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

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/world/europe/mount-everest-xenon-gas-nepal-uk-climbers.html

by nikcub • 1 year ago

97 176 1 year ago

nytimes.com

nikcub• 1 year ago

https://archive.is/WWrtP

frozenwind• 1 year ago

thank you

randomtoast• 1 year ago

This should be the most top voted comment or dang should automatically add these links.

gnabgib• 1 year ago

Related: They want to climb Everest in a week using an anesthetic gas (3 points, 13 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43988039

Use Xenon gas to climb Everest in a week? (12 points, 27 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43837865

Climbers using xenon gas to climb Everest (107 points, 4 months ago, 145 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42705180

Calwestjobs• 1 year ago

LESS people have Tesla car than amount of people who were on top of Mount Everest, why bother ?

herbst• 1 year ago

You could be the _first coder who wears blue shoes from country X_ who ever climbed the Everest!

I doubt your Tesla example is true, but the summit news sound like stupid jokes at this point

rkangel• 1 year ago

It doesn't have to be an achievement for humanity - it can just be a personal achievement.

Thousands upon thousands of people have done the Three Peaks (a famous walking route in the UK), but I'd still like to do it, and would feel a sense of satisfaction at succeeding.

grues-dinner• 1 year ago

"Only" about 6000 people have succeeded in climbing Everest as of mid-2022. Interestingly one third of all successful attempts ever have been since 2016, and nearly half of all summits are people doing it not for the first time.

admissionsguy• 1 year ago

fewer*

hermitcrab4• 1 year ago

LESS people have Tesla car than amount of people who were on top of Mount Everest

That isn't true now. But it might be in a few years, if Tesla's genius CEO continues to alienate his customers.

Etheryte2• 1 year ago

Important to note that they didn't use xenon for the climb, only for the prepwork, which makes this outcome all the more remarkable. Still, I would feel uneasy if this were to become a trend, as incorrectly administering xenon can lead to death, as seen on Hamilton's Pharmacopeia[0].

In an interview, Mr. Carns said that his expedition had been in touch with the ministry, and clarified with the department that it had not taken the gas on the mountain.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVahys8MWLo

Euphorbium2• 1 year ago

The guys in the phrmacopeia were very obviously addicts.

Etheryte2• 1 year ago

That seems completely orthogonal to the point. Much like elsewhere in drug addiction, the deaths were due to the suppliers' negligence, not the fact that the deceased were addicts.

542354234235• 1 year ago

I think the larger risk is lowering the bar even further for who could climb Everest. Anything that makes climbing “easier” could put more people on the mountain that aren’t fit enough or trained enough to handle problems with the climb. In the death zone, any issue, mistake, or problem is potentially fatal. Since just moving up and down the summit puts people at the absolute limit of exertion, attempting to help someone having an issue could domino into multiple fatalities.

The book “Into Thin Air” by Jon Krakauer is an amazing firsthand account of the 1996 Everest disaster. The book does a great job helping you really understand how far your body is pushed in the death zone, and how you truly have nothing left to do anything other than get one foot in front of the other in a race against time. Just sitting down to “rest” was a likely death sentence and how people had to walk past because stopping to try and help would have likely meant sitting down next to them to die.

comrade1234• 1 year ago

So they slept in hypoxia tents which activates the hypoxia-inducible factor molecule, but they also took xenon which also activates the molecule. So, it's not clear if the xenon actually did anything?

Back during the 2000 dot-com boom crash I met a guy who got into a top business school in part by writing about the challenges of climbing Everest. He confessed drunkenly at a party to me that he'd never even left the USA...

acquisitionsilk• 1 year ago

If the business school is silly enough to accept people based partially on the idea that they climbed Everest, perhaps he was right to treat the task of getting in to the place as essentially theatre.

FirmwareBurner2• 1 year ago

Isn't most business success about convincing people to buy expensive tulips while you (legally) walk away with the money and leave them holding the bags, then rinse and repeat? Seems like he'd be the right person for the job.

And then you wonder why so many young people flirt with communism or want to see the capitalist system burn to the ground. What's the point of ethics and hard work if those who just lie their way into much better opportunities will out-earn you by orders of magnitude? Granted, it's a bit more complicated than that, often those people also have connections, but the feeling still stands.

