The British team, which aims to complete an Everest expedition in seven days “door to door,” is ready to start the countdown from London’s Heathrow Airport on Friday.
Garth Miller, Alastair Carns, Anthony Stazicker, and Kev Godlington have completed their hypoxic training while at their jobs (Carns is a Member of Parliament). Presumably, they have taken the Xenon gas therapy as planned to increase the production of EPO in their blood. This will largely substitute for the long natural acclimatization process that climbers typically follow by going up lesser peaks or doing rotations up and down the mountain.
Instead, the four men will fly to Kathmandu, helicopter to Base Camp, and start climbing immediately. Furtenbach Adventures has several teams on the mountain, all the camps well supplied, and plenty of support staff. Lukas Furtenbach shared no details about this expedition’s logistics or tactics but told ExplorersWeb he would provide the safest climb possible for his pioneering clients.
Once they start, the expedition will also share a link to track their progress live.
X-Men
The expedition is officially called 7 Days Mission Everest and the four members are all British Army veterans. Since the unusual approach made worldwide news, they have been known as the “Everest Xenon climbers.”
Furtenbach and some of his guides have tested the inert gas with good results on previous climbs, such as on Aconcagua. The expedition leader insists Xenon is just another method to guarantee a safe, fast climb, no different from specific gear or oxygen. He strongly disagrees with the debate around the ethics of using a substance prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency in professional sports. Furtenbach argues that the qualification does not apply to non-competitive sports such as mountaineering.
The team, meanwhile, has kept a low profile in mainstream media. This will surely change if they succeed in their objective of summiting in a week, and also if they don’t.
