Nepal's mountaineering community celebrates 72nd anniversary of Mount Everest conquest
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Nepal's mountaineering community celebrated the conquest of the world's highest mountain with a rally of climbers, guides and others who gathered for International Everest Day.
The event Thursday marked the 72nd anniversary of the first summit climb of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953, by New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay.
Nepal's minister for culture and tourism led the celebration in the capital, Kathmandu, that included a walk around the city and a gathering at the old palace.
'We are celebrating May 29 as the international Sagarmatha (Everest) day because the world needs to continue to recognize the achievement and contribution of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay,' said Ang Tshering, who runs Kathmandu-based Asian Trekking.
The event was not just a celebration for the mountaineering community but also a festival for Nepal and the world, said Tshering, who has helped hundreds of clients scale the Himalayan peaks.
Nepal contains eight of the highest peaks in the world and every year hundreds of foreign climbers fly to the country in South Asia to tackle the mountains. The climbers hire thousands of people in Nepal to assist their climbs by carrying gear, cooking food and generally taking care of them as they spend weeks in the mountains.
Nepal's government collects money from the climbers through permit fees.
The end of May also marks the end of the popular spring mountaineering season, when climbers finish their adventures and retreat from the peaks before the monsoon season brings foul weather.
"This day is celebrated also to mark the end of the climbing season where we gather climbers and the community," Jiban Ghimire of Shangri-La Nepal Trek said.
According to Nepal's Department of Mountaineering, 468 foreign climbers from 57 countries received permits to climb Everest by the end of May, along with a roughly equal number of Nepalese mountain guides.
Many were able to scale the peak, but officials were still working to verify how many reached the 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) summit. Climbers must report to the department with proof they reached the summit and cleared their garbage before they are issued the official certificate.
Famed Sherpa guide Kami Rita reached the Everest summit for the 31st time Tuesday, breaking his own record for the most climbs to the top of the famed mountain.
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Atlantic
41 minutes ago
- Atlantic
History Is Repeating Itself in the World of Controversial Sports Records
It was a travesty—two travesties, actually, separate but inextricably linked. In May 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, a challenge that had killed more than a dozen people in the preceding decades and that scientists had once declared impossible. The catch: They breathed canisters of pure oxygen, an aid that the Everest pioneer George Mallory—one of those who died on the mountain—had once dismissed as 'a damnable heresy.' A month later, a young British medical trainee named Roger Bannister just missed running the first sub-four-minute mile, another long-standing barrier sometimes dubbed 'Everest on the track.' But he did it in a race where his training partner let himself be lapped in order to pace Bannister all the way to the finish line, violating rules about fair play due to the advantages of pacing. Bannister's American rival, Wes Santee, was unimpressed. 'Maybe I could run a four-minute mile behind one of my father's ranch horses,' he said, 'if that's what you want.' Funny how history repeats itself. Fast-forward to a couple of weeks ago: A controversy erupted in the world of mountaineering, when four British climbers summited Everest just five days after jetting to Nepal from the United Kingdom. To skip the usual weeks or months spent gradually adjusting to high altitude, they paid a reported $153,000 each for a bespoke protocol that included inhaling xenon gas to help them adjust more rapidly. Meanwhile, on the track, Kenya's three-time Olympic champion, Faith Kipyegon, is preparing for a carefully choreographed, Nike-sponsored attempt to become the first woman to run a mile in under four minutes. It's slated for June 26 in Paris and will almost certainly violate the same pacing rules that Bannister's run did. Both initiatives are, by any measure, remarkable feats of human ingenuity and endurance. They're also making people very angry. The xenon-fueled expedition was organized by an Austrian guide named Lukas Furtenbach, who is known for his tech-focused approach to expeditions. He has previously had clients sleep in altitude tents at home for weeks to pre-acclimatize them to the thin mountain air. What made the new ascent different is that, in addition to sleeping in altitude tents, the four British climbers visited a clinic in Germany where they inhaled xenon gas, whose oxygen-boosting potential has been rumored for years. The World Anti-Doping Agency banned xenon in 2014 after allegations that Russian athletes used it