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Xenon and the Future of Big Mountain Expeditions with Lukas Furtenbach
4.1k Plays7 days ago
In this podcast episode, Lukas Furtenbach, founder of Furtenbach Adventures, and Steve House discuss Lukas’ work in high-altitude expedition mountaineering. They discuss the development of hypoxic pre-acclimatization techniques and how technologies like xenon gas are being used to reduce expedition durations. The conversation addresses the ethical debates around these technologies, commercialization of Everest, and the reasons behind Lukas’ decision to utilize xenon gas in a ground breaking expedition beginning in May. This is part two in the Uphill Athlete podcast series surrounding the discussion of the use of xenon in mountaineering.
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Transcript
Rethinking Mountaineering Risks
00:00:00
Speaker
There's no other sport, or at least I'm not aware of any other sport, where the acceptance of individual risk to die is so high as in Monteneer.
00:00:10
Speaker
It's even glorified. And I think it's just outdated.
Innovations in Expedition Safety
00:00:24
Speaker
Welcome. Today, i'm happy to welcome Lukas Fortenbach to the podcast. Welcome, Lukas. and know Thank you for having me Of course. It's my pleasure.
00:00:36
Speaker
Lucas is a very well-known mountain guide and the founder and CEO of Fortenbach Adventures. His company has redefined, I would say, high-altitude expedition guiding through innovation, but always with a very strong commitment to the safety of their climbers.
00:00:53
Speaker
Over the past years, two decades now, his expeditions have achieved an extraordinary tap track record, including a rare zero fatality history on Mount Everest.
Hypoxic Conditioning: Safety and Ethics
00:01:05
Speaker
Lucas has pioneered techniques like hypoxic conditioning and is now exploring the use of xenon gas for acclimatization, which potentially makes it possible for climbers to attempt to climb Everest in ever shorter times, faster times.
00:01:21
Speaker
However, these innovations, of course, raise questions about safety, ethics, and the evolving nature of modern mountaineering. Today, i want to dig into this with Lucas, get his insights into the future of high-altitude guiding, as well as the wider role of science and technology in the mountains. So, Lucas, welcome to the podcast.
00:01:43
Speaker
Thank you very much. I just want to remind our listeners that we are sharing Lucas's voice and knowledge today to deepen our understanding of ourselves in the mountains. And at Uphill Athlete, our mission is to make the profound experiences that we've personally had in the mountains accessible to more people, much like Lucas does through his guiding.
00:02:02
Speaker
If our work has inspired you, please consider joining one of our training groups, following a training plan, or working with one of our coaches. Your support helps us sustain this work and empowers you to unlock the full potential of your mountain experiences.
00:02:15
Speaker
So, Lukas, let's start off by, ah can you just tell me what hypoxic conditioning is and why it's helpful for high altitude climbing? So in a nutshell, hypoxic conditioning or we call it hypopoxic preacclimatti is using tent with a generator that is simulating the oxygen level of a higher altitude.
00:02:37
Speaker
So you simulate altitude and you trigger the same processes in your body to start with and but a climatization, adapting to this lower oxygen level that would also happen in real altitudes.
00:02:53
Speaker
How is the simulated altitude achieved? How does it how does it work? So these ah generators, they have a filter built in a zeolite filter and can filter oxygen out of the environment air.
00:03:06
Speaker
And then either with a mask or a tent, a sleeping tent or just a head tent, make an atmosphere with this lower oxygen level that correlates to a certain altitude and this certain altitude and oxygen level can be set on on the generator.
00:03:26
Speaker
Okay, so you're not changing the pressure in the tent or at the mast, you're changing the relative availability of oxygen. Yeah, so these systems are all in normal barric hypoxic systems, so the pressure stays the same.
00:03:41
Speaker
It's not changing the pressure to the levels that we have in high altitude, but as what is known and in high altitude medicine so far is that the oxygen level is the component that that is important to trigger the acclimatization processes in your body and not pressure.
00:04:02
Speaker
And ah how did you start using this kind of, um ah technically I think it's called a normal barric hypoxic conditioning, a normal barric hypoxic pre-acclimatization, as you say.
00:04:15
Speaker
How did you come to start using this? What's your personal history with it and the history with it in regards to guiding and the greater ranges? So I started using this...
00:04:27
Speaker
normal bi-carboxy climatizing in 2000 two thousand 2000 or 2001 for a research study at the University of Innsbruck with Professor Martin Bolcher, who was one of the leader leading researchers in this field.
00:04:45
Speaker
And I got there as a test person and I found out that the first use of the first time I could use this this hypoxic pre-acclimatizing at the university in the laboratory, so the mobile systems have not been ready back then um I found out that it works perfectly well for my expeditions, for my private expeditions, my personal expeditions. I was very surprised how how good my acclimatization was. I had the comparison to real altitude a traditional acclimatization.
00:05:22
Speaker
and So I i started to to work with these systems and then soon the the mobile systems, like mobile generators with tents and masks came out.
Hypoxic Systems and Expedition Success
00:05:34
Speaker
<unk> Actually, they first came out for cyclists to make out a form of of high altitude training during the races. man And these mobile systems were a game changer. So you don't have to go to a university or clinic to a hypoxic chamber.
00:05:54
Speaker
You could do it at your home with just a system that costs maybe including all accessories $5,000 and it's 25 kilograms, 50 pounds. And you have the whole setup to simulate altitudes up to, if you want, up to 9,000 meters.
00:06:11
Speaker
and So I started using these systems for all in my personal expeditions. We started using to just to get experience with it, data. My friends started using it.
00:06:26
Speaker
just to see if it works the first sp came out in 2005 and 2006 I guess it was. And then in 2007 for the first expeditions in Pakistan and Tibet 2006-2007 we started using it for the whole team, for the whole group in our expeditions.
00:06:45
Speaker
And we could see that it's not only working for me or other people that are in altitude a couple of times every year. But also for regular clients that have one altitude exposure per year maximum and that haven't spent so much time in altitude before.
00:07:02
Speaker
We could see that the acclimatization is, if i would I would go as far as saying the same quality as a traditional acclimatization, but even better, people and recovered. They didn't waste energy on doing rotations on the mountain.
00:07:22
Speaker
So what from the beginning we could see that people who used hypoxic system for acclimatization performed better on the summit days.
00:07:34
Speaker
For example, after the summit coming down as far as possible is important for us as a guiding company. We want everyone as slowed down as possible if if you say everest after therummit we want everyone back in Camp 2 at 6,400 on the same day. That's a long way down.
00:07:53
Speaker
People who use hypoxic pre-acclimatization and have to not done the rotations on the mountain have been significantly better performing on the descent after summiting.
00:08:04
Speaker
That was the first eye-opener for me. and And I said, okay, it makes a difference, a huge difference. So we started... further exploring the possibilities if we can not only use it for in enhancing our acclimatization but maybe also make the the duration of the expedition shorter.
00:08:30
Speaker
Shifting one part of the acclimatization process from the mountain to our home. And in the this In this time, 2000 years, it was very new, this idea. like People have been acclimatizing on other mountains, climbing this mountain and then going to an 8000 meter peak and doing a faster sand. This was not new.
00:08:50
Speaker
But shifting the acclimatization process in your bedroom was new. and There was very little experience with that and and very little data and very little studies.
00:09:01
Speaker
So we just tried and went further and further. Martin Bocha from the University of Innsbruck was very supportive and helpful in in this time and and he he developed all the acclimatization programs with us.
00:09:15
Speaker
ae we we started to make expeditions shorter by making the... climb and that's maybe wrong to say the expedition the expeditions didn't become shorter it's just that the location of the expedition changed or shifted from Nepal to your home country a so when a traditional shore you expedition let's say in this time was eight weeks we said okay let's do three or four weeks sort of of hypoxic sleeping at home and then make the expedition only four or five weeks so it's the same the same duration at the end but the location of the acclimatization went home with all the benefits it has it means less rotations on the mountain it means being with your family being at the job being at home when you have an infection and getting sick you just open the ten and You are at at sea level again.
