Too Smart to climb Everest Buddy

I don't think Id ever climb Everest. At present I'm not rich enough, or have the necessary experience, but if, say, I won the lottery on Sat (I might have you know, Ive not checked yet) and had the time and money to spare, I still don't think Id risk it. The difference between a good sea level physical challenge and high altitude mountaineering is that you cant prepare for how your body will respond to the extreme altitude. You can train all you want, get to the fittest you've ever been, then train for another 5 years and feel superhuman. It wont matter a jot. Sure, your fitness might help you on the lower slopes, and it will certainly help you recover and make the climbing days easier, but in terms of altitude related sickness it wont help you in the slightest. The two main altitude sickness killers- HACE and HAPE (build up of fluid in the brain and lungs) are thought to be genetically based and currently impossible to test for or predict. Low oxygen in the air makes you breath faster, your vascular system swells and speeds up to get more oxygen round your body, this can lead to a leakage of fluid and very quickly to death. Survival isn't anything to do with your training and preparation, your fitness, age, or anything else, its about your genes, and what methods of dealing with low oxygen your body has hard wired into it.













The reason im sharing this is because I watched the BBC Horizon programme last night called 'Doctors in the Death Zone' where a group of doctors climbed up Everest and conducted experiments on the slopes into the body's response to a lack of oxygen. They took an exercise bike to camp 4 at 7950 m which was an incredible sight- I just wish they had shown it strapped to one of the Sherpas back. They recorded the lowest ever blood oxygen content in a human that was still alive when they took an arterial sample from one of the team at 400m from the summit. It suffered, like most Horizons, from an over the top narration which tried to add more drama and suspense than was necessary, but it was still an amazing piece of work. The photography alone was fantastic. The small screen of YouTube doesn't really do it justice, but the footage of the team reaching the summit was absolutely breathtaking and gave an amazing insight into the challenges facing the climbers. TV like this is brilliant. Look out for it.