![\"Sunrise](\"https:\/\/abenteuer-berg.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Everest-Sonnenaufgang.jpg\")
<\/a>Faster than the flash? Lukas Furtenbach<\/a> is already calling one of his offers \u201cFlash Expeditions\u201d. For around 100,000 euros, the Austrian has been offering clients of his company Furtenbach Adventures <\/a>the chance to climb Mount Everest in three weeks \u2013 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?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n According to a report in the Financial Times<\/a>, four British mountaineers are to inhale the inert gas xenon<\/a> under medical supervision after arriving in Kathmandu. They are then to be flown by helicopter to Everest Base Camp and set off straight for the summit with their Sherpas. After a three-day ascent to the summit at 8,849 meters and a one-day descent, they will return to Kathmandu by helicopter and then return home.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Xenon<\/a> has been used in medicine as an anaesthetic for more than 70 years; in Germany, it was first used in a surgery in 2010. Anesthesia with xenon (mixed with oxygen) is considered to be very gentle, but also expensive. However, the gas not only has a soporific effect. Xenon also causes the kidneys to produce more EPO by leaps and bounds. This results in significantly more red blood cells \u2013 which are needed at high altitudes to cope with hypoxia, the lack of oxygen in the body.<\/p>\n Normally, this is achieved by means of extensive acclimatization, by approaching higher and higher altitudes. These \u201crotations\u201d \u2013 ascents to higher and higher camps, then descents back to base camp \u2013 are to be made superfluous by the use of xenon.<\/p>\n Furtenbach received the xenon tip years ago from Dr. Michael Fries, Head Physician for Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine at St. Vincenz Hospital in the German town of Limburg an der Lahn<\/a>. Furtenbach played the \u201cguinea pig\u201d himself, testing xenon in 2020 on Aconcagua, the highest mountain in South America, and later also on Everest \u2013 with success, as he says. He has no reservations about using the noble gas with clients.<\/p>\n \u201cThe treatment is carried out by an anesthetist in a clinical setting,\u201d Lukas writes to me. \u201cThere is no health risk. What\u2019s more, there are no known adverse health effects from xenon. And after all, it has been used as an anesthetic since the 1950s and has been extensively researched and medically approved.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Furtenbach, \u201conly a fraction of the amount of xenon administered during normal anesthesia\u201d is required to achieve the desired effect. He does not want to disclose the exact mixing ratio of xenon and oxygen and how long it has to be inhaled, \u201cbecause our competitors are always watching us and trying to copy everything we do that is new.\u201d<\/p>\n The lucrative Everest expedition market is highly competitive and is now dominated \u2013 at least in the lower price segment \u2013 by Nepalese operators. Furtenbach Adventures is one of the few foreign companies that has held its own in the sometimes fierce competition: with a range of services that is not cheap, but of high quality, as Furtenbach emphasizes. \u201cThe same high standards of health, fitness and mountain experience apply to all our clients, whether Classic, Flash or now the new variant,\u201d says Lukas. \u201cWe are the only Everest operator that has never had an accident and we have by far the best success rate in the industry. We are obviously doing a lot of things right.\u201d<\/p>\n Xenon has been on the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA<\/a>)\u2019s list of banned substances since 2014. At the time, it became known that athletes in Russia had been inhaling the inert gas across the country to boost their performance. I ask Furtenbach whether he is supporting doping on the mountain with the use of xenon \u2013 a problem on Everest that is often hushed up<\/a> anyway. He doesn\u2019t want to take the blame that.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are many substances and practices on the WADA list that are regularly consumed or practiced by many mountaineers. Even hypoxia tents were on the banned list in Italy until 2024. And the FIS (World Ski and Snowboard Federation)<\/em> has (bottled) <\/em>oxygen on the banned list, for example, and WADA is considering following suit,\u201d Lukas replies.<\/p>\nBy helicopter to base camp and directly onto the route<\/h2>\n
No more rotations<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Under the supervision of an anaesthetist<\/h2>\n
<\/a>\u201cWe are obviously doing a lot of things right\u201d<\/h2>\n
On the doping list<\/h2>\n