00:10:14
Speaker
You can recover faster. You can eat better. ah You save energy. my And of course, you have less exposure time in a dangerous environment. and And this is when it became important. for us as a guiding company, because as a guiding company, we have ah a moral, but also a legal, more important, a legal obligation for the safety of our clients.
00:10:36
Speaker
So everything we can do to make an expedition safer, we have to do. It would be a legal problem for for us if there is a possibility to make an expedition safer and we would not use it. This is another reason why, for example, we can't let our climbers climb without oxygen on
Revolutionizing Everest Expeditions
00:10:56
Speaker
Everest. It's a legal problem. um Even if we we wanted it to, it's not possible for a guiding company.
00:11:04
Speaker
that But, yeah, again, but we started to to explore what is possible. And... Already back then we could see that the potential, that we we could were thinking that one day we we will be able to to have the full acclimatization process, including rotations, including high camp nights, at home.
00:11:31
Speaker
so that if you fly or, however, reach a mountain only to do the final summit push.
00:11:40
Speaker
We started in Pakistan on ah mountains like Broadbeak or in Tibet on mountains like Choyu and then
00:11:51
Speaker
used this approach on Everest only in when we had our first Everest expedition, in that was 2016. We didn't touch Everest because everyone the Everest market and the Everest guiding landscape was so competitive with with people like
00:12:11
Speaker
IMG, Alpanasense, companies that have been guiding there for for years or decades and famous guides and so we couldn't see how we could enter this market but with and I personally had never an ambition to climb Mount Everest so so in in two thousand and said, okay, this would be maybe our step into the Everest riding market.
00:12:41
Speaker
But if we do it, we do it different. but We try to make a short expedition. the The experience with hypoxic pre-acclimatizing we had from Pakistan and Tibet, we bring it to Everest and we try to make an Everest expedition in six weeks.
00:12:54
Speaker
Six weeks was revolutionary in 2016 for an Everest expedition that average Everest expedition was 8 to 10 weeks so 6 weeks was pretty and progressive but we said okay we can do this we did a whole team pre-acclimatizing at home with hypoxic system. We flew to Mara Peak with a helicopter.
00:13:21
Speaker
We climbed Mara Peak. It's a 6,000 or 22,000 feet mountain close to Everest in the Kumbu Valley. ae To do a safety rotation there,
00:13:31
Speaker
to see if the hypoxic pre-acclimatizing worked for everyone because everyone was watching us. It's our first Everest expedition. and It was, yeah, difficult. lot of pressure. Yeah, a lot of pressure.
00:13:43
Speaker
It went well and on Island Peak. From there, we went in into Everest base camp and we climbed Everest with the whole team. We had one guy not summiting. It was a doctor and he was afraid of his hands because of cold fingers.
00:13:57
Speaker
But the rest of the team summited and... And ah it was less than six weeks. So it was for us, at least, our proof of concept. And we knew immediately, OK, two things, two learnings.
00:14:09
Speaker
We have to move to the north side, to China, because it's a mess in Nepal. And the second learning was we can do it much faster than six weeks. So next year, we moved to China, to the north side.
00:14:23
Speaker
where and everything is more restricted and regulated than on the Nepalese side. The Chinese implemented a monitoring program, so as a new guiding company you had to go through a monitoring program of of two or three seasons so that the the authorities can check how you operate, how you run your expeditions, if you have accidents, in doing how your clients perform, are they experienced, or do you bring anyone to the mountain.
00:14:52
Speaker
and It went well in 2017 and we already had this project of one guide of us climbing the mountain in two weeks from home.
00:15:04
Speaker
It didn't work out at the end because it became sick in and in base camp with the flu. So we stopped it for safety concerns, but we could see that logistics would work and acclimatization was perfect we then the expedition was four weeks everyone summited everyone was healthy back down in base camp and then we said okay this is the new benchmark will be a three weeks 21 days expedition for Everest that we launched in the in the year in the summer from 2017 for 2018 first time or we called it a flash expedition because we needed a name some of our competitors already had names for this form of expedition we called it a flash expedition and
00:15:52
Speaker
we When we launched this idea, or did this this this product, let's say we were sold out for the next two years, within two weeks. ah So the market was waiting for this expedition.
00:16:06
Speaker
And you can say you like it or you don't like it. and and you lose some of the of the experience if your expedition is that short but for many people eight or nine weeks is just not an option because of the family business job whatever when we launched this expedition we had immediate a lot of criticism like it is what we were called like we are killing we will be killing people it won't work nobody will some
00:16:38
Speaker
it is stoppping it is cheating it is but the the same things that that are coming now with the new CEO and stuff, and the same voices, by the way. But yeah, he proved them wrong in the following year, 2018. Again, a full team, everyone summited, and it was exactly 21 days. So it was a full success.
00:17:03
Speaker
and we could see yeah possible. We can do this even quicker. But still we said, okay, as a product to sell to clients, we need this 21 days because this involves some spare days for weather, for politics, for whatever can happen, route fixing problems.
Challenges and Developments in Hypoxic Conditioning
00:17:24
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I want to share um my experience with hypoxic conditioning because as we both know, like we we're about the same age and so we came up really close to the same time both as mountain guides and but also as as climbers. and you know i has I tried hypoxic conditioning in 2003 for the first time, slept in the tent at my home at the time ah before an expedition to Mashabrum.
00:17:54
Speaker
and I didn't notice, honestly, like an an effect. and i really and I decided that the reason was that it had taken too long to get from and and You remember, like I was climbing with a couple of Slovenian guys.
00:18:12
Speaker
our total budget for all three people, including airfares, was $8,000. We're food the markets. you know shopping for our own food in the markets like you know so we don't quite have like um It took us 14 days, and I think you'll agree, like it it was just too long between the last session and the tenth and getting to getting to base camp. right like and I realized that that was too much time.
00:18:37
Speaker
and i was like, okay, that was an experiment. Then the next year, i tried it going up to Alaska, going to Denali. um Had a similar problem that time, but for a different reason. We just couldn't fly onto the mountain, and we had to wait until Keetna for quite a number of days.
00:18:52
Speaker
And again, like got up on the mountain, went straight up to 14, and felt pretty much like I always felt when I went straight up 14. And thought, okay, well, the this doesn't work. But I didn't know that I really could not separate it between, is it just the time, the I'm losing all the pre-acclimatization effects by the travel and the bad logistics, or is it just not working with me? i didn't really know.
00:19:22
Speaker
And I think it's really interesting because what you had a very different position, I would say, that is very advantageous for sort of uncovering these um these correlations.
00:19:33
Speaker
which is that you were going to relatively, not if not the same mountains, like quite similar mountains with similar logistics, with similar altitudes, with similar people. You were iterating on that pretty fast. right so For me, it was like as a struggling you know professional climber barely scraping by, it was like, man, this is kind of a big expense.
00:19:57
Speaker
It's not really helping because every time I get stuck with logistics, it takes too long. So I'm just not going to do it anymore. Right. and And that was sort of the end of my um my investigation. Of course, I watched as, you know, you and other people started doing this. And as a mountain guide and knowing the community, like I was I was I was absolutely paying attention to that and watching these developments. was very curious to see see how it would would work.