Not sure if meritocracy has been on a decline, or that we're now just more aware of it due to the internet.

dmckeon• 1 year ago

hypoxic tents, which lower oxygen levels in the air

I wonder if the shorter time at altitude also reduced the chances of slower-to-develop high-altitude cerebral edema and pulmonary edema (HACE, HAPE). Some climbers have been sleeping in camp in small tubular pressurized tents to reduce daily apparent density altitude.

Aurornis5• 1 year ago

Back during the 2000 dot-com boom crash I met a guy who got into a top business school in part by writing about the challenges of climbing Everest

I met a startup founder in my local community who would always bring up his ambitions to climb Everest. He made sure everyone knew and made it part of his personality.

Except, he was very out of shape and undeniably overweight. He was not doing any type of training or fitness activity. Everyone could see with their own eyes that this man was not on any path toward climbing Everest in any way.

Yet people around him always brought up his Everest ambitions like it was an amazing fact about him. I always wondered if it was some sort of litmus test to see who could be convinced to deny reality and follow what he said.

0_____0• 1 year ago

I love this anecdote, it honestly feels like satire.

vjvjvjvjghv3• 1 year ago

I have a coworker who talked to me about wanting to climb Everest. I asked him if he does any climbing or even liked to climb. The answer was "No". It's a really weird thing. Everest seems to be a symbol for achievement.

nradov2• 1 year ago

I met a climbing guide who had summitted Mt. Everest multiple times (and had the pictures to prove it). His normal cardio workout was to put on a heavy backpack, then get on a StairMaster machine and go at maximum speed for a couple hours. He looked amazing — although I don't think he ever founded a tech startup.

vjvjvjvjghv3• 1 year ago

"Back during the 2000 dot-com boom crash I met a guy who got into a top business school in part by writing about the challenges of climbing Everest. He confessed drunkenly at a party to me that he'd never even left the USA..."

It kind of makes sense. A lot of business success is about being able to bullshit convincingly.

djtango2• 1 year ago

Meta but the discussion from this anecdote drove so much societal commentary, I totally forgot I was here to talk about Xenon-assisted mountaineering and experienced whiplash when people started talking about xenon again...

meindnoch2• 1 year ago

Xenon is used by athletes to increase their endogenous erythropoietin production. As it's a noble gas, it leaves no trace in their body, so post-hoc detection of this doping method is impossible.

But as a recreational climber, why bother with xenon? Just inject EPO.

dtech• 1 year ago

I guess it feels different to people to stimulate their bodies production of a hormone rather than injecting it.

_joel2• 1 year ago

Breathing in an inert gas is easier and much safer than injecting something into your body.

timschmidt• 1 year ago

Xenon acts like an anesthetic so it's possible to OD on.

CGMthrowaway• 1 year ago

Epo injections are safe and effective, and side effects are very rare and usually mild

meindnoch2• 1 year ago

Casually breathing in an anaesthetic gas for prolonged periods is easier and much safer than injecting a widely used medicine? Are you out of your mind?

alariccole• 1 year ago

It’s inert, how bad could it be? /s

jppittma• 1 year ago

Why not both? Also detection?!? That’s crazy. Everybody should be doing this. The raison d’etre for these sorts of bans is their perceived negative health consequences.

You almost certainly safer using whatever PED you can get your hands on if you’re trying to climb Everest.

Lio• 1 year ago

Why not both?

Because if you can inject EPO then you don't need xenon. With EPO you can generate as many red blood cells your body can handle.

fiftyacorn• 1 year ago

More recently it was CO use to simulate altitude training

pixl973• 1 year ago

Hmm, that sounds like it could go bad easily.

lm28469• 1 year ago

why bother with xenon? Just inject EPO.

As a recreational anything I'd say avoid wrecking your body to make some arbitrary numbers nobody will ever care about go up (or down)

hermitcrab4• 1 year ago

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

151552• 1 year ago

As a recreational anything

Most recreational activities don't come with an existing risk of death: PEDs likely reduce this relative risk in many riskier physical endeavors.

tonyhart7• 1 year ago

"former special force", "flew to expert across Europe for testing and trial"

Yeah this is not your average mountain climber group, "normal" people could not do this just by xenon gas alone

Havoc• 1 year ago

Yeah was about to say that must have been really good baseline fitness.

