ARCHIVE – View from an airplane of the Himalayas with Mount Everest. Photo: Sina Schuldt/dpa
Keystone
From London to the summit of Mount Everest and back in seven days – four British Army veterans have climbed to the top of the world’s highest mountain without weeks of acclimatization. They reached the summit of the 8,849-metre-high Everest on Wednesday morning, said expedition organizer Lukas Furtenbach. They were descending in good weather conditions.
Xenon as a performance-enhancing agent
The four veterans Garth Miller, Alistair Carns, Anthony Stazicker and Kevin Godlington used new methods for their project, in which the inert gas xenon plays a role as a performance-enhancing agent. The climbers were administered xenon in a clinic in Germany a few weeks before their expedition, said Furtenbach. “It protects the body, improves acclimatization and makes climbing safe.”
The inert gas causes the hormone erythropoietin to be released in the body. EPO intake is prohibited in sport and is considered doping. The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) added the noble gases xenon and argon to its list of banned substances in 2014.
Controversial action
According to reports in the Washington Times, the four climbers flew from London to Kathmandu on Friday to climb to the summit of Everest from the Nepalese side. They then boarded a helicopter that took them to the base camp at over 5,360 meters. From there, they climbed to the summit. According to the newspaper, the project is controversial in the mountaineering community because of the use of xenon.
According to the organizer Furtenbach Adventures, a conventional Everest expedition takes about two months for most mountaineers. Thanks to modern technology, however, it is possible to climb the mountain in just three weeks.
The four men had previously described their trip as an attempt at a speed ascent in record time. One of their goals was to raise one million pounds (around 1.2 million euros) in donations to support charities.