00:20:24
Speaker
But I personally never really used it. We tried when we started coaching when an uphill athlete was started in 2016, we started coaching athletes. we were sometimes getting athletes that wanted to use this. But the problem was that I didn't have, we internally didn't have the expertise like we at that time. We didn't know, if it was one of your climbers that was climbing with you, you're you're managing that with with the climber directly, right? Like if they're you're telling them what altitude to sleep at, and of course the coach was looped in so they knew what that how to how to manage the the training and recovery around that additional stressor of sleeping at ah
00:21:03
Speaker
at a simulated high altitude, but um we didn't know what the right, I guess, dosage, I mean, it sounds like a medical term, but what the right dose and what the right timing was with the altitude. And so, you know, and we didn't really have that internally until the last few years. And I think that a couple of things have really changed in the last few years. One, it's enough time has gone by where you and others have done this enough times where it's like,
00:21:33
Speaker
Oh, okay. Yeah. like For example, like you know I coached Roxanne Vogel. who was our Actually, I didn't coach her. Was I coaching her then? I did coach her for a while. I can't remember if I was coaching her or if Seth was coaching her.
00:21:47
Speaker
But Uphill Athlete was coaching her at the time she went and did the two-week a round trip of Everest with one of your competitors as the guide. But nevertheless, it was like, okay, like she went from San Francisco And granted, she's an absolute beast of an athlete. She's an incredible athlete and can, uh, but it's like, okay, she did that. Like, it's obvious that there's something here that's working.
00:22:12
Speaker
We just didn't know what it was. And then as, after that, that really triggered it and, you know, bringing on some additional coaches, like, uh, our current director of coaching, Chantel Robitaille specifically in this area has a tremendous, uh, personal interest in this as well.
00:22:27
Speaker
So then we started to have enough, like, a gather enough of this internal information as the coaching team to start to understand what the dosages needs should be, what the timing needs to be, you know and also looking at it from our perspective of like how does that how do we integrate the training stimulus and the recovery prescription within the context of pre-acclimatization protocols.
00:22:53
Speaker
And that really, in the last, like I'd say really... A year ago, it really gelled. And we're like, okay, we know how this works now. We understand it. We've been around it enough.
00:23:04
Speaker
Also, I think you and others have really helped us understand these the dosage and timing is actually like, it's not a, um how do I say this? it's it's it's not a it's It's something that you requires a pretty fine touch.
00:23:20
Speaker
You can't just like go sleep in the tent a bunch. you You have to really know what you're doing. and it's It's much like training. When you apply a stress, you do it not to torture the person. You do it to an i elicit a physiological response from the body. and With these these applying the pre-acclimatization stress, you need to do it very quite precisely.
00:23:45
Speaker
and in the right order. you need to do the right things in the right order at the right time. and It takes quite a lot to learn that. and You've known that. You're kind of the pioneer of that, but others of us have have now kind of caught up and figured it out. and but I think part of it, there's there's a bunch of reasons why guys like me didn't figure this out and guys like you did. because you You had you know this this captured group of people that you could regularly go to the same place, you you could you could do these tests, and you were you were experimenting. You were developing. You were developing you're innovating. You were like, okay, well, that seemed like too much. What about this?
00:24:22
Speaker
It's the classic way that innovation is made in sports physiology as well. is like the The innovations never come from the laboratories. It's almost always the other way around, where where coaches and athletes experiment and fiddle and start to see things and kind of follow their noses.
00:24:40
Speaker
and Then like something works, we're not really exactly sure why, and then later the scientists can come and be like, okay, this is when you do this, this is what's happening, therefore there must be a causality.
00:24:53
Speaker
Yeah, I totally agree. but That's a good point. ae ah especially that there was one finding and and one learning and it was a hard ah hard way of learning this over years with many with many failures and and that that you have to follow ah you let's start like this acclimatization is very individual so like hundred plan You will acclimatize different to me. And and so it's it's different from every person.
00:25:25
Speaker
ae So, of course, the acclimatization schedule or protocol is also different. as A standard acclimatization, as we see in traditional expeditions, are tracking. to base camp then doing rotations and that's where an itinerary for a whole group.
00:25:41
Speaker
It might work for for the most of of most of the group but not for all. Yeah, the middle of the boundary. Yeah, so that's one reason why we still see so many people failing on traditional expeditions with developing any form of altitude sickness or even hape or haze.
00:26:01
Speaker
Yeah. So the crux or the that the point was our most important learning was to use individualized protocols to understand that every person acclimatizes differently. It needs a different protocol for sleeping in the tent, a different progress of sleeping altitude, a different amount of total hours spent in an average altitude.
00:26:25
Speaker
a We have different responders. we have responders that are more responding over SpO2 and we have responders that are more responding with their heart rate in different stages of the acclimatization process.
00:26:39
Speaker
You have to consider all of that. So only someone with experience or a perfect data pool is able to individualize your acclimatization protocol with a hypoxic attempt.
00:26:54
Speaker
That's also a reason why we can see so many do-it-yourself hypoxic acclimatization
00:27:02
Speaker
or comparedors that up just trying with standard front the cost because they don't understand how it works. And then their clients arrive in base camp get taken. And they're flying out with a helicopter the next morning.
00:27:15
Speaker
yeah And that's a problem for us. this well because then people see this and think oh it doesn't work these people have been using hypoxic trends for prelialism And still they get head hate in base camp.
00:27:27
Speaker
But I can say that never, ever, any of our clients, and we have a lot now, have developed hate after a fast approach to base camp.
00:27:38
Speaker
I want to shift the conversation now to...
Exploring Xenon Gas for Acclimatization
00:27:42
Speaker
your latest innovation that is, you know as you pointed out, turning out to be very controversial, and that is the use of xenon treatments for pre-acclimatization.
00:27:54
Speaker
and i want to just frame this up quickly for people that, well, this is, I think, the main sort of, I guess, allegation, if that's the right word, or criticism,
00:28:08
Speaker
is that this is some sort of you know short-cutting of the process or it's doping or something like that. you alluded to those criticisms earlier.
00:28:21
Speaker
I want to call out that you know they they once did a study and they tested the urine in the toilets um that causeds me cut you know about this right in and They found the whole spectrum of performance-enhancing drugs.
00:28:38
Speaker
in that so so so climbers have been trying to dope for a long time. i mean the It goes back as old as the history of of mountaineering where you know people climbers is used performance-enhancing substances, or at least what they thought were performance-enhancing substances like methamphetamines and and other things, way back like in you know the the first ascents of many of these 8,000-meter peaks.
00:29:05
Speaker
I'm not saying that makes it right or makes it wrong. I'm saying that we need to recognize that this it's humans searching for pharmacological or technological aids to help them do what they want to do, climb these mountains, is is nothing new. and To your point,
00:29:25
Speaker
You are providing a service and that if you can allow someone to achieve a dream with ah less but less time commitment or rather by shifting the the duration of the acclimatization, for example, more to their health.
00:29:41
Speaker
bedroom at home and less ah and spend less time away from their businesses and their families and so on. Um, that, that, you know, there's people that, that want to do that. Part of my aim here with this podcast is not to tell anyone how to think, right? Like I want to, you know, you to have a platform to share your thoughts.
00:30:01
Speaker
I want to be able to share my thoughts and our listeners are intelligent people. They can come up with their own, own opinions and decisions and then, and will tell us you know eventually what they think, which is part of what's what's great about this this format.
00:30:16
Speaker
So let's go to xenon. First of all, what is xenon gas? Where does it come from? And what are the physiological benefits of it as especially particularly as it regards to a commoditization?
00:30:31
Speaker
yeah so it It is important because there has been so much misunderstandings in in media and in the recent two weeks that I think it's important to to give this context.
00:30:43
Speaker
Thenon is a noble gas that is part of our atmosphere, that we that every one of us is breathing every day. You can, with a technical system, you can extract.
00:30:59
Speaker
you can extract Xenon from the atmosphere and then you have Xenon as a medical gas that is used in medicine and anesthesia for more than 75 years now.
00:31:13
Speaker
It is ah a very safe, very well researched gas with very little side effects. One side effect is that you can get a little bit dizzy. Of course you can get I'm cautious. it's it's an It's used for anesthesia, for surgery.
