It started in the pub, over a couple of beers. Four ex-military friends had been speaking about taking on an adventurous trip to raise money for a veterans’ charity, when one brought up the prospect of summiting Everest.
“We’re 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,” Al Carns, a British lawmaker told CNN.
But one of his friends had a counter challenge: he had heard about a novel way of altering the acclimatization process that could allow them to summit the 8,849-meter (29,032 feet) peak in under a week — by inhaling a noble gas called xenon ahead of the expedition.
This month, the men — a pilot, a politician, a businessman and an entrepreneur — will attempt to summit Everest in seven days: they will fly from the UK to Kathmandu, where they will take a helicopter to base camp, and attempt to summit the mountain in a few days, before returning home in what would be a historic first.
This, they hope, will be made possible by inhaling the noble gas xenon 10 days prior, as part of a tour with Furtenbach Adventures.
“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 acclimatizing, your body is ready to build enough red blood cells, and then you can start your summit attempt,” he added.
Furtenbach said that he had spoken at length with a doctor who was an expert in noble gasses, including xenon, which is sometimes used as an anesthetic.
Furtenbach was convinced of its ability to increase the body’s production of erythropoietin, also known as EPO, a hormone naturally produced by human kidneys to stimulate red blood cell production.
“One side effect of using Xenon is that it triggers the body’s EPO production, and that results in an increase of red blood cells in the blood — and that’s the same effect that you have when you are acclimatizing at real altitude,” he added.
Furtenbach told CNN he first tested the effects of gas on himself while summiting Argentina’s 6,961-meter Aconcagua, and one year later took it to Everest to trial with a larger team. At the time of speaking with CNN, he had used xenon five times.
Medical concern
Deaths on Everest can be caused by several factors. Mountaineers venturing above 8,000 meters, or 26,000 feet, in what is known as Everest’s “death zone” are faced with low levels of oxygen.
“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.
This, he explained, can lead to cerebral edema (swelling of the brain) pulmonary edema (fluid accumulation in the lungs), as well as affecting the kidneys, the liver, and the muscles.
In addition to exhaustion and dehydration, mountaineers can also find themselves at risk of avalanches, hypothermia and falling.
Furtenbach’s plan to use xenon for high-altitude expeditions has rattled some cages, including at the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation (The UIAA), which released a statement saying: There is no evidence that breathing in xenon improves performance in the mountains, and inappropriate use can be dangerous.
“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.”
The UIAA warned that as an anesthetic, xenon should be considered a medicine, and could result in “impaired brain function, respiratory compromise, and even death” if used in an unmonitored setting.
“One study showed significant sedation in people using it at doses recommended for mountaineering. Even slight sedation is detrimental in the potentially dangerous setting of high-altitude mountaineering,” it added.
The federation also noted that the substance has been banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) since 2014.