for that year's Winter Olympics. But subsequent studies on its athletic effects have produced mixed results. Other research in animals has hinted at the possibility that it could offer protection from potentially fatal forms of altitude illness, which can occur when climbers ascend too rapidly. For now, the strongest evidence that it helps high-altitude mountaineers comes from Furtenbach's own self-experimentation over the past few years. When news of Furtenbach's plans emerged earlier this year, the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation's medical commission put out a statement arguing that xenon probably doesn't work and could be dangerous because of its sedative effects. Other critics have pointed out that shorter expeditions mean less paying work for the Sherpa guides in the region. But these criticisms can feel like post hoc justifications for the fact that many mountaineers simply have a gut-level aversion to what seems like a shortcut to the summit. Their objection isn't to xenon itself but to the idea of making Everest easier. That's the same problem many runners have with Kipyegon's sub-four-minute-mile attempt. Women have made extraordinary progress in the event since Diane Leather notched the first sub-five in 1954, but under conventional racing conditions, no one expects a sub-four anytime soon. Kipyegon is the fastest female miler in history: Her current world record, set in 2023, is 4:07.64, which leaves her more than 50 yards behind four-minute pace—an enormous deficit to overcome in a sport where, at the professional level, progress is measured in fractions of a second. Nike has promised 'a holistic system of support that optimizes every aspect of her attempt,' including 'footwear, apparel, aerodynamics, physiology and mind science,' but hasn't revealed any details of what that support might look like. That means critics—and there are many —don't yet have any specific innovation to object to; they just have the tautological sense that any intervention capable of instantly making a miler 7.7 seconds faster must by definition be unfair. (I reached out to Nike for further specifics about the attempt, but the company declined to comment.) It's a safe bet that new shoes will be involved. Kipyegon's effort, dubbed Breaking4 by Nike, is a sequel to the company's Breaking2 marathon in 2017, in which Kipyegon's fellow Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge came within 25 seconds of breaking two hours at a time when the official world record was 2:02:57. Kipchoge's feat was made possible in part by a new type of running shoe featuring a stiff carbon-fiber plate embedded in a thick and bouncy foam midsole, an innovation that has since revolutionized the sport. But the reason his time didn't count as a world record was that, like Bannister, he had a squad of pacers who rotated in and out to block the wind for him all the way to the finish line. That's also likely to be a key for Kipyegon. In fact, scientists published an analysis earlier this year suggesting that a similar drafting approach would be enough to take Kipyegon all the way from 4:07 to 3:59 without any other aids. Bannister's paced-time trial in 1953 was ruled ineligible for records because, per the British Amateur Athletic Board, it wasn't 'a bona fide competition according to the rules.' Still, the effort had served its purpose. 'Only two painful seconds now separated me from the four-minute mile,' Bannister later wrote, 'and I was certain that I could cut down the time.' Sure enough, less than a year later, Bannister entered the history books with a record-legal 3:59.4. Similarly, Kipchoge went on to break two hours in another exhibition race in 2019, and Nike's official line is that it hopes that feat will pave the way for a record-legal sub-two in the future. (It's certainly getting closer: The world record now stands at 2:00:35.) In 1978, a quarter century after Hillary and Norgay's historic ascent, Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler climbed Everest without supplemental oxygen. One view of innovation in sports, advanced by the bioethicist Thomas Murray, is that people's perceptions are shaped by how new ideas and techniques are introduced. The status quo always seems reasonable: Of course we play tennis with graphite rackets rather than wooden ones, use the head-first Fosbury flop to clear high-jump bars, and climb mountains with the slightly stretchable kernmantle ropes developed in the 1950s. But many of these same innovations seem more troublesome during the transition periods, especially if only some people have access to them. When Bannister finally broke the four-minute barrier, he was once again paced by his training partners, but only for about the first three-quarters of the race. This form of pacing remained highly controversial, but because none of the pacemakers had deliberately allowed himself to be lapped, the record was allowed to stand. These days, such pacing is so routine that there are runners who make a living doing nothing but pacing races for others, always dropping out before the finish. The full-race pacing that Kipyegon will likely use in Breaking4 remains verboten; the slightly different pacing that leads runners almost all the way through the race but forces them to run the last lap alone is simply business as usual. Oxygen in a can is good; xenon in a can is bad. These are subtle distinctions. Sports are, in at least some respects, a zero-sum game: When one person wins a race or sets a record, it unavoidably means that someone else doesn't. Even at the recreational level, if everyone decides to run marathons in carbon-plated shoes that make them five minutes faster, the standards needed to qualify for the Boston Marathon get five minutes faster. 