00:31:33
Speaker
But it is considered a very safe medical guess. A lot of research going on right now with Xenon in the field of eye timer research and Parkinson and different other forms because Xenon has some side effects.
00:31:53
Speaker
One of them is it is... neuro cardio protective for example. but Another one is, it and that was found out by coincidence, it triggers your own body's EPO production.
00:32:11
Speaker
So, and that is one misunderstanding, we are not working with synthetic ah epo as a substance that is injected like we all know it from the cyclis around Lance Armstrong in this area.
00:32:26
Speaker
This has nothing to do with this. So it's it triggers EPOC production in your body. So that's and a natural process. And the same process is triggered when you are either in real altitude or in simulated altitude.
00:32:42
Speaker
Xenon is just one other way to trigger this process. And let's call it one of the processes that is um that that is making and adapting to a lower oxygen level.
00:32:56
Speaker
EPO in your body is, is and I put this very simple because i'm I'm not a doctor, I'm not a researcher, so EPO in your body is responsible for the production of red blood cells.
00:33:09
Speaker
So ultimately this will increase your hematocrit. This is the same thing that happens when you are acclimatized in real altitude or in simulated altitude.
00:33:20
Speaker
We use xenon as one form of a wider acclimatization strategy that consists of hypoxic sleeping protocol, active hypoxic training, intermittent hypoxic training, and the xenon treatment.
00:33:37
Speaker
We found out that the xenon treatment is enhancing your acclimatization. We are not using it for enhancing performance because this is something that we still don't know if this is really happening.
00:33:49
Speaker
there are some studies that implement there would be an increased performance after a xenon treatment. That's also one of the reasons why it is on on the international list of of prohibited substances from the International Anti-Doping Agency.
00:34:09
Speaker
But this is not our intention of using it and the intention is to have and enhanced acclimatization with the goal of a safer expedition.
00:34:21
Speaker
we are not It became now big in the media, a big story because we are telling this story, this Xenon story related to a one week expedition. alright It was the the missing link for us to to go out with a one... It was always ah an idea of mine to have a seven day Everest expedition, seven days from home to home.
00:34:44
Speaker
I think from logistics it's it's absolutely possible for a fit climber who can also maybe skip one or the other camp. and But to make sure that yeah traumatization we didn't want to cheat on this. We didn't want to let someone climb somewhere else in in Argentina or anywhere and then fly to Nepal and climb Everest in a week.
00:35:07
Speaker
we We wanted to have it right, like the full acclimatization process at home in Europe or in US and then from home to the mountain and back within seven days just to show that it's possible. It will never be a big market for this but just to show where is possible with with with these forms of acclimatization like intermittent hypoxic training, active hypoxic training and and hypoxic sleeping protocol, we were very confident that this is doable.
00:35:40
Speaker
But and we still had this idea that we need Just a safety backup. India climatization. We have a lot of safety backups on the mountain.
00:35:51
Speaker
We have a ah very good safety infrastructure on the mountain with oxygen everywhere, with redundancy and oxygen systems everywhere. At any time climber is on mountain.
00:36:04
Speaker
But still we needed a backup for the acclimatization. And Xenon was the missing link. as We have been experimenting. and We did the same as with the hypoxic 10s 20 years ago.
00:36:17
Speaker
we were There's not much data. There's not much scientific studies. That's true. So we started to do it ourselves. Just test trial and error. But it worked so well from the beginning then we say okay this this must have a lot of potential. we've We widened the circle of people who were testing it and it worked so well for every single person who who was trying and to use it that we had finally, we said last year in 24, when I climbed Everest using only xenon acclimatization, nothing else, no hypoxic, no intermittent hypoxic, training nothing else, just the xenon.
00:37:01
Speaker
And that was for the second time on Everest. I did this on other mountains and it worked so perfectly well. So now you can say it's because my body maybe spent so much time in high altitude that just the altitude memory is is ah adapting faster, and more efficient, whatever. Maybe I don't need any acclimatization at all anymore.
00:37:23
Speaker
But
00:37:25
Speaker
For myself, i had ah I could compare my experiences, how it feels arriving there and climbing the mountain with a xenon acclimatization compared to a hypoxic acclimatization and compared to a traditional acclimatization.
00:37:42
Speaker
right I had all these experiences, so I knew it for me. But of course, that's not enough to sell it to a client. That's why... We are going to sell it as ah as as one part of the acclimatization only.
00:37:57
Speaker
But not only for the seven day expedition, we will of course offer this for everyone climbing Everest or any 8000 meter peak just as an enhancer for your acclimatization.
00:38:08
Speaker
Okay. I want to take a ah short um side note into sort of what we know about the science of how xenon works. particularly as it would affect in endurance training generally, because I think that there's, it's ah as you mentioned, it's a lot of banned substance.
00:38:26
Speaker
It was Xeon gas and bottles were found at the Sochi Olympics. And, you know, there's a whole story there if people want to dig into that.
00:38:37
Speaker
ah Most of the research around this that is published is coming from Russia. There are some... I'd say questions about whether or not some of those results are either overstated or understated.
00:38:54
Speaker
That's another topic. But again, as I ah as i said earlier, you know the innovation usually comes from practice and then it gets kind of verified by science later in most of these cases.
00:39:05
Speaker
So here's what we know. We know that um Xenon affects a key mechanism. involved in stabilizing a protein and that is called HIF-1alpha.
00:39:18
Speaker
So HIF stands for hypoxia-inducible factors, and then there's they been they give them numbers like 1alpha after that. Under normal conditions, normal atmospheric conditions, HIF-1alpha gets broken down pretty quickly.
00:39:34
Speaker
But when it's stabilized, which happens at high altitude and also in certain interventions, and Xeon is one of them, the adaptations that come out of this are the boost in EPO production, erythroplatin production, and a higher red b blood cell count.
00:39:50
Speaker
Now, that gets a lot of attention. As you said, that's been mostly what's in the news. i think that people need to realize that's probably not the thing that's happening here that's really important.
00:40:02
Speaker
so For example, i mean red blood cell production just takes a long time. It takes weeks. and so are you know The kind of scientific consensus, as I understand it, is that you need about 100 hours in hypoxia to get a 1% increase in your hemoglobin. so you know and That's going to be a four to six week process. so You're talking about a climb of taking seven days. like Obviously, red blood cell
00:40:33
Speaker
new production isn't isn't increasing in in seven days. like i mean That process is starting, but it's not going to be really the reason that explains these changes. Another thing that's that's derived from this HIF-1-alpha is formations.
00:40:52
Speaker
That could be part it. vessels are this we know so that could be part of it new blood vessels are are especially in places like the heart muscle and that's already very vascular that has a huge effect that's very important um in high-altitude climbing.
00:41:11
Speaker
Another one is there's a shift in glycolysis, which means that there seems to be better anaerobic energy production, which is you know anaerobic, of course, we all know the production of energy,
00:41:23
Speaker
in an anaerobic condition or without oxygen. So people, this this may not really apply to high altitude climbers because we never really go anaerobic when we're at high altitude. People are like, oh yeah, I must be anaerobic because there's not much oxygen around. And then doesn't work that way. You're still aerobic.
00:41:40
Speaker
A really important one is there is a better cell survival in the low oxygen environment when you've undergone a xenon treatment. and This seems to have both a metabolic pathway and it's not well understood, and there's there's also a pathway that is mostly researched around cancer. There's something called, and I'll probably say this wrong, apoptokic.
00:42:05
Speaker
pathway, and that is the process whereby the cells know when to die. right and it's often The reason it's of interest in cancer is like this is sometimes turned off in in tumor cells. right they don't They don't know when their time is up, and they just keep growing.
