He breathed a gas and increased Everest in days. Is this the future of mountaineering?

Climbing Mount Everest usually takes weeks, most of the time of that time is adjusted into the thin air in the foot of the mountain. But last week, four British men shrunned the dramatic of the time, traveled from London at the summit and less than a week, according to the organizer of their campaign. They left the duration of adjustment, in the part, a secret weapon: breathing the Xinon gas. His feat has stopped the world of mountaineering and has inspired an investigation by the Nepali government, as the use of gas has been fiercely debated. Some researches have shown that Xenon can quickly take people to high altitude, even some experts say the benefits, if any, are negligible and the side effects of its use remain unclear. The organizers stated that the gas was important for the speed of climbing, but their approach has inspired a widespread debate that attacks at the core of mountaineering: one of the biggest achievements of sports, should score Mount Everest, available to more people during a quick holiday – with the help of a performance enhancer? “It is an inspiration, especially for traditional climbers, who feel bad about the idea that you can climb Everest in less than a week,” Lucas Furtainback, who organized the exhibition, said in a phone interview to the mountain base. “This showed that it could work.” Furtainbach said in 2026 initially offered a two-week round-trip tour to mount Everest using Zenon Gas, cutting the typical time required to score the mountain for several weeks. “This can be the future of commercially guided mountaineering on Mount Everest,” he said.

With Xinn, ‘you feel better.’

For those who live at low altitude and have traveled to the mountains, the discomfort of height disease is all very clear. Symptoms include nausea, headache and disrupted sleep, and in some cases it may occur or even death of the brain. As you go high, low oxygen with each breath is absorbed into the bloodstream. This is the reason why so many people climbing Everest use supplementary oxygen. A smellless gas, zenon, hypoