea is always the same: acclimatize at home, simulating the lack of oxygen, and arrive at Everest base camp pre-acclimatized. The aim is to reduce the time needed on site: three weeks instead of six to eight weeks for a conventional expedition.

But Furtenbach’s announcement, in a long article in the Financial Times, of xenon as a new means of acclimatization is of a different nature. With the announced objective of climbing Everest in three days, in one go, arriving at base camp the day before.

©JC

Xenon has been used in anaesthesia for years, but only for specific procedures, as it is a rare and expensive gas, a resource not widely available on the planet. But a doctor suggested that Furtenbach experiment with xenon at high altitude, as it increases the natural production of erythropoietin, a hormone that increases the number of red blood cells in the blood – and oxygen transport in the muscles.

This is the fast and furious version of acclimatization, at $5,000 per pre-Everest session for each client. A synthetic molecule, EPO is the cornerstone of the doping which has ruined cycling for the past thirty years, with a certain Lance Armstrong, a fan of EPO injections. He has since been stripped of his 7 Tour de France titles.

The rich don’t have the time to walk to base camp or acclimatize

Furtenbach tried xenon on himself, reaching Aconcagua (6910 m) seven days after leaving Innsbruck. Furtenbach takes offence at talk of doping. After all, aren’t oxygen cylinders a doping agent? Not to mention all the drugs swallowed by the contenders before and during the summit: diamox, viagra (and its vasodilator effects), codeine, dexamethasone, and even cocaine, it seems.

While oxygen cylinders are used to compensate for the lack of oxygen, and even if they are used as early as camp 2 (6400 meters) for some, the same cannot be said for xenon: rarer and more expensive than coke, but just as little present in the air we breathe. It’s not synthetic EPO, but the principle is the same.

Furtenbach’s main argument? Safety. Less risk of edema and accidents when doing acclimatization rotations. Less crap at base camp, less coughing at altitude. But the health of its golden customers is not the real reason behind xenon.

The super-rich don’t have the time: neither to walk to Everest base camp, nor to acclimatize. Kathmandu? Don’t ask, it’s polluted. Furtenbach has understood this: he who finds clients for his VIP expeditions to Everest starting at 75,000 euros, is having trouble convincing new ones, because of the time it takes.

If it were possible to drop customers off by helicopter at the summit of Everest for a selfie, no doubt someone would suggest it. In the theoretically protected Antarctic, an agency for ultra-rich tourists is already offering a three-hour picnic on site (with champagne) for a ten-hour AR flight from South Africa.

So to climb Everest in a week, what a bargain! As a matter of fact, to paraphrase a French humorist*, Everest would be less difficult to do without crampons than without doping.

 

* Coluche’s quote : “Le Tour de France, il serait moins dur à faire sans le vélo que sans le dopage.”