I know people that made it to Kilimanjaro as pretty average middle class urbanites with no substantial climbing background, but that's probably at the edge of what's possible.

normie30004• 1 year ago

I know people that made it to Kilimanjaro ... with no substantial climbing background

Kilimanjaro is an arduous hike. No technical knowledge or equipment is required. The main challenge on the mountain is altitude, which is countered by time spent acclimatising.

nokeya• 1 year ago

“Days instead of weeks on the mountain foot” - that’s the crucial point. Less time -> less money spent on accommodation, supplies, personnel there. Obviously they don’t want to lose income.

elif2• 1 year ago

Nah the logic is less time on the mountain > more climbers per climbing season.

They will do this math eventually and then they will require xenon prep.

Euphorbium2• 1 year ago

Would nitrous work as well?

voidUpdate• 1 year ago

I'm not sure, but you'd have a fantastic time trying

smartbit• 1 year ago

Nitrous gas inactivates the cobalamin form of vitamin B₁₂ by oxidation. [0]

Vitamin B₁₂ deficiency …… at levels moderately lower than normal, a range of symptoms such as feeling tired, weak, lightheadedness, headaches, dizziness, rapid breathing, rapid heartbeat, cold hands and feet, low-grade fevers, tremor, cold intolerance, easy bruising and bleeding, pale skin, low blood pressure, sore tongue, upset stomach, loss of appetite, weight loss, constipation, diarrhea, severe joint pain, feeling abnormal sensations including numbness or tingling (pins and needles) to the fingers and toes, and tinnitus, may be experienced.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrous_oxide#Safety

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12_deficiency#Signs,_...

Klaus_• 1 year ago

Climbing Everest in just a few days with xenon gas does sound pretty wild.

But it also makes me wonder if we’re turning what used to be a deeply human and challenging journey into just another experiment in efficiency.

Not sure if that counts as progress. Curious how others see it.

freetime22• 1 year ago

But it also makes me wonder if we’re turning what used to be a deeply human and challenging journey into just another experiment in efficiency.

I think that ship has sailed already. Now the focus should probably be on safety, economic benefit, and sustainability/minimizing environmental impact.

normie30004• 1 year ago

what used to be a deeply human and challenging journey into just another experiment in efficiency

Maybe it's always been an experiment in efficiency? Early Everest expeditions consisted of large support teams, setting records for sleeping at altitude, and inventing new breathing apparatus. Or maybe the challenge and the journey are over now?

A_D_E_P_T• 1 year ago

Boss Lowe wrote about doping with xenon gas more than a decade ago: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/another-use-xenon

Also, and quite interestingly, xenon isn't the only element that does this. Cobalt does something very similar: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6157393/

Athletic use is probably more common than people think. And I'd be absolutely shocked if Xe gas weren't already being used in racehorses. (You wouldn't believe the state of chemical warfare in that sport.)

There's also potential military use -- especially in combat divers. They're very limited by the amount of breathing gas they can carry. Anything to meaningfully cut oxygen use could be a game changer.

formerly_proven• 1 year ago

It’s kinda curious that xenon can be used both for performance enhancement _and_ as a general anaesthetic.

dmd• 1 year ago

And as a dessert topping!

Scaevolus• 1 year ago

Anesthetics are very weird. One of the leading theories is that they basically get wedged in lipid bilayers and interfere with neural signaling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_general_anaestheti...

mdorazio• 1 year ago

Military divers who need to be underwater for long periods are almost certainly using rebreathers, both for the longevity and for the lack of visible & audible bubbles.

cenamus• 1 year ago

Isn't that also mainly to avoid nitrogen toxicity?

gadders2• 1 year ago

I always wondered if the allied forces were giving their elite troops EPO or similar when tracking the Taliban up and down mountains in Afghanistan. If they weren't, I think they should have been.

nradov2• 1 year ago

I don't know about EPO, it probably wouldn't have been that useful. But it was an open secret that a lot of the elite ground troops used illegally purchased performance enhancing steroids to build muscle and accelerate recovery. Long patrols through rough terrain while carrying a heavy load are extremely grueling and a little enhancement was tremendously helpful. Use of those drugs was technically a violation of military regulations. But officers often looked the other way because they didn't want to endanger the mission, and regular urine tests didn't check for steroids.