00:42:22
Speaker
um so There may be something in that. It's very complicated and frankly not very well understood, these areas. and Then the other part that I think is very interesting and with regards to combatization is the vascular regulation.
00:42:37
Speaker
so This is it essentially affects the the NO production. I'm going to go into Hyl-2 physiology a little bit. When we breathe more, we blow off more CO2. And when we blow off more CO2, again, i'm going to simplify, it changes but the pH of our blood.
00:42:59
Speaker
And so when this vascular regulation happens due to the Xenon treatment, it may be helping that balance. i mean Again, this is pure speculation. We don't know exactly what it works, we but we know something is working.
00:43:15
Speaker
so Medical science kind of uses some of these effects of Xenon for treating things like anema or ischemic conditions. um But and we know it has been and used artificially for sports performance to to boost endurance. And and you know a lot of coaches will say, like you know when people ask, like what supplements should I take? What should I do to improve my performance? It's like, well, just go check the water list because that's all the stuff that works. If it was if it didn't work, it wouldn't be banned.
00:43:47
Speaker
So, which I think that there is is some real truth
Xenon Gas: Safety vs. Doping
00:43:50
Speaker
to that. So, we don't know. and And a lot of times when things get put on the water list, a lot of research is either goes underground or it it's just stopped. This is a big topic.
00:44:04
Speaker
How do you respond to people when they say that using Xeon in addition to these other therapies is doping?
00:44:13
Speaker
I mean and would say doping or the VADA list only applies to a regulated a competition sport. so commercial guided expeditions on Mount Everest are no competition sport. It's not about records. There's no regulations about how fast you can climb, how much support you can climb.
00:44:37
Speaker
It's just, ah yeah, no competition. The other thing is we are not, using ah substance it's it's something because this is something it it came on nevada list after the VADA inspectors found Xenon equipment at the Russian cross-country skiers in Sochi.
00:44:58
Speaker
But the Russian cross-country ski federation is still fighting this VADA, how to say this, this VADA, the because they argue meant that it is not a substance because it's in the atmosphere.
00:45:17
Speaker
and And that's actually, it did is very in detail, but it is a good point. For example, the FIS, the International Ski Federation, they put oxygen on and the list of prohibited substances.
00:45:30
Speaker
So for skiers, for in competition, it is not allowed to inhale pure oxygen right before the race. Another thing is that substances like dexam metaone or are on the vara list as well and are used by by climbers yeah on a regular basis, not only for treatment of an emergency but especially dexamethasone is used for prophylactic or even for performance enhancement.
00:45:59
Speaker
and So I would say to my approach is it it would be doping if a substance is used for performing ah for enhanced performance to reach a certain goal, like reaching a record, reaching a ah podium in a competition.
00:46:20
Speaker
but Using it for increasing safety on a guided expedition in a dangerous environment as a form of enhanced acclimatization i don't see it asopine I think I want to just call out, because the audience will, if I don't, that, you know, I personally built my whole climbing career on the premise that we as climbers should, you know, strive to match the mountains challenges, not to reduce them or change them.
Balancing Safety and Ethics in Climbing
00:46:48
Speaker
Right. But I also believe that one of the core tenants in life is that the mountains are freedom and that I don't want to dictate what people should, can't, are allowed to choose or not choose to do
00:47:01
Speaker
or choose not to do. I think your point around organized competition, in an organized competition, there are rules so that the competition is, let's say, fair. Like people can show up at a starting line and they can see who is the fastest skier that day, for example.
00:47:19
Speaker
And and that's that's the whole that's the whole sport, is to do that. right and And mountaineering is more or less the antithesis of that in my but mind. it's there's There's no starting line. We don't even know when the climb's going to start.
00:47:33
Speaker
um It's the the freedom of the hills, as as we like to say sometimes. So I think you have a really strong point with that. um And you know I myself have called you know oxygen using oxygen like like you know high flow rate oxygen for climbing as doping. And i I remember when I said that, and then I thought about it. This was years ago, probably 20 years ago, when I was in my early 30s, and I was all fiery about this kind of stuff. And then I thought about it and i was like, you know, what what difference does it make to me if people want to do that or not?
00:48:08
Speaker
Like, it actually doesn't. As long as you know, yeah. so So I kind of come full circle on that myself. And i also, as a coach, have now for years taken great pleasure in writing books and coaching and educating athletes.
00:48:25
Speaker
and Many of them go climb mountains like Everest and many of them have used supplemental oxygen and other things like hypoxic conditioning and now Xenon to to allow them to make the ascent. They have incredible experiences that are not really arguably not accessible to them without these interventions, including the training.
00:48:48
Speaker
right so I sort of feel like you know that's kind of an argument, we in my opinion, I've put to rest. like I don't really see how ah we can call this doping. Is it ethical? I think that's a different question because ethics are different than rules. Rules apply to organized competition, as you rightly point out.
00:49:11
Speaker
Ethics is is another ah other thing. so you know The next topic, then, I think is like you know tools like xenon or using a hypoxic tent.
00:49:23
Speaker
ah have It's been argued that they detract from the purity, the beauty of mountaineering. So how do you personally, not not for the rest of the world, but you for you and those that you're responsible for in the mountains as a mountain guide,
00:49:37
Speaker
how do you define these ethical boundaries of what is acceptable technological and pharmaceutical aid? And how, is yeah, how do you how do you how do you navigate that? How do you think about that?
00:49:55
Speaker
That's a very difficult question because I think it's it's different for for me personally, my approach to the mountains when I go climbing for myself or when when our companies is having guided clients and we are responsible for them.
00:50:12
Speaker
and And I come back to the beginning when I said, as soon as we take responsibility for the safety of a climber, we have limited possibilities. We have to work in our in a frame that keeps the client safe and that has client safety as a number one priority.
00:50:34
Speaker
and I think it is important to to understand. a good example for this whole ethics discussion is is the use of oxygen. and when So you have one extreme, Reinhold Messner, who is saying real alpinism involves the risk of dying.
00:50:58
Speaker
if you can't die anymore then it's it can't be alpinism. It must be tourism. And on one side, I 100% agree that that's true.
00:51:09
Speaker
And for outstanding professional athletes like yourself, this is the way like you would go or you have been going to the mountains in your career.
00:51:21
Speaker
And this is the style you choose for you climbing a pure and ethical, pure and clean style without technology, without aids, without cheating. Let's call it cheating. or Cheating is making things easier on mountain.
00:51:37
Speaker
aye But this is not the the the reality for most of the people that the go to the mountains. And for most of them, dying in the mountains is not an option and it's not part of the game.
00:51:51
Speaker
They want to go there to enjoy the mountain, nature, freedom, in their style, they choose. So obviously for us as a guiding company, it is not...
00:52:06
Speaker
an option that our clients buy because we are not using all the safety and all cheating tools that exist. We come to oxygen, yes, we we we have an obligation to use oxygen on guided expeditions because oxygen is the number one factor why people would survive in in this extreme environment everyone including ah professional athletes, including people like Randall Messner, would come to a certain point where they would die up there without oxygen.
00:52:41
Speaker
It is international medical consensus in in science that this extreme hypoxic environment will cause damage on your brain, on other organs,
00:52:58
Speaker
if you stay there for too long time ae There's only one way to avoid this and that's using bottled oxygen. You can say oxygen is cheating, yes, because it makes the mountain much lower, but it feels much lower for your body, it's much easier, but it's still probably the same experience that a climber has.
