Peacock told CNN that he was skeptical of xenon’s effect on stimulating erythropoietin in such a short timeframe, warning that “the effect on the red blood cells takes weeks.”
“Xenon is an anesthetic gas, and it stimulates erythropoietin. That level of hormone then stimulates the bone marrow, which boosts red blood cells, which increases your oxygen-carrying capacity. And that probably does happen, but I really don’t think it happens in the timeframe that these people are talking about,” he explained.
Peacock also cautioned that as xenon is an anesthetic gas, “that means it puts people to sleep. So what we’re worrying about slightly, is the side effects, or the residual effects of inhaling an anesthetic gas when you’re going to extreme altitude.”
Carns told CNN: “When oxygen first came on the scene in alpine mountaineering, it was seen as a taboo, and that it shouldn’t be done. Now, it’s used by everybody. Helicopters to base camp were seen as a taboo, but now quite a lot of people do that as well.”
‘Like a speed tour of the Sistine Chapel’
Climbing Everest has changed dramatically since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first successfully summited the mountain in 1953. Now, with access to Sherpa guides, porters, supplemental oxygen and top-of-the-range equipment, the mountain is far more accessible to hobbyists and tourists.
“Everest stopped being mountaineering in the pure climbing, mountaineering sense, back when it began to be guided in the 90s,” Will Cockrell, author of “Everest, Inc.” told CNN, adding that guiding outfits have long been dreaming up innovative ways of cutting expedition times.
A classic expedition on Everest can take between six to 10 weeks and involves multiple rotations to camps on the mountain or its neighboring peaks so that the body acclimatizes to high altitude, before a final summit push.
“It varies person to person, but let’s say it takes about four weeks to gradually acclimatize to an altitude of 6,000 meters, which is Everest Base Camp,” Peacock explained.
Cockrell noted that for many years, guiding providers have been providing “flash” expeditions where clients sleep in a hypoxic chamber before they reach Nepal to speed up the acclimatization process to reduce the trip to between three and four weeks.
“The knee-jerk reaction from climbers who still want to argue that about this as if it’s a climbing pursuit, which is a really antiquated way of even looking at Everest anymore, is to say these people aren’t climbers and be grumpy about it,” Cockrell said.
But, he added, “no one’s really there claiming to be a climber or a mountaineer — they’re all claiming to be at Everest for these very personal reasons, right? They’re seeking out the same sort of transformation that climbers do when they climb mountains, but you also get it when you run a marathon.”
Mountaineering purists, Cockrell noted, might take issue with the speed at which people summit. “When we humans go do these things, whether it’s traveling, climbing a mountain — isn’t part of the point to enjoy the process, and as they say, smell the roses?
“It’s a little bit like signing up for the speed tour of the Sistine Chapel,” he says, adding that it is perhaps more useful to think of a regular Everest expedition and speed ascents of the mountain as completely separate entities, each with their own objectives.
Furtenbach, whose outfit is so far the only one to offer this xenon-reliant tour, argued that his new style of expedition could actually be considered less dangerous than other types.
“The less time you spend on the mountain, the less time you spend doing rotations on the mountain, the less exposure time you have to risks on the mountain, like avalanches, rock fall,” he told CNN.
Cockrell warned that this style of expedition is still likely to come with a great deal of risk.
“You’re reducing your self-sufficiency. You’re making yourself even more reliant on external factors, such as the xenon gas working and perhaps needing more support from guides and Sherpa guides, because in case something goes wrong, because you’re less prepared, you’re less acclimatized,” he explained.