Now that the GWOT is over, the peacetime military has been cracking down on steroid use.

sQL_inject• 1 year ago

Sherpa (local) climbs Everest in eleven hours: national pride

Foreigner climbs Everest in three days: "against climbing ethics"

Got it.

cratermoon3• 1 year ago

That Sherpa was born and lived on the mountain his whole life. Everything he is was molded by his life. His ability to make the climb came from years of experience and knowledge.

The foreigner huffed some gas and slept in a high-tech tube a week before the climb.

I'll leave to the reader to decide which one deserves respect and admiration.

adwn• 1 year ago

Himal Gautam, the director of Nepal’s tourism department, which is responsible for regulating expeditions on the nation’s mountains, said in an interview that using the gas was “against climbing ethics,” […]

Okay, but then be consistent and also ban bottled oxygen and the services of Sherpas.

[…] and that it would hurt the country’s tourism industry and the Sherpas who help climbers by reducing their time on the mountain.

Ah, okay, there's the real reason. "Climbing ethics" my ass.

yapyap• 1 year ago

What even is the point anymore of doing something like this if you cheat your whole way up.

It’s like bragging about sailing around the world when in reality you did a cruise

freetime22• 1 year ago

Where do you draw the line at cheating, though? Is using supplemental oxygen cheating?

normie30004• 1 year ago

A cruise around the world? What's the differentiator?

genewitch• 1 year ago

A cruise ship doesn't have sails and a sailboat does. That's the reason I got from the context.

quotemstr• 1 year ago

Amazing and hilarious.

Genuine technological innovation in adaptation to low oxygen. Nay-sayers say it does nothing. Guys climb Everest in a week using said innovation. You can't argue with results, so they switch to:

"Himal Gautam, the director of Nepal’s tourism department, which is responsible for regulating expeditions on the nation’s mountains, said in an interview that using the gas was “against climbing ethics,” and that it would hurt the country’s tourism industry and the Sherpas who help climbers by reducing their time on the mountain."

and

"From a medical point of view, off-label use without a scientific basis and with unknown health risks must be rejected"

So it simultaneously does nothing and is unethical, and it doesn't matter whether it works anyway, because even if it did, it'd be against made-up "medical" rules.

I've never seen a stronger case for telling very serious people to go fuck themselves.

rndmio• 1 year ago

I don't know, maybe the 10 prior weeks of sleeping in hypoxic tents might have had some effect too. If they walked off the street, huffed some Xenon then blasted up Everest that'd be amazing, but it sounds like people are overfocusing on the Xenon bit.

donatj3• 1 year ago

Why does mountaineering need a future? Mountaineering should just be done. Stop.

The mountains have been scaled. All of them. We've been there, website seen what's to be seen. It's done, it's over. Just leave these grandiose wonders alone rather than destroying the natural beauty in the name of an ego boost.

avalys• 1 year ago

Why do anything? Better to just sit on the couch.

donatj3• 1 year ago

There are plenty of things worthy of doing, spaces left to explore and discoveries to be made.

Destroying a natural wonder in the name of impressing your buddies doesn't fall under that.

gosub100• 1 year ago

Everest in particular, should be shut down to climbers. It's a giant trash heap full of human waste and dead bodies. Usable only 2 weeks per year.

They should install a cable car or furnicular and let people go straight to the top any time of year. Tax it and give the money to the locals. Put a nice restaurant up there too. That would be cleaner and more practical than what we have now.

hofo• 1 year ago

Only the people that have been there have seen it. Why should experiences not be repeatable? Humanity doesn’t share a to-do list; you doing something doesn’t give me those experiences. If you want to pivot to the wear-and-tear or how people aren’t adhering to leave-no-trace that’s fine but a different argument

elzbardico• 1 year ago

Plenty of unconquered peaks and routes across the world.

jmyeet• 1 year ago

I've long held that climbing Everest has become a gross display of wealth and vanity and basically nobody should do it. There's no glory in being the 4000th person to do so. It's not glamorous. You're basically climbing over trash and dead bodies to do it.