00:53:22
Speaker
ae The same enjoyment the same the same view from the senate and within their possibilities maybe the same amount of effort they have to put in to reach the summit it's just a different style of climbing but it stays the same amount to climbing that's what you said i like this it's it's the freedom of the mountains and everyone can choose his or her stay to claim a mountain and i think this is so important we need tolerance against other people who choose a difference by
00:53:55
Speaker
as long as i do not harm other people or bring them into danger. And what we can see as a guiding company with a lot of infrastructure on Everest, with a lot of support stuff, guides and and oxygen on Everest, we have to provide our resources to people who climb in a pure style every year we see people dying up there in appeal strike every year ae So if people are now criticizing us that using something like xenon would be dangerous, would be but put our people at risk, I have to tell them our climbers will never be the problem on Everest. Our climbers that are always climbing with oxygen, with a guide, with experience, with training programs,
00:54:47
Speaker
um with good equipment, ah with safety backups, they will never be the problem on Everest. People that are inexperienced, people that are taking shortcuts, people that are climbing without oxygen.
00:55:00
Speaker
These are people that become the problem on Everest every year. So now we saw the statement from the UIAA that was recently ah released ah questioning if if using Xenon as acclimatization could be dangerous, or at least and and I would say they they state that it is dangerous.
00:55:22
Speaker
And what I'm missing think here is what they are not saying, that our climbers that are using Xenon, they will climb with oxygen. They are always safe. Nobody will die up there.
00:55:34
Speaker
But every year people decline people die climbing this mountain without oxygen, every year. So if there's a warning about ah a very dangerous style of climbing Mount Everest,
00:55:46
Speaker
it must be the warning of climbing without oxygen. And I know it it may sound hard, but we need, I think we need a shift of of paradigm here.
00:55:58
Speaker
um Especially in Europe, in German-speaking countries, this idea or almost an ideology of climbing without oxygen is the only true way of climbing an 8,000-meter peak.
00:56:10
Speaker
it's It's just, in my opinion, it's just wrong.
00:56:17
Speaker
Yeah. i Years ago, when I was probably about 30, used to work as an avalanche forecaster for as a mountain you know i was in my role of ah a mountain guide for heli-ski operation.
00:56:32
Speaker
And part of our outreach that we did was to the snowmobiling community, the ski-do community, right? and Of course, we were heli skiing, so obviously people would say that there's something wrong with that probably.
00:56:47
Speaker
But for me, as an alpinist and as a mountain guide, like these sled heads, as we call them, they were they were like you know they were culturally very different than us. right like they showed up at the parking lot usually really late. the They were definitely not what we considered athletic or any of these things. So I went out and did like a workshop, an avalanche awareness kind of safety workshop with this group of about 12 people. And at the end, they wanted to ride up onto this onto this ridge. And this is an area where riding is allowed. And there's these old mining roads. And we went up, we rode the sleds up onto this peak.
00:57:33
Speaker
And it was sunset and everybody did just shut shut off their machines and they were just sitting there watching. the And this this one guy who was like, you know, 100 kilos, really big guy ah you know, very much culturally different than than I am, very politically, every way. Right.
00:57:53
Speaker
And he just looked at me and he's like, God, that's beautiful. And that really changed my perspective Because i was i showed up that day ready to just not like these guys, right? Because they were different than me and had had different beliefs and different came from different culture and stuff.
00:58:13
Speaker
And what they most appreciated about the whole day was sitting there at the top of that mountain watching the sun go down. you know And and they just you're looking out over this incredible wilderness area.
00:58:25
Speaker
and you know there was there was it was all about the awe of the moment and seeing this incredible sunset and just being out in the winter environment. and It was like, actually, like I'm way more like these people than i ever thought.
00:58:39
Speaker
you know and i think that that This is sort of a similar thing. What I think we have to acknowledge is that you know I can go climb alpine style. Not that I do very much of that. Certainly not the Hibalea anymore. but you know I can also appreciate people who go and climb Everest and use the tools at their disposal to make the experience as rich and rewarding and also as safe as they want it to become. and then they They can dial that all the way down to our friend Yost Koba, who who was recently on Everest Westridge in winter by himself.
00:59:16
Speaker
I mean, yeah, that's the opposite. like You can dial all the way to that and hats off like to him. And that can coexist, right? like I think that both things can... We're not going to Yost isn't going to be able to go and find that level of adventure on the South Call route in May. Of course not.
00:59:32
Speaker
But... It's still available. It just has to change the dial, of the knobs a little bit and make some adjustments. So I agree that we could all use a little more um understanding and compassion, in a sense, for but one another for our differences.
00:59:48
Speaker
You know, I think that a lot of people will say things like, you know, EPO is also natural. it's like it's It's produced by our body to promote, you know the creation of red blood cells. And xenon is in the air. so But that doesn't mean it's not doping. And, you know, I think that this at this point it gets, like, so down in the weeds that, you know, it it starts to get a little bit, like, where the the best answer to this is, you know, that's great and you don't have to use it.
01:00:25
Speaker
100% degrees from that, yeah. So, you know, you've you've mentioned that ah a number of times, and I mean, it actually stands out that Furt Baca Ventures has a remarkable safety record on on big mountains.
01:00:39
Speaker
And we know that there are unknowns with xenon, right? Like, you know, you've said you've used it on your, like, you you took it that took this process like you did with the domobaric hypoxic tents, right?
01:00:55
Speaker
How do you manage, particularly this season coming up, how do you manage the the unknowns? i mean there's the there's the There's different kinds of risks. There's the known risk, there's the there's to and then there's also like the unknown risk. There's the things that could go wrong that we don't even know are things that could go wrong.
01:01:19
Speaker
right like Do you feel like you have a good handle on those? Do you feel like there's still some of those out there with this therapy potentially? And how do you how do you manage that?
01:01:32
Speaker
So I would say that there's you're right saying that there's still a lot that we don't know, especially with Xenon. yeah But I would say we know enough to run this first sceneonupported trip with these four were british climbers that are by the way are very experienced mountaineers, very fit athletes as well.
Future of Everest Expeditions
01:01:55
Speaker
and We know enough that we are confident to run this seven-day trip with them that without having more risk than with any other client or team we have. So we have seven teams on Everest this year, three on the on the north side and four on the south side on different schedules, on different itineraries.
01:02:22
Speaker
I would say this one seen unsupported trip in seven days has not definitely not more risk, I would say even less risk than any of the other teams and especially than any of the other climbers of the mountain for different reasons one reason because they spend so little time on the mountain.
01:02:41
Speaker
right So in risk management, it's a lot about exposure time. The exposure time is very, very little compared to all our climbers on Mount Everest. The other thing is we have a double safety network for for this first trip because, of course, I'm aware that the whole world will be watching us and waiting for something to happen for an accident. So we make extra shifts
01:03:11
Speaker
um and yeah at the end i'm i i know our operation i i built this operation yeah i know the system uh yeah how it works and i'm so confident that it works perfectly safe i never gave a guarantee that the seven days will work out that's a yeah that's a project that's a plan seven days if it's eight or nine days at the end there so many factors that we can control if flight weather off or the helicopter
01:03:43
Speaker
There are so many things that can be delayed with rope fixing in the Kumbu Iceborne. So yes, it can be longer than seven days, but it it will not involve more risk for the climbers than any other expedition that we will have.
01:03:57
Speaker
And I think one of the one of the nuances that I think is lost in some of this debate at times is that you're not you're changing one variable of...
01:04:09
Speaker
Many. right You're not changing all the... It's not like you're throwing out everything else and just doing, oh like let's just do this you know intensive xenon program and nothing else, then we're going to go up there in seven days.
01:04:21
Speaker
No, you have all these other things and you're adding one additional thing. And you're also probably pretty confident that if you remove that thing, that these four guys have a good chance of of of pulling this off in ah and a short time frame, too. process may just give you that that extra boost? Am I wrong?
01:04:40
Speaker
You are absolutely right. and Thank you for for bringing this point because you're actually the first one who understands that these people are still climbing in the same style as everyone else with the same support with oxygen and they are pre-acclimatizing with different with different acclimatization systems and it's just one component that we change and you are absolutely right i'm also confident that they could do possibly the same seven days even without senior or even without the hypoxic and intermittent hypoxic training.
