International alpinism association UIAA warns against xenon use in high-altitude mountaineering – Furtenbach contradicts

Mount Everest
Nepalese south side of Mount Everest

In the debate about the planned use of the noble gas xenon with the aim of shortening the duration of Everest expeditions to one week, the international alpinism association UIAA has now also intervened. “According to current [scientific] literature, there is no evidence that breathing in xenon improves performance in the mountains, and inappropriate use can be dangerous,” reads a statement from the UIAA Medical Commission.

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Nepal tightens price screw for Mount Everest – from fall 2025

Mount Everest at sunrise
Mount Everest (l.)

The news comes as no surprise. A year and a half ago, the Nepalese government announced that it would be raising the price of a permit to climb Mount Everest by a good 36 percent from 2025: from 11,000 to 15,000 US dollars per climber from abroad. It is now official.

However, the new prices will not yet apply for the upcoming spring season on Mount Everest, but only from 1 September. The permit price for an Everest ascent in the fall will then rise from the previous 5,500 to 7,500 dollars per person, and in winter and during the monsoon season (June to August) from the previous 2,750 to 3,750 dollars, both of which also represent an increase of a good 36 percent.

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Xenon use on Everest short trip: “Trained doctor with appropriate equipment is absolutely essential”

Mount Everest
Mount Everest

And suddenly the mountaineering scene is discussing a noble gas that we all probably heard about in chemistry lessons at school. But most of us have forgotten all about it. Xenon is one of the rarest elements found on earth. Although it is in the air we breathe, the proportion of xenon is tiny: 87 billionths or 0.0000087 percent (I hope I didn’t make a mistake with the zeros).

If you want to extract xenon, this almost-nothing proportion has to be extracted from the air in a complex process. This makes the gas expensive. But it is also in demand. Xenon is used for light sources (such as car lamps), as a laser gas in the semiconductor industry, as a propulsion agent for satellites, in medicine as a high-tech anesthetic – and probably soon also in commercial eight-thousander mountaineering.

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With Xenon to Mount Everest and back in just one week?

Sunrise on Mount Everest
Sunrise on Mount Everest (in fall 2019)

Faster than the flash? Lukas Furtenbach is already calling one of his offers “Flash Expeditions”. For around 100,000 euros, the Austrian has been offering clients of his company Furtenbach Adventures the chance to climb Mount Everest in three weeks – with several weeks of hypoxia training at home, a helicopter shuttle to the mountain, two personal climbing sherpas for support and the use of bottled oxygen at a high flow rate. A conventional Everest expedition, which the company also has in its portfolio, lasts six weeks, others up to ten weeks. In the upcoming Everest spring season, Furtenbach now wants to do the whole thing in just one week. Can that work?

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Helicopter dispute in the Everest region: “The whole Khumbu is united”

Blockade of a helipad in the Everest Valley
Blockade of a helipad in the Everest Valley

“Enough is enough,” Mingma Sherpa, chairman of the Namche Youth Group, tells me. “We locals have never spoken out against helicopter companies in general. But we are against the unnecessary helicopter flights. Last year alone, there were about 6,000 flights from Lukla (the gateway to the Everest region) to the Khumbu Valley. That’s too many for Sagarmatha National Park.”

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Jost Kobusch ends winter expedition on Mount Everest

Jost Kobusch in the Khumbu region
Jost Kobusch in the Khumbu, the Region in Nepal around Mount Everest

The premature end to his winter expedition on the highest mountain on earth does not come as a complete surprise to me. Even after Jost Kobusch‘s first push of the season on his route – he reached an altitude of around 7,500 meters on the West Ridge on 27 December and thus already achieved the goal he had set himself for his third Everest winter expedition – the 32-year-old German mountaineer reacted rather cautiously to my question as to whether he would climb up again.

Survived earthquake physically unscathed

Jost finally set off again at the beginning of last week and was surprised by the effects of the strong earthquake in Tibet while climbing to Lho La, a pass that connects the Nepalese Everest Valley with the Tibetan side, in his tent at 5,700 meters. He survived the tremors physically unscathed. But after his return to his “base camp” in the “Pyramid”, an Italian research station and lodge located at around 5,000 meters, Kobusch seemed even more indecisive.

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Jost Kobusch after Everest attempt: “It would have been too dangerous to climb any higher”

Jost Kobusch on the West Shoulder of Mount Everest
Jost Kobusch on the West Shoulder of Mount Everest

Jost Kobusch kept a cool head on Mount Everest. On his first push this winter, the 32-year-old German climber reached an altitude of 7,537 meters on the West Ridge. The altimeter on his watch showed this value on 27 December. His GPS tracker measured the highest altitude at 7,488 meters. On another model, the figure was 7,553 meters. Such differences are not unusual for altimeters.

In any case, Jost climbed around 200 meters higher than during his most successful attempt to date in the winter of 2019/2020, when he turned back on the West Shoulder. This time, he sniffed into the upper part of the West Ridge. I asked Jost via WhatsApp if he hadn’t been tempted to pitch his tent there and climb further up.

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Jost Kobusch on Mount Everest at around 7,500 meters

Jost Kobusch on ascent on Mount Everest
Jost Kobusch on ascent on Mount Everest

If his GPS tracker sends correct information, Jost Kobusch has almost reached the goal of his winter expedition to Mount Everest this year. According to the data sent by the GPS tracker, the 32-year-old German mountaineer climbed over the West Shoulder onto Everest’s West Ridge today and reached an altitude of 7,488 meters. Jost, who is climbing solo and without bottled oxygen, then set off on his descent again. His last signal today, Friday, was sent from an altitude of just below 7,000 meters.