Often inexperienced people with too much money are putting themselves, their sherpas and other climbers are risk by doing so.

Using bottled oxygen already made this substantially easier. But this Xenon is on a whole new level. I went looking for the cost and found [1]:

After a week, the Brits could be back at their desks at home. They still pay an introductory price of an undisclosed amount. In future, such a short trip to Everest will cost around 150,000 euros.

From my understanding, that's 50-100,000 more than usual. The whole thing just reeks of Oceangate.

And for what? To take a selfie at the top and to brag to you're equally vacous and wealthy friends? It would be more ethical to stay home and just Photoshop yourself into a photo. ChatGPT can probably do it for you.

Nepal is a very poor country. Being a sherpa is one of the few (locally) high paying jobs there are. Sherpas risk their lives for this. At least on K2 or Annapurna you're more likely to find experiernced and technically capable mountaineers who won't endanger your life for a selfie.

Everest is not a technically difficult climb, as far as I understand it. The death zone and general conditions make it a challenge. Negate those with Xenon and it's just a really expensive walk.

[1] https://abenteuer-berg.de/en/with-xenon-to-mount-everest-and...

username223• 1 year ago

100%

I've climbed some mountains, and while I don't know if I would be capable of doing Everest, I do know that I wouldn't want to (unless I could do it like Goran Kropp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göran_Kropp). I guess I could brag if I doped myself, took a helicopter past the Khumbu Icefall, and had servants carrying my stuff the whole way to the summit, but I could never be proud of myself for doing that.

throwawayffffas• 1 year ago

Why not just climb with oxygen and skip the hypoxia all together?

zeristor• 1 year ago

Isn't Xenon very expensive?

I used it in my Laser MSc has part of the mix for a CO2 laser (marks how long ago that was). CO2 for the optic properties, and Xe to reduce the electron temperature.

So the Xe in this case triggers a response in the human body, but people aren't quite sure why. Quite strange considering Xe is an inert gas.

helsinkiandrew• 1 year ago

Isn't Xenon very expensive?

Climbing Everest costs $50-100K though. If you can reduce the time each 'climber' spends on the mountain, its probably cost effective.

pfdietz2• 1 year ago

Xenon is so expensive it's reasonable to think about recovering it from spent nuclear reactor fuel (it's a major fission product with no long lived isotopes, although you have to very rigorously separate it from krypton, which does have some.)

Xenon isn't inert; it can form chemical compounds like xenon difluoride. In the body it's probably dissolving into cell membranes or other fatty components.

weinzierl• 1 year ago

What do you mean by "no long-lived isotopes"? That fission only produces short lived Xenon isotopes? Then, what use would it be to harvest it from fuel?

For applications like in the article you want very long-lived or ideally stable Xe isotopes, which do exist.

jebarker3• 1 year ago

Climbing Everest these days just seems to be the quintessential activity for people that have lost site of what really matters in life. It's where you end up if you never grow out of the idea that life is a competition you can win.

osigurdson4• 1 year ago

Some people like climbing mountains, including Everest. It makes sense to follow your interests in my opinion.

croes4• 1 year ago

It makes sense to think about consequences.

https://nepalmonitor.com/2025/03/19/nepal-overtourism-everes...

jebarker3• 1 year ago

My phrasing was weird but I'm actually speaking from personal experience here. I haven't climbed Everest but I've pursued other activities to extreme limits, e.g. running 100 mile high mountain races. These activities are all fun and have intrinsic rewards, but a large number of people doing them (my prior self included) were really in it for the external recognition of having done it. Everest seems to be the epitomy of that. I'm sure there's lots of people quietly climbing Everest just because it's there, but there's certainly very many doing it because of the name Everest and because it's the highest.

cheeze• 1 year ago

IMO this is a reductionist take that is often peddled around Reddit. "Anybody can climb Everest, it's not that difficult", etc.

Personally? I think it's a pretty cool achievement and is _the_ mountain to climb for a reason. I'm with the other commenter here. Chase your passions.

croes4• 1 year ago

Maybe it’s time to stop being so egocentric

https://nepalmonitor.com/2025/03/19/nepal-overtourism-everes...