01:05:15
Speaker
I'm not confident that they could do it without any of them. Right. but Of course. But the combination makes it not not only positive but even safe.
01:05:27
Speaker
yeah What do you say about the criticisms, and this isn't necessarily limited to Xenon, but just around the commercialization
Addressing Everest Overcrowding and Environmental Impact
01:05:36
Speaker
of Everest? and you know Of course, there was a lot of publicity when there was this photo a few years ago of all the people on that um the ridge going up from the south, where the Hillary step used to be, and so on.
01:05:48
Speaker
how do you how do you How does Fortenbach Adventures fit into that, and how do how do you see your role in this? so of Overcrowding on Everest Southside is a problem on certain days in the season. all
01:06:10
Speaker
summit phase. We had this situation in 2019 when this picture was taken from a Sherpa from NIMS.
01:06:20
Speaker
But we had other seasons in in the years after with in 22, I think it was consecutive period of um almost thirty post trauma days Wow.
01:06:34
Speaker
So almost the whole season, you could sum it every single day. We had no problems with but people with traffic chants on the Southeast Bridge, nothing at all. But yeah, it it can be a problem. And of course, something has to be done about it.
01:06:49
Speaker
ah I would say what China is, China was leading the way in in this regard when they implemented a system where they gave full responsibility of the experience and the the performance level of the clients to the operator and with all the consequences. Like when you bring people that are not enough prepared or experienced to climb Everest from the north side in Tibet and it results in an accident, you will never run an expedition in Tibet again.
01:07:21
Speaker
That simple. And you as a guide and a guiding company take full responsibility for all consequences. That prevented the companies that cannot guarantee for the quality of their clients.
01:07:40
Speaker
If Nepal would follow this path, there would be no more problem on Everest. It also involves minimum safety standards, safety protocols for all operators.
01:07:55
Speaker
If this is... if this is coming by law from the government No more problems on Everest. ah But I understand that Nepal is in a different position than China. Nepal needs the income from Everest tourism.
01:08:09
Speaker
And it's not that easy to implement these rules and limit climbers as China is doing. that The limitation of permits on the north side in China 200 150. It changes every year little bit.
01:08:24
Speaker
But compared to the unlimited permits on the not on the south, side it it makes a huge difference you have something between four hundred fifteen and and four hundred eighty permits for foreigners and but then twice this amount of people climbing us support stuff ah that makes twelve thirteen hundred people in one season that is and the actual climbing season within this two months frame is only two or three weeks.
01:08:50
Speaker
So 1,300 people in three weeks, that's a lot. We could think about different ways, like yeah going back to the autumn season, did yeah yeah after the monsoon.
01:09:01
Speaker
With climate change, this season is becoming more and more attractive. We still need more weather data. from But when you look at the last 10-year period, you can see that your oum climbing sees not ever would become better in terms of wind and temperatures about hundred thousand metres And that was always the limiting factor of for the autumn season. Yeah.
01:09:26
Speaker
Autumn is certainly colder than spring. I can personally attest to that. Yeah. um Yeah, there's a couple of things that come to mind. one is I think I've done 12 expeditions in Nepal and in the spring and have never seen 30 days of good weather. So that is exceptional.
01:09:46
Speaker
But the other thing I think that has always been kind of a part of my attraction to lightweight expeditions and small climbing teams is that you know our impact on the mountain is lower. right So i think that part of the potential benefit of these combinations of these therapies you know, for lack of a better word, i'm calling these all therapies, maybe they're interventions. I don't know the exact precise best term here, is that people spend less time on the mountain and therefore there's less overcrowding, right? Like if all of a sudden it shifts and in 10 years from now or five years from now,
01:10:29
Speaker
everyone is you know that's going to climb Everest with a mountain guide is doing a seven to 14 day expedition, that significantly reduces the strain on that environment, right? Like in in every way, there's just going to be fewer human days above base camp.
01:10:46
Speaker
There's no question about that. And so in some ways, some of these innovations could have a very ah net positive effect on the overcrowding environmental impacts of climbing in these fragile environments.
01:11:00
Speaker
Yes, absolutely looking true. You know, one of the things that you have been willing to do for 20 years now is innovate and to to frankly, like deal with a lot of criticism and criticism, not just from, you know, random people like let's admit like this. Our community is small, like we all kind of know each other. Right.
01:11:25
Speaker
I mean, and even even even Historically, like you know your grandfather was a ah famous mountaineer, Oswald Olsz. You've been part of this community like from arguably before you were even born. and Then you're getting these criticisms from from people who are part of our community, and and yet you kind of, I don't know what the right word is, but you push through.
01:11:55
Speaker
i don't know. Is that... Is that a personal drive of yours? Is that like, are you really like, is it a conviction and a commitment to client, client safety? Are you thinking about, like are you curious about like scientifically how all of this works? Like what goes into that? look what Like it's a ah lot of people simply would not put themselves out there the way you They may even have all the ideas and have all the abilities to make the changes that you've made over the years.
01:12:27
Speaker
And they just wouldn't because they're just like, I don't want to like, I don't want to be a target for all these attacks and deal with all of this. I mean, that's like ah a good, <unk> it's a good reason to not do something like that. But yet you, you do and have persisted and you continue to persist. What is that?
01:12:43
Speaker
What is your thinking and around that? I think it's a combination of all the motivations that is that you mentioned.
01:12:52
Speaker
Definitely I'm burning for this. like I really want to make high i toitude guided high and altitude climbing. it's It's a big difference. It's important to say this.
01:13:09
Speaker
Guided high altitude climbing. Commercial Everest climbing. I want to make it safer because I truly believe that you could avoid most of the people dying on 8,000 meter peaks today in guided expeditions.
01:13:25
Speaker
And what I truly believe is that it's it's really time for, as I said before, for shifting in the paradigm. and Like this ideology of of climbing without oxygen is the only true and and and real and legit way to do it.
01:13:49
Speaker
It's just, it's, I think it's, it's, it's a very traditional way of thinking and it's, it's just not, um, not the the best way forward. There's no other sport, or at least I'm not aware of any other sport, where the acceptance of individual risk to die is so high as in mountaineering.
01:14:15
Speaker
And it's not even not only accepted, it's it's even glorified. Like, dying in the mountain, here you become a hero. There's no other sport in the world where this is accepted and i think it's just outdated. We need to change our thinking. And I think the Americans, people from UK, they are much further ahead of us.
01:14:37
Speaker
We owe ah europe in Europe, in Germany, Austria, and and and Switzerland, it's much of the German speaking countries. Where Alpinism started, we still have a very traditional thinking.
01:14:52
Speaker
And I think it's time to change this. And this is one big part of what that drives me because i see people dying in the mountains every year because they do not follow it's the simplest safety rules and and and do not... like Friends of mine died, and i don't I stopped counting in the last 20 years, how many people died without oxygen. The last one was um one of our lead guides, Louis Schietzinger, who died of conscience hunger.
01:15:24
Speaker
climbing and trying to ski down his 12, 8,000 meter peaks without oxygen. He was such a great and experienced guide. He died because he also sort of followed this idea that it it is a great achievement to climb all 14, 8,000 meter peaks without oxygen.
01:15:45
Speaker
And it is, it is a great achievement. It is outstanding if you can do this. But you can do this for yourself but you can't ask someone else to do it only this way otherwise i wouldn't count it.
01:15:59
Speaker
I don't know, like, your summit only counts if it's done without oxygen. Because so many, especially young climbers, follow this ideology and their achievements only are important to the community if it's done in this pure style.
01:16:16
Speaker
But let's look at this. How many people die? How many young, talented climbers die? And then if they die, it's always, how could this happen? Why is young, talented climber die?
01:16:29
Speaker
He died because he followed this idea of this pure style style of climbing is the only way that counts, the only way that gives you respect and credibility in the community.
