Sunrise on Mount Everest (in fall 2019)
Faster than the flash? Lukas Furtenbach is already calling one of his offers “Flash Expeditions”. For around 100,000 euros, the Austrian has been offering clients of his company Furtenbach Adventures the chance to climb Mount Everest in three weeks – with several weeks of hypoxia training at home, a helicopter shuttle to the mountain, two personal climbing sherpas for support and the use of bottled oxygen at a high flow rate. A conventional Everest expedition, which the company also has in its portfolio, lasts six weeks, others up to ten weeks. In the upcoming Everest spring season, Furtenbach now wants to do the whole thing in just one week. Can that work?
By helicopter to base camp and directly onto the route
According to a report in the Financial Times, four British mountaineers are to inhale the inert gas xenon under medical supervision after arriving in Kathmandu. They are then to be flown by helicopter to Everest Base Camp and set off straight for the summit with their Sherpas. After a three-day ascent to the summit at 8,849 meters and a one-day descent, they will return to Kathmandu by helicopter and then return home.
After a week, the Brits could be back at their desks at home. They still pay an introductory price of an undisclosed amount. In future, such a short trip to Everest will cost around 150,000 euros.
No more rotations
Xenon has been used in medicine as an anaesthetic for more than 70 years; in Germany, it was first used in a surgery in 2010. Anesthesia with xenon (mixed with oxygen) is considered to be very gentle, but also expensive. However, the gas not only has a soporific effect. Xenon also causes the kidneys to produce more EPO by leaps and bounds. This results in significantly more red blood cells – which are needed at high altitudes to cope with hypoxia, the lack of oxygen in the body.
Just once through the Western Cwm, the “Valley of Silence” and back?
Normally, this is achieved by means of extensive acclimatization, by approaching higher and higher altitudes. These “rotations” – ascents to higher and higher camps, then descents back to base camp – are to be made superfluous by the use of xenon.
Under the supervision of an anaesthetist
Furtenbach received the xenon tip years ago from Dr. Michael Fries, Head Physician for Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine at St. Vincenz Hospital in the German town of Limburg an der Lahn. Furtenbach played the “guinea pig” himself, testing xenon in 2020 on Aconcagua, the highest mountain in South America, and later also on Everest – with success, as he says. He has no reservations about using the noble gas with clients.
Lukas Furtenbach
“The treatment is carried out by an anesthetist in a clinical setting,” Lukas writes to me. “There is no health risk. What’s more, there are no known adverse health effects from xenon. And after all, it has been used as an anesthetic since the 1950s and has been extensively researched and medically approved.”
According to Furtenbach, “only a fraction of the amount of xenon administered during normal anesthesia” is required to achieve the desired effect. He does not want to disclose the exact mixing ratio of xenon and oxygen and how long it has to be inhaled, “because our competitors are always watching us and trying to copy everything we do that is new.”
“We are obviously doing a lot of things right”
The lucrative Everest expedition market is highly competitive and is now dominated – at least in the lower price segment – by Nepalese operators. Furtenbach Adventures is one of the few foreign companies that has held its own in the sometimes fierce competition: with a range of services that is not cheap, but of high quality, as Furtenbach emphasizes. “The same high standards of health, fitness and mountain experience apply to all our clients, whether Classic, Flash or now the new variant,” says Lukas. “We are the only Everest operator that has never had an accident and we have by far the best success rate in the industry. We are obviously doing a lot of things right.”
On the doping list
Xenon has been on the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)’s list of banned substances since 2014. At the time, it became known that athletes in Russia had been inhaling the inert gas across the country to boost their performance. I ask Furtenbach whether he is supporting doping on the mountain with the use of xenon – a problem on Everest that is often hushed up anyway. He doesn’t want to take the blame that.
Infirmary at Everest Base Camp
“There are many substances and practices on the WADA list that are regularly consumed or practiced by many mountaineers. Even hypoxia tents were on the banned list in Italy until 2024. And the FIS (World Ski and Snowboard Federation) has (bottled) oxygen on the banned list, for example, and WADA is considering following suit,” Lukas replies.
“It’s also about the intended use. Dexamethasone is also on the WADA banned list. Does that mean I can’t use it on an expedition if I develop cerebral edema? We use this xenon treatment to prevent high altitude sickness, high-altitude pulmonary edema and high-altitude cerebral edema. As an additional acclimatization. Not to improve performance. In addition, we are not involved in competitive sport. So by definition, no doping.”
And the mountain experience?
But even if you leave aside all the sport ethical and other concerns – doesn’t a trip to Mount Everest lasting just one week also mean that the mountain experience falls by the wayside? Lukas Furtenbach answers with two counter questions: “Where is the mountain experience in an eight-week expedition when compared to a six-month expedition from the 1920s? Is the value of the mountain experience a question of the duration of the expedition?”
