Graham Cooper was ecstatic after reaching the summit of Mount Everest.
(Zhaoxia Adventure)
Sleeping with your head in a bag works.
California mountaineers Graham Cooper and Adrian Ballinger climbed the world’s highest peak on Wednesday, and their Everest acclimatization process included sleeping at home with their heads in low oxygen tent to simulate the pain of extreme altitude.
Groundbreaking adaptation technology helped cut the expedition time by about half, from about two months to less than a month. They have also embarked on the less traveled northern route, starting in Tibet rather than Nepal to avoid the dangerous crowds and chaos of the more popular southern route.
A harrowing traffic jam on the southern route a week ago saw dozens of climbers lining up along a narrow ridge below the summit, with fatal consequences when the cornice collapsed beneath them .
Six climbers plummeted down the nearly vertical 11,000-foot rock face below. Four of them survived because they were properly secured to a fixed rope. The other two people, who were obviously not, slid helplessly into the abyss under the horrified gaze of everyone.
Increasing crowds, squalor and danger on the southern route prompted Ballinger, founder of Olympic Valley guide service Alpenglow Expeditions, to start taking his clients up the mountain’s north side.
“The weather is colder, the route is more difficult, and the bureaucracy of dealing with China and getting permits is a complete nightmare,” Ballinger told The Times in an interview before setting off. “But nonetheless, the Chinese try to police it, so once you get up the mountain, it’s safer, cleaner and less crowded.”
Ballinger has climbed and guided on Everest since 2009, but stuck to his principles and put his Everest trip on hold after the Chinese government closed its side of the mountain in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. .
The May expedition was his first back since then.
On Wednesday, with snow-capped peaks stretching to the horizon in every direction under a blue sky, he shouted into the wind from the top of a mountain: “This is unbelievable!”
A total of 23 climbers, guides and Sherpas from Alpenglow’s team successfully reached the summit on Tuesday and Wednesday.
But there were many obstacles along the way.
First, the Chinese government made last-minute changes to their permits, forcing them into tense conflicts with bureaucracy and causing a week-long delay in entry. The start date is important because there is only a small window of time each year, usually in late May, when the weather is good enough to attempt a climb to Everest’s 29,032-foot summit. Expeditions must be carefully planned, and any delay could put the entire enterprise in jeopardy.
The team also had to contend with dangerous winds.
On Monday, as they broke into the “death zone” above 26,000 feet – where most people’s bodies begin to fatally collapse without supplemental oxygen – Ballinger posted about the situation on Instagram . The wind was howling, and the bright white peaks in the distance were faintly visible over his right shoulder. He pulled down his oxygen mask and said to the camera: “The wind is a little smoother now.”
“But it was a close game,” he added, “on the verge of no chance. [safety] I want a security deposit.
Finally, the weather cooperated, ending Ballinger’s five-year wait to return to the highest point on Earth. This is his ninth summit.
It was the physical test of a lifetime for Cooper, a 54-year-old Oakland biotech executive with an impressive resume in endurance sports. This is a huge accomplishment for a man who has competed in the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii 11 times and won the legendary Western States Endurance Race, the 100-mile ultramarathon in California’s Sierra Nevada.
Cooper said in a phone interview from Everest Base Camp on Friday morning that the four-day summit was like competing in four consecutive Ironman triathlons.
He coughed throughout the call, and his exhaustion was evident as he described the worst part: a sudden onset of acute renal failure during the descent.
“I peed a whole bottle of what looked like Pete’s coffee,” he said. While Ballinger was trying to arrange a helicopter rescue, Cooper began “peeing again,” much to everyone’s relief, he said.
As part of his preparations for an Everest expedition, Graham Cooper slept for months in a hypoxic tent, where the oxygen was slowly lowered to simulate conditions at extreme altitudes.
(Brian Vanderbrugge/Los Angeles Times)
Cooper said the permit snafu meant less acclimatization time on the mountain, and without a few weeks of acclimatization at home sleeping with your head in a bag, the trip would have been a failure.
“Without that, I would have been absolutely crushed,” Cooper said.
On his last night in the tent before attempting the summit, Cooper said he had serious doubts about whether they would succeed. They climbed to this point in 30 mph winds, with the forecast calling for more of the same the next day. If things get worse, they have to turn things around.
But the weather stayed good and climbing from the north side, the Alpenglow team had the mountain completely to themselves.
“It’s absolutely in line” with expectations, Cooper said. “It’s been an epic adventure.”