'Once an effective technology gets adopted in a sport, it becomes tyrannical,' Murray told me several years ago, when I was writing about athletes experimenting with electric brain stimulation. 'You have to use it.' In the '50s, a version of that rationale seemed to help the British expedition that included Hillary and Norgay overcome the long-standing objections of British climbers to using oxygen—the French had an Everest expedition planned for 1954 and the Swiss for 1955, and both were expected to use oxygen. Less clear, though, is why this rationale should apply to the modern world of recreational mountaineering in which Furtenbach operates. What does anyone—other than perhaps the climbers themselves, if you think journeys trump destinations—lose when people huff xenon in order to check Everest off their list with maximal efficiency? Maybe they're making the mountain more crowded, but you could also argue that they're making it less crowded by getting up and down more quickly. And it's hard to imagine that Furtenbach's critics are truly lying awake at night worrying about the long-term health of his clients. Something else is going on here, and I'd venture that it has to do with human psychology. A Dutch economist named Adriaan Kalwij has a theory that much of modern life is shaped by people's somewhat pathological tendency to view everything as a competition. 'Both by nature and through institutional design, competitions are an integral part of human lives,' Kalwij writes, 'from college entrance exams and scholarship applications to jobs, promotions, contracts, and awards.' The same ethos seems to color the way we see dating, leisure travel, hobbies, and so on: There's no escape from the zero-sum dichotomy of winners and losers. Kalwij's smoking gun is a phenomenon that sociologists call the 'SES-health gradient,' which refers to the disparities in health between people of high and low socioeconomic status. Despite the rise of welfare supports such as pensions and health care, the SES-health gradient has been widening around the world—even, Kalwij has found, among Olympic athletes. There used to be no difference in longevity among Dutch Olympians based on their occupation. But among the most recent cohort, born between 1920 and 1947, athletes in high-SES jobs, such as lawyers, tend to outlive athletes in low-SES jobs by an average of 11 years. As Kalwij interprets it, making an Olympic team is a life-defining win, but getting stuck in a poorly paying dead-end job is a loss that begets an endless series of other losses: driving a beater, living in a lousy apartment, flying economy. These losses have cumulative psychological and physiological consequences. Some things in life really are competitions, of course. Track and field is one of them, and so we should police attempts to bend its rules with vigilance. Other things, such as being guided up Everest, are not—or at least they shouldn't be. The people who seem most upset about the idea of rich bros crushing Everest in a week are those who have climbed it in six or eight or 12 weeks, whose place in the cosmic pecking order has been downgraded by an infinitesimal notch. But I, too, was annoyed when I read about it, despite the fact that I've never strapped on a crampon. Their win, in some convoluted way, felt like my loss. Another detail in Kalwij's research sticks in my mind. Among American Olympians, silver medalists tend to die a few years earlier than either gold or bronze medalists. Kalwij theorizes that these results, too, are related to people's outlook. Gold medalists are thrilled to win, and bronze medalists are thrilled to make the podium; silver medalists see themselves as 'the No. 1 loser,' as Jerry Seinfeld once put it. With that in mind, I've tried to reframe my attitude about the xenon controversy. Let the annual Everest frenzy continue, with or without xenon, and let its allure continue to draw the most hard-edged and deep-pocketed summit baggers. Meanwhile, leave the other, lesser-known mountains for the rest of us to enjoy in tranquility. I'd call that a win.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
After record-breaking Everest climbers revealed they use hypoxic tents to get altitude ready without acclimatizing on the mountain, we look at how the technology works