151552• 1 year ago

is _the_ mountain to climb for a reason.

Is this the case in mountaineering circles, or are K2 and Annapurna the peaks to be respected?

jebarker3• 1 year ago

I never said it's not difficult. Please see my response to the other commenter.

llm_nerd• 1 year ago

It's similar to how many people clutch their pearls about abandoned gear on Everest.

Many of the neighbouring countries -- including Nepal, India, Tibet, Bangladesh -- are effectively open-air garbage dumps, where rivers and fields and cities are just awash with discards and garbage. In environmentally critical places where it massively impedes with the life of millions.

In a relative sense I just do not care about some infinitesimal amount of discarded air canisters on a lifeless rock at 10,000 feet. It seems like misdirected envy when people suddenly super care about that. In an ideal world they would leave only footprints, but in the grand scheme of things it just does not matter. Cue another "OMG look at these air canisters some rich guys left at 15,000 feet!" articles.

It's a bit like how the anti-AI cadre have taken to suddenly being incredibly concerned about the energy usage of AI. Despite everything else, it's AI that's going to heat the planet. They never cared about data centre power usage when it was serving their big tiddy goth anime GIFs, but if it's AI suddenly they lament this outrage.

TechDebtDevin2• 1 year ago

I think theres more to it than just ego. I find myself watching Everest videos on Youtube (shout out Michael Tracy's channel).

Ive never done mountaineering but I become fascinated by these stories of people on the mountain and sometimes wonder if I could do it. I definately never will, theres lots of other things id rather invest my time in but I can definately see the allure and why people become obsessed with doing it.

exhilaration• 1 year ago

If you're interested in Everest, I loved Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer - it's absolutely fantastic and available on Audible. Then last week I discovered Everest on Netflix, which isn't great but it's based on the book and they do a good job showing you the route and distances between the camps with CGI.

Anyways, after all that I have zero desire to ever go near Everest or any other risky mountain climb.

TheCondor2• 1 year ago

There are both kinds. There are passionate mountaineers that want to reach the tallest summit, with varying degrees of “rules” about it that matter to them. There are also a group of “tourists” that want it for, what appears to be, other reasons.

Some special forces guys, record summit Everest time… let me guess, one is an SAS sniper with numerous recorded kills in Iraq or Afghanistan… but clearly he can’t talk much about it, he just needs you to know it… maybe some mi5 action in there… this is tailor made for a “bro-tube” channel.

severusdd• 1 year ago

Xenon isn’t a new magic. Russian athletes were rumored to use it in the 2014 Sochi Olympic, and WADA banned it shortly thereafter: https://www.aip.org/inside-science/catching-some-xes-has-str...

It spikes HIF-1α → EPO for a day or two, but meta-analyses still doesn't show a real performance bump, let alone safety at 8 km. Feels less like innovation and more like mountaineering’s own carbon-plate shoes, except the failure mode here is cerebral edema, not a slow marathon time.

patentatt• 1 year ago

What's the issue with carbon-plated shoes?

germinalphrase• 1 year ago

They return energy (like a spring) providing mechanical assistance to the runner.

cratermoon3• 1 year ago

Elite runners can knock about 2 minutes off their marathon time. Studies show about a 2% improvement in times, the downside is increased injury.

Aurornis5• 1 year ago

but meta-analyses still doesn't show a real performance bump

I wish all of these news articles would discuss the actual studies instead of lazily parroting the claims of the one guy who is trying to sell expensive Xenon-assisted Everest hikes.

These articles are always PR pieces for Lukas Furtenbach’s expensive Everest tours. Every single time I see the words “Xenon” and “Everest” in a headline, his name is in the article as the source.

rtkwe3• 1 year ago

I wish all of these news articles would discuss the actual studies

They do, if you read them.

While some doctors have used the gas in the past to “precondition” patients to low oxygen levels — for example, before major heart surgery — the practice hasn’t really caught on because “it hasn’t been as protective as one would hope,” he said.
Mike Shattock, a professor of cellular cardiology at King’s College London, said “xenon probably does very little and there is virtually no reputable scientific evidence that it makes any difference.”
Some research has shown that xenon can quickly acclimatize people to high altitudes, even as some experts say the benefits, if any, are negligible and the side effects of its use remain unclear.

mg794613• 1 year ago

Unfair?

