Acclimatize in bed, reach summit in half the time
KATHMANDU, Nepal — As other Qomolangma hopefuls were trudging up to base camp in April, Singapore-based Brooks Entwistle was at home, planning his daughter’s 13th birthday party and preparing for his company’s annual general meeting. But at night he would climb into a hypoxic, or low oxygen, tent meant to mimic the thin air at high altitude. Now on Qomolangma (known in the West as Mount Everest), Entwistle, a partner with Singapore’s Everstone Group, is hoping to summit the world’s highest peak in just 35 days — half the time of a conventional climb. For decades, the dream of reaching the summit of Qomolangma has required at least two months on the mountain doing a series of acclimatization rotations to get used to the harsh low-oxygen environment at the top of the world. Now pre-acclimatization, which has been at the fringes of the climbing world for several years, is gaining traction, dividing the community between those who see it as yet another tool of modern mountaineering and purists who dismiss it as a gimmick. An increasing number of expedition organizers are offering “rapid ascent” packages that allow clients to pre-acclimatize in a tent at home before zipping up the world’s tallest peaks in just a few weeks. Entwistle and climbers with at least two other operators are attempting to summit Qomolangma after using the tents, each paying between $75,000 and $85,000, more than double the cheapest rates to scale the peak the conventional way. Adrian Ballinger of Al pen glow Exp editions, who took one client up Qomolangma in 2013 using the system and another four last year, said: “People are actually healthier on the climb because they don’t spend so much time on the mountain.” But expedition operator Simon Lowe is a vocal critic of the method, saying it only gets results because companies provide climbers with much more supplemental oxygen than on a conventional climb. That brings its own problems, requiring Sherpa guides to make repeated risky climbs to leave additional oxygen bottles for the climbers to collect during their ascent, while also resulting in more empty canisters left on the mountainside. “If you extend this to everybody, it will be a disaster. They (pre-acclimatized climbers) won’t have the flexibility to respond to Everest and its weather and will take risks putting everyone in danger,” Lowe said.