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Around 800 people attempt to climb Mount Everest each year, braving extreme conditions for the chance to say they've stood on top of the world. Along with rigorous physical and mental training, hopefuls need to prepare for the harrowing effects of altitude atop Earth's tallest mountain, where the amount of oxygen taken in with each breath is drastically lower than at sea level. Traditionally, climbers have acclimatized by spending significant time in the mountains, heading up and down to prepare their bodies for the dizzying heights, and reducing the impact of altitude sickness. This tried and tested method has proven effective for the past 70 years of Everest expeditions, but comes with one major drawback: time. Without four to six weeks to dedicate to acclimatization, many Everest hopefuls are now turning to modern technology to help them prepare, sleeping and exercising in specialist acclimatizing 'hypoxic' tents, which do away with the need to spend months in the mountains. 'You sleep like garbage if you're not acclimatized, you lose your appetite, so you wither away Brian Oestrike, CEO of Hypoxico Altitude Training Systems As alien as it may sound, hypoxic tents, otherwise known as altitude tents, have become increasingly common in recent years, used by alpinists and climbers to prepare for harsh conditions. This year, a group of British veterans in their forties and fifties used hypoxic tents in combination with controversial Xenon gas to speed-climb the mountain, summiting a record four days after arriving in Nepal and effectively going from sea level in London, to the highest peak on the planet in 5 days. The very next day, US-Ukrainian climber Andrew Ushakov claimed to have broken their record, after spending over 400 hours acclimatizing in a hypoxic tent. Ushakov says he went from New York to the Everest summit in just 3 days, 23 hours, and 27 minutes. So what are hypoxic tents, and how can they help climbers achieve these once-unthinkable feats? Read on for everything you need to know. Put simply, hypoxic tents mimic the low oxygen levels of high-altitude environments. The air at sea level contains 20.9% accessible oxygen, a number that drops dramatically the higher you get. At Everest base camp, it falls to around 10.4%. By the summit, it's down to just a third of the accessible oxygen quotient at regular sea-level. In healthy individuals, blood oxygen saturation levels sit around 98% to 100% at sea level. At altitude, that number drops to roughly 87% to 92% This has a weakening effect and can cause altitude sickness. Hypoxic tents simulate this mix with a generator or pump, which removes oxygen and replaces it with nitrogen, reducing the amount of oxygen in the air to high-altitude levels. Sleeping in the simulated altitude conditions of a hypoxic tent triggers your body to saturate your blood oxygen levels, releasing red blood cells and ready your system for conditions at 20,000ft (6,096m). 'As you expose yourself to altitude, your kidneys release EPO [erythropoietin], which starts this physiological change that leads to an increase in red blood cells, but more so into a better ability to transport and utilize oxygen,' Brian Oestrike, CEO of Hypoxico Altitude Training Systems tells us. Climbers like Ushakov use hypoxic tents to ready themselves for the unforgiving mountain conditions atop the globe's tallest peaks. Saturating your blood oxygen levels can be beneficial in several ways, reducing the risk of altitude sickness and preparing your body for the tiring effects of altitude. 'You improve your comfort and safety margin as you're ascending up through the mountains,' Oestrike explains. 'You sleep like garbage if you're not acclimatized, you lose your appetite, so you wither away as those things happen. By acclimatizing beforehand and using this equipment, you can offset your expedition, it improves your safety and your comfort margin.' By mimicking arduous alpine conditions, hypoxic tents can reduce the time it takes to acclimatize. 'Most people, if they're going to the Himalayas, historically have a six to eight-week expedition itinerary,' continues Oestrike. 'It takes that long for your body to slowly adapt and build the red blood cells that carry oxygen and allow you to climb safely." Ultra-running superstar Kilian Jornet slept inside a hypoxic tent for eight weeks before his maiden ascent of Mount Everest, mimicking altitudes of 13,000ft (3,962m) to 16,000ft (4,877m) without leaving sea level. He then became the fastest man to climb Everest alone and without oxygen, summiting the 29,000ft (8,850m) behemoth in just 26 hours. Although they're becoming increasingly popular with climbers and other extreme athletes, hypoxic tents do have their limitations and experts say they cannot be trusted as the sole method for acclimatization. "It's not the full acclimatization. I would say it's the first step," says Grégoire Millet, Professor of Exercise Physiology at the Institute of Sport Sciences in Lausanne, France. He explains that, even after months of sleeping in a hypoxic tent, "you will use some acclimatization, but not the full spectrum. You can be fully acclimatized in the tent, and not acclimatized to the real mountain". In other words, hypoxic tents cannot fully prepare the body for the rigours and difficulties of climbing at very high altitudes. In the Himalayas, elite climbers (and paying clients) on expeditions aiming for the highest peaks enter what is known