01:16:40
Speaker
And I don't like this idea. Too many people die.
01:16:45
Speaker
Yeah, i can't disagree with the statement that too many people die and I'm like, you have lost count. So many thoughts. um One is you know, had a great discussion on one of my Voice of the Mountains episodes with Will Gad.
01:17:02
Speaker
the Canadian climber, and he had a way of putting out of like, if someone has a different way of doing something, and he had a specific example around climbing in the Canadian Rockies, ah there are some young kids, and he instead of calling them out for what they had done, he called them in, he he brought them into the community and and started to kind of mentor them and see their perspective, right?
01:17:27
Speaker
You mentioned this paradigm needs to to change I would say make a slight change, and I would say that that we just need to be more expansive in our definition.
01:17:40
Speaker
that that That both can exist. that That people can go and they can climb you know in a very pure style. and you know't like i would you know not trade my experiences that I had alone on k seven for example for anything in the world. like That was such an incredible group of experience and it's such an incredible time of growth in my life.
01:18:07
Speaker
And you know the the athletes that I'm coaching right now that are going to Everest, some of whom are climbing with Fortenbach, they're also going have incredible... and they're they're the The mountains enrich all of us and we shouldn't say that you know one ah one is an acceptable means of enrichment and what is an unacceptable.
01:18:28
Speaker
We're all climbers. We're all out in the mountains because we love being in the mountains. Some people want to and are able to accept more risk and they should do that, honestly. like This is one of the things that I had to kind of come to terms with as I got older and I got really, really sick of my friends dying.
01:18:47
Speaker
and I had the had this really strong attachment right to to my friends not dying. Sounds funny, like right? That seems like a pretty natural thing. And after i don't know how many times, i and it was just crushing me. It was just crushing me every time I got one of those phone calls. And I finally kind of came to this realization like that that they had to do them.
01:19:10
Speaker
like They had to go do their thing, what they wanted to do, and I couldn't control it. And they weren't doing it to, I don't know, seek my approval or something like that. They had their own personal reasons for doing that, and they wanted to do that for... and and and there may be consequences to that that would lead to you know them losing their lives. And that wasn't my responsibility.
01:19:33
Speaker
And as soon as I was able to kind of do that and really integrate that, it made it much easier for me in the ensuing losses. i mean, it never gets really easy, right? But it made it so got me to the point where i was like, okay, like, yeah yeah, that climber was out there doing what they wanted to do. That was their vision.
01:19:52
Speaker
that's so cool. Like I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm happy for them that they lived their vision. I'm not happy that they died. And I don't think there's anything about the platitude. that They died doing what they love. They don't want to be dead. Like that's ridiculous, but that they were at least living according to their own values and allowing everyone to have that.
01:20:12
Speaker
Right. And that goes both ways. You can't have that just your way, right? Like if you're going to accept that for yourself and your friends, you have to accept that for others too. Yeah, I like that.
01:20:24
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. It's a coexistence. That's the key word. It's big enough. I mean, people will disagree with this, but I think it's big enough for all of us.
01:20:37
Speaker
share one final story as um that as my youth as a mountain guide. When I was in my late 20s, went and I was working in the Teton Mountains as a mountain guide. And the Tetons in the States are...
01:20:50
Speaker
at that time, and this was, boy, this was like 2000, 99, 2000, somewhere in there. It's always been, it was kind of the birthplace of American guiding, which happened completely isolated from the rest of mountain guiding in in the Alps and also in Canada. kind of So it grew its ah own tradition.
01:21:10
Speaker
And i was in the heart I was in the heat of my like purest era, right? I was in my late twenties. I was, a had been a, IFMJ mountain guide for a few years. I was one of the first to do that in the US. so I was kind of an anomaly.
01:21:25
Speaker
and you know i had all this official training and I'd done all these exams. right and Then I come in here into this like traditional bastion of climbing. and We had one of our team meetings, our all guides meetings in the middle of the summer. and This one guy who I really respected, i mean he'd been on alpine style attempts of the Rupaul Face, which as you know is a very special place to me on Nangaparbat, way back like in the 80s and stuff. An incredible climber, just was like had lived his whole life in the mountains.
01:21:57
Speaker
Older at this point, he was probably like in his and He had like bad knees and he had like the ski poles and he was like you could tell he was in pain like just being out there. and He got up and he's like, you know, I'm out there when I'm guiding and I have this, this and this in my backpack because this this and this and this and all these other things could happen.
01:22:22
Speaker
And my responsibility professionally is to make sure my clients are safe. Then I see this guy house running around with this little backpack and his tennis shoes and he can't do anything to help his clients if something goes wrong because he has 10 meters of rope and one piton and whatever it was. At first was upset. I felt like I being attacked then ah and first i was like kind of like ah upset right like
01:22:52
Speaker
like i was being attacked but then i just I just sat on my hands and I didn't say anything and I let the conversation around me develop and i was listening to the different people talking and I was like, you know what, he's right.
01:23:05
Speaker
i you know My responsibility is to, when I'm working as a mountain guide, is to ensure the safety of the people that have hired me to ensure their safety. That's the first, and get them to the top of the mountain if that's something we can do within those parameters of safety.
01:23:23
Speaker
And it completely changed how I approached mountain guiding. like I never went anywhere without know backups to the backup after that. And you know you know I think it served me really well. And it meant oftentimes that my pack was heavier and that i what my days were harder and all those things. And one of the things that I really appreciate you about you, Lucas, is that yeah know your backpack both...
01:23:52
Speaker
both actually but also like just emotionally has been much heavier than most. and I think it's because you've taken on the work of really doing everything you can in the name of your your clientele and the climbers that sign up for you and take their trust that they place in you for their safety more seriously than than most. And I think that that's really commendable. And you've been a real pioneer in that way. And I hope that over time, you start to get to hear that more and less of like, I don't know, you're destroying mountaineering or I don't know, whatever these, it
01:24:34
Speaker
you know internet trolls are are saying about you because you know everybody's entitled to their own opinion of course but at the end of the day like you're out there innovating for the safety of your teams and your fellow mountain guides as well and your sherpas that work with you as well and you know you have the track record to prove it and I can only hope that you're ah successful with this next evolution and I'm happy that myself and the other coaches at Uphill Athlete have been able to partner with you in helping train your athletes for these expeditions.
01:25:13
Speaker
And i just i just really hope that um this season goes well and that everybody comes back and has another data point to achieve. find to make that next change that next little adjustment in the dial that leads to that safety net because that really is what it is it's a safety system that you've built so thank you for coming on and thank you for sharing your thoughts thank you very much steve yeah it was a pleasure talking about this yeah this stuff and and yeah it was the first time that someone
01:25:46
Speaker
with with expertise and and was talking about the whole, especially the scene and stuff. There was so much misinformation in the last two weeks and it was a relief to
01:26:02
Speaker
prepared book this topic. Thank you very much, Vince. Yeah, you're welcome. Well, it's it's very interesting. like I think it's very interesting. I i think there's a lot of... you know i'll be I'll be very interested to talk to you when you get back from this trip and debrief how it went and see what we can all learn because the mountains is big enough are big enough for all of us and we all all can help each other. So...
01:26:25
Speaker
so Thanks for doing that work. and How can people find you and follow you and follow your expeditions this spring, and that that particularly the Xeon? I don't know. Do you guys have a name? Are you the Xeon expedition now? are you the seven-day expedition?
01:26:40
Speaker
Yeah, so for now we call it the seven-day expedition. The Xenon treatment will be available as as an add-on for all the others. ah You can find and follow our expeditions on Instagram, Fotenbach Adventures, or at the website, fotenbachadventures.com.
01:26:56
Speaker
Great. Thanks very much for your time. We'll talk to you when you get back. Thank you very