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Discussion again about ban on commercial helicopter flights in the Everest region

Helicopter takes off above Namche Bazaar
Helicopter takes off above Namche Bazaar

Same old, same old – it’s like in the Hollywood movie “Groundhog Day”. Once again, the regional administration of the Everest region has launched an attempt to restrict helicopter traffic. The Khumbu Pasanglhamu Rural Municipality has announced that commercial helicopter flights will be prohibited in Sagarmatha National Park from 1 January 2025. Only rescue flights will then be permitted, and these must be coordinated with the national park authority.

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100 years after disappearing on Mount Everest: Remains of Andrew Irvine discovered

Andrew Irvine
Andrew Irvine

“I lifted up the sock and there’s a red label that has A.C. IRVINE stitched into it. We were all literally running in circles dropping F-bombs.” This is how the US climber and filmmaker Jimmy Chin described to the magazine “National Geographic” the moment when he and his team discovered remains of Andrew Irvine on the Central Rongbuk Glacier at the foot of the North face of Mount Everest .

They found an old boot with a foot in it and the sock in question, which bore witness to who had once worn it. At the beginning of June 1924, the British mountaineers George Herbert Leigh Mallory, then 37 years old, and Andrew Comyn Irvine, 22 years old, had set off on a summit attempt on the then unclimbed Mount Everest. According to their expedition colleague Noell Odell, they were last seen on 8 June on the Northeast Ridge, after which their trail was lost. To this day, the mystery of how close they came to the highest point on earth at 8,849 meters is unsolved.

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40 years ago: “White Limbo” on Mount Everest

Everest North Face in the last daylight
Everest North Face in the last daylight (Great Couloir in the shadwo)


It has never been repeated to this day. That says it all about the “White Limbo” route through the North Face of Mount Everest, which the Australians Tim Macartney-Snape and Greg Mortimer used to reach the summit at 8,849 meters on 3 October 1984 – 40 years ago today. They were climbing without bottled oxygen. The American Everest chronicler Walt Unsworth (1928-2017) once described the Australian expedition as “one of the greatest climbs ever done on the mountain”.

In addition to Macartney-Snape and Mortimer, Geoffrey Bartram, Andrew Henderson and Lincoln Hall were part of the Australian team that set out to open up a new route through the North Face without breathing masks. They named it White Limbo – after a song by the former rock band Australian Crawl from 1983.

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Masses of water and mud hit the mountaineers’ village of Thame in the Everest Region

Mud and water pour over Thame
Mud and water pour over Thame

It took my breath away when I saw the pictures from Thame on the Internet today. The village lies at around 3800 metres in the Khumbu area, the region around Mount Everest. Masses of mud and water rolled through the village, which I visited in 2002 and 2019. According to the Kathmandu-based newspaper “The Himalayan Times”, around half of the village was severely damaged, especially the lower-lying areas. A school, a medical centre, seven houses and five lodges were swept away. Most of the houses were reportedly uninhabitable. At least one person is missing.

A stroke of luck: the water and mudslides hit the village in daylight. Most of the inhabitants were apparently able to reach safety in higher areas. The Gompa of Thame, one of the oldest and most important monasteries in the Khumbu, is located well above the village and is likely to have been spared from the disaster.

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100 years ago: Mallory and Irvine go missing on Everest

North side of Mount Everest
North side of Mount Everest

Noell Odell is collecting fossils on the Tibetan north flank of Mount Everest when the weather suddenly clears. “The entire summit ridge and the last ridge of Everest became visible,” the British mountaineer later wrote about this moment in the midday hours on 8 June 1924.

“My eyes became fixed on one tiny black spot silhouetted on a small snow-crest beneath a rock-step in the ridge; the black spot moved. Another black spot became apparent and moved up the snow to join the other on the crest. The first then approached the great rock-step and shortly emerged at the top; the second did likewise. Then the whole fascinating vision vanished, enveloped in cloud once more.” Odell is apparently the last person to see his expedition colleagues George Mallory and Andrew Irvine on their summit attempt. They never return. At the time, Mallory is 37 and Irvine 22 years old.

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Norrdine Nouar after Everest attempt: “I can no longer put up with the circus”

Norrdine Nouar at Everest Base Camp
Norrdine Nouar back at Everest Base Camp

Norrdine Nouar listened to his body. On the evening of 22 May, the German mountaineer, who wanted to climb Mount Everest without bottled oxygen and without a Sherpa companion, set off from the South Col at around 7,900 meters. His goal: the highest point on earth at 8,849 meters.

However, the 36-year-old turned back at an altitude of around 8,100 meters. “I realized pretty quickly that I might manage to reach the summit, but that I would never come back,” Norrdine writes to me.

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Piotr Krzyzowski: Double ascent of Lhotse and Everest without bottled oxygen

Piotr Krzyzowski
Piotr Krzyzowski

Among the hundreds of Everest summit successes that have been reported in recent days, one stands out: Piotr Krzyzowski from Poland climbed the 8,516-meter-high Lhotse on 21 May without bottled oxygen and without a Sherpa companion.

Instead of returning to base camp, as he had actually planned before the start of the expedition, Krzyzowski climbed from the Lhotse flank to Everest South Col and then on towards the summit at 8,849 meters. On 23 May, Piotr stood on the highest point on earth, barely 48 hours after his summit success on Lhotse. Such a double ascent of these two eight-thousanders without bottled oxygen had previously only been achieved by a handful of mountaineers.

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