as the Death Zone, an extremely dangerous zone above 26,247ft (8,000m), where besides having to deal with temperatures potentially tumbling to -31°F (-35°C) and highly technical terrain, the oxygen in the air is so low it's impossible for humans to survive for long. "You have to go to the real mountain for at least a few days before you travel," advises Millet, an expert in acclimatization technology. He advises climbers to use the tents in combination with traditional acclimatization methods, like sleeping atop smaller mountains, before tackling any major peaks. "It's better to use the tents, and then before you go to the Himalayas, it's recommended that you go for at least a few days to the Alps," he says. He says your body acclimatizes differently at real altitude and, despite their many benefits, hypoxic tents cannot fully replicate the tough conditions and and lack of oxygen in the mountains. It's not just mountaineers who put hypoxic tents to good use. All manner of sports people, from swimmers to footballers, use simulated altitude environments to expand their physical capabilities and access the benefits of altitude training. 'If you can transport and utilize oxygen better, that leads to better performance benefits, and literally just more ability to consume oxygen,' says Oestrike. "Most of the elite athletes, they have a hypoxic chamber at home," adds Millet. "It's not a tent, but it's a real chamber. It's the same idea, you decrease the oxygen concentration in the room." By training and sleeping at altitude, athletes can increase what's known as their hemoglobin mass, which boosts the amount of oxygen they can utilize during exercise. As Millet explains, this requires considerably more time than mountain acclimatization: "Every 100 hours sleeping in the tent, you will increase your hemoglobin by one percent." Every member of the US Olympic rowing quad who won gold at the Paris 2024 games reportedly slept in hypoxic tents for six weeks before racing. Although they're designed for elite athletes, hypoxic tents can be useful to outdoor enthusiasts of all abilities, helping to build fitness and intensify workouts. When it comes to climbing, Oestrike suggests that hypoxic tents are even more useful to amateurs than professionals. 'Most people who are committed to an 8,000m (26,247ft) peak know what they're getting into, they know what the training looks like, and they know what it takes to prepare. 'High-level athletes are already training super intensively. So the person that's more modest and maybe needs to lose a little weight, they're going to see a greater upside.' Of course, hypoxic tents are not required for easy-to-medium-difficulty ascents. Nor are they absolutely essential to climb giants like Mount Everest. Traditional, slower, acclimatization has proven itself as an effective, stress-tested method of alpine preparation. Rather, hypoxic tents are an additional and convenient method of acclimatizing, to be used along with high-altitude climbing and intensive training. You can read our exclusive interview with Andrew Ushakov here. For more on climbing preparation, check out our expert guide. The best ice axes: for tackling frozen terrain The best climbing shoes: get a grip both indoors and out
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Nepal beat Scotland in final-ball thriller
Cricket World Cup League 2: Scotland v Nepal, Forthill Scotland 296-7 (50 overs): Tear 80, McCreath 55; Dhakal 2-26 Nepal 297-9 (49.5 overs): Karan 65*, Bhurtel 53; McMullen 3-42 Nepal won by one wicket Scorecard Advertisement Scotland suffered a surprise last-ball defeat by Nepal in a nailbiting World Cup League 2 one-day international in Dundee. Chasing the home side's 296-7, Nepal's last pair levelled the scores with one ball of the final over to spare. And, when left-arm spinner Mark Watt's delivery down the leg side was signalled as a wide to hand Nepal victory, it sparked a pitch invasion from passionate Nepal fans. Nepal, who sit second bottom of the eight-team qualifying section, had lost to a second-string Scotland A side in a warm-up match on Thursday. With Scotland asked to bat first, it looked like opener Charlie Tear's 80, with Finlay McCreath pitching in with 55, had set a healthy target for the visitors. Advertisement Although Nepal opener Khushal Bhurtel scored 55, they slumped from 152-2 to 192-7 before all-rounder Karan KC, coming in at nine, did the damage with an unbeaten 65 from 41 balls, including four sixes. Nepal went into the final over on 290-8 after Karan had plundered 18 from the 49th, but George Munsey caught Sandeep Lamichhane off Watt's first delivery. However, a wide from Watt and a single from last man Rijan Dhakal left Karan on strike with five needed for victory from three deliveries. Karan hit two twos before Watt's second wide of the over sealed an unlikely victory. It looked like the fateful delivery may have come off Karan's pad, but any protests were to no avail as Nepal took the points against a Scotland side sitting fourth in the table and four places above the visitors in the world rankings. The ODI tri-series continues on Wednesday at the same venue, with Nepal taking on the Netherlands.
