Xenon Gas could cut Everest summit times
Climbing to the summit of Mount Everest was once regarded as mountaineering’s ultimate challenge.
However, a team of climbers now plans to scale the world’s highest peak in less time than it takes for a weekend beach trip.
With the help of a controversial xenon gas therapy, these ambitious adventurers aim to complete the round-trip from Heathrow to Everest’s summit in just one week.
If successful, this method could allow time-strapped professionals to fulfill their mountaineering dreams for £124,000 ($150,000), all without missing a Monday meeting.
Standing at nearly 8,850 meters, Everest poses a deadly risk of altitude sickness for those who don’t properly acclimatize.
Traditionally, climbers spend weeks or even months doing gradual ascents and descents—known as rotations—to help their bodies adjust to the thin air.
Yet Austrian mountain guide Lukas Furtenbach believes xenon therapy, a contentious technique banned in professional sports, could eliminate the need for this lengthy process.
A mere 30-minute session inhaling a low dose of xenon gas reportedly stimulates red blood cell production, reducing the usual 10-week expedition to just seven days.
One of the greatest challenges climbers face on Everest is altitude sickness, caused by a lack of oxygen at high elevations.
As oxygen levels decrease, symptoms such as headaches, nausea, and in severe cases, death, can occur without proper acclimatization.
Of the 335 people who have died on the slopes of Everest, around 15 per cent were killed by altitude sickness.
But Mr Furtenbach believes that inhaling small amounts of xenon gas could dodge these complications by letting climbers ‘pre-acclimatise’.
Xenon is an extremely expensive gas normally used as a rocket propellant or an anaesthetic.
But, in addition to its more common applications, lower doses of the gas have a potentially critical side effect.
Breathing the gas triggers the body’s response to ‘hypoxia’, low levels of oxygen, which is to secrete a protein called erythropoietin, or EPO.
EPO is what tells your bone marrow to make more red blood cells which, in turn, increase the body’s oxygen capacity and help to mitigate the effects of altitude.
Traditionally, climbers spend up to 10 weeks slowly introducing their bodies to altitude in order to build up their EPO levels.
But xenon gas therapy could replicate the entire process in just 30 minutes.
On the advice of Michael Fries, an anaesthetist at a hospital in Limburg an der Lahn in western Germany, Mr Furtenbach has already put this bold theory to the test.
In 2020, Mr Furtenbach summited the 6,961-metre peak of Aconcagua in Argentina after pre-acclimatising with a dose of xenon.
‘I climbed a difficult route eight days from leaving Innsbruck, and had no problems on the summit,‘ Mr Furtenbach told the Financial Times.
‘I was standing there, thinking, ‘OK, this really works.’ I was totally convinced.’
For the ultimate test, Mr Furtenbach has now organised a four-person expedition that will use xenon therapy to ‘flash’ Everest in a week.
In total, the team will spend just three days climbing from base camp to the summit before descending on the fourth day.
The team includes pilot Garth Miller, 51, businessmen Kevin Godlington, 49, and Anthony Stazicker, as well as the UK veterans minister Alistair Carns, 44.
Mr Miller says: ‘I’m super-excited to see if we can leave home on a Monday morning, be on the summit of Everest on Thursday night, and make it home for Sunday lunch.’
The crew are all experienced climbers in robust health, but this trip will be like nothing ever before attempted on the world’s tallest mountain.
Since it was first summited by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953, the time taken to reach Everest’s summit has been getting progressively shorter.
According to data collected by the Himalayan Database, the average time from arrival at base camp to the summit has fallen from 60 days in the 1980s to just 25 in 2024.
Some guides, like Mr Furtenbach, already require their customers to pre-acclimatise for weeks prior to the actual trip.
Would-be climbers sleep in hypoxic tents – sealed chambers which suck out the oxygen to simulate oxygen or work out in air-restricting masks.
Mr Furtenbach’s company, Furtenbach Adventures, already offers ‘flash’ trips for £168,000 (€199,000) to summit the mountain in three weeks.
Likewise, Roxanne Vogel used these techniques to break the record for the fastest ascent by climbing Everest in only 14 days.
Xenon gas could reduce those times even further – but the technique is not without controversy.
In 2014, the World Anti-Doping Agency added xenon to the list of banned substances after reports that the gas had been used during the Sochi Winter Olympics.
Yet this would hardly be the first time in the history of mountaineering that climbers have turned to chemical enhancements to gain an edge on the highest peaks.
For example, when Herman Buhl made the first ascent Nanga Parabat in 1953, he did so while taking large quantities of methamphetamine.
Mr Furtenbach maintains that mountaineering is not an organised sport so doping is not an issue.
However, there are serious concerns over the safety of using a relatively untested medical treatment in one of the world’s most extreme environments.
Excessive doses of xenon can lead to dizziness, nausea, vomiting, loss of consciousness, and death.
Critically, xenon poisoning also leads to confusion and errors of judgement which could be fatal during the ascent.
At low oxygen levels, unconsciousness and death can occur within seconds and without warning.
But xenon is regularly used in medicine as an anaesthetic due to its sedative properties and rarely leads to dangerous side effects when applied carefully.
Likewise, the doses taken by the climbers will be very low compared to those used in medicine.
However, Dr Fries, who recommended the treatment, does admit that any untested medical procedure is risky when used in such a dangerous situation.
Additionally, xenon gas has become prohibitively expensive in recent years.
Prices have risen especially high since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which was the world’s largest producer of noble gases.
Mr Furtenbach predicts that it will cost £4,000 ($5,000) to provide xenon for a single climber to pre-acclimatise.
With many already complaining that Mount Everest has become a playground for the rich, Mr Furtenbach says he is prepared for pushback over the use of this controversial gas.
However, whatever other climbers may think, the real test for xenon gas therapy will come when the four climbers embark on their record-breaking expedition later this year.
Mr Miller concludes: ‘You don’t have to suffer to show respect for the mountain, and doing it faster doesn’t make it easier.
‘I would argue that the endeavour is greater. You can’t go higher, so going faster brings new and exciting challenges.’