I thought that mountain was mainly climbed by CEO's that let sherpa's carry their stuff?

thecrumb• 1 year ago

I'm waiting until the trash pile on Everest is higher than the mountain itself. Everest isn't supposed to be easy to climb. If someone wants to do it faster/quicker - why would I care how. I'd still look at them and say you cheated.

pixl973• 1 year ago

I'd still look at them and say you cheated.

That's why naked cavemen are the only ones to climb the mountain without being called cheaters!

Aurornis5• 1 year ago

Note that these all of these Xenon-Everest stories come back to the same person: Lukas Furtenbach

Why? Because he’s launching a business that sells Xenon-assisted Everest tours: https://www.furtenbachadventures.com/

These stories are never about uncovering an underground world of Xenon performance enhancement or discussing the science (which is much less optimistic about Xenon’s benefits). They’re always lazily relaying the PR information that Lukas Furtenbach gives them.

So while it’s true that Xenon appears to have some possible performance enhancing properties, all of these news pieces about how climbers are using Xenon always come back to this one same guy who is, coincidentally, trying really hard to sell people on expensive Xenon-assisted Everest tours.

mattmaroon3• 1 year ago

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

RajT88• 1 year ago

Unless he has found some other clever way that he is for some reason pretending is Xenon.

Meth. It's meth.

Aurornis5• 1 year ago

I would say that it’s strong evidence that Xenon actually works

The only evidence is the claims from the person selling the expensive five-figure Everest packages. It’s the very definition of a conflict of interest.

They also use multiple treatments, not just Xenon. The hikers sleep in hypobaric chambers. Another comment said they used supplemental oxygen but were hiding details about how much.

There is no evidence or even head-to-head testing here. It’s all claims that come from one person, who is also trying to sell the treatment.

toss1• 1 year ago

He is primarily selling the Placebo Effect.

All kinds of fancy "research" and "reasons" it will work, and the marks\\\\customers put in a financial and emotional investment in it working, so expect it to work.

Seems just about how placebos work best

goric• 1 year ago

IMO this climb doesn't really do much to prove of xenon's effectiveness (altitude researcher Dr. Peter Hackett says as much [0]).

The team used supplemental oxygen on the climb, with the starting altitude and flow rate not being reported [1]. This is speculative, but if they were using more oxygen than typical and starting at a lower altitude, that's a massive advantage.

Further, Andrew Ushakov traveled from NYC to the summit in just under 4 days this year without the use of xenon (but also with supplemental oxygen with unknown starting altitude and flow rate). He used a hypoxic tent to prepare as well, and depending on the accuracy of the reporting may have even spent less time doing that than the xenon team did [1].

[0] https://www.npr.org/2025/05/18/nx-s1-5398553/a-new-company-i...

[1] https://www.alanarnette.com/blog/2025/05/21/everest-2025-fas...

djtango2• 1 year ago

I believe the Xenon team also did hypoxic tents

vjvjvjvjghv3• 1 year ago

Next step is probably exoskeletons.

_fs• 1 year ago

https://www.cnn.com/travel/robotic-exoskeleton-hiking-china-...

firesteelrain• 1 year ago

How safe is Xenon to breathe?

fortran77• 1 year ago

Will it also crash Rasperry Pis?

nine_k• 1 year ago

Should scaling Mount Everest, one of sporting’s greatest accomplishments, be made easier

But it has been, for a long time. Base camps, oxygen masks, advanced gear, etc all make climbing easier.

Similarly, should lifting 200 kg be made easier? It has been made easy, you can use a forklift and barely move your finger to do so. But this is not seen as an accomplishment; if you want to be considered a strong weightlifter, you have to lift an old-school barbell.

The biggest problem, as I can imagine, is not the dilution of the achievement, but the intensity of the stream if the climbers. Mt Everest is already full of climbers who follow each other at a short distance. Doubling this stream might ruin the experience altogether, or there would be large lines and inevitably large fees to jump them.

EasyMark• 1 year ago

They can easily limit the number of climbers with quotas, which they already do.

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

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