They used Xenon to climb Everest in days – is it the future of mountaineering?

Post by nradov » Thu, May 29, 2025, 2:20 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #132

comrade1234 wrote: post #11

So they slept in hypoxia tents which activates the hypoxia-inducible factor molecule, but they also took xenon which also activates the molecule. So, it's not clear if the xenon actually did anything? Back during the 2000 dot-com boom crash I met a guy who got into a top business school in part by writing about the challenges of climbing Everest. He confessed drunkenly at a party to me that he'd never even left the U…

> Back during the 2000 dot-com boom crash I met a guy who got into a top business school in part by writing about the challenges of climbing Everest I met a startup founder in my local community who would always bring up his ambitions to climb Everest. He made sure everyone knew and made it part of his personality. Except, he was very out of shape and undeniably overweight. He was not doing any type of training or fi…

Post by djtango » Thu, May 29, 2025, 2:21 PM UTC

goric wrote: post #143

IMO this climb doesn't really do much to prove of xenon's effectiveness (altitude researcher Dr. Peter Hackett says as much [0]). The team used supplemental oxygen on the climb, with the starting altitude and flow rate not being reported [1]. This is speculative, but if they were using more oxygen than typical and starting at a lower altitude, that's a massive advantage. Further, Andrew Ushakov traveled from NYC to t…

Post by lesuorac » Thu, May 29, 2025, 2:24 PM UTC

hermitcrab wrote: post #80

lm28469 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why bother with xenon? Just inject EPO. As a recreational anything I'd say avoid wrecking your body to make some arbitrary numbers nobody will ever care about go up (or down)

Given that the odds of dying on Everest are so high, a bit of ill-advised drug use seems like a minor concern.

Post by firesteelrain » Thu, May 29, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

Post by RajT88 » Thu, May 29, 2025, 2:34 PM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #166

Aurornis wrote: post #123

Note that these all of these Xenon-Everest stories come back to the same person: Lukas Furtenbach Why? Because he’s launching a business that sells Xenon-assisted Everest tours: https://www.furtenbachadventures.com/ These stories are never about uncovering an underground world of Xenon performance enhancement or discussing the science (which is much less optimistic about Xenon’s benefits). They’re always lazily relay…

That’s some really solid PR work on his part if true, but if he is scaling (pun intended) tours that actually do manage to summit Everest in significantly decreased time, I would say that it’s strong evidence that Xenon actually works and the science just hasn’t caught up to it yet. Unless he has found some other clever way that he is for some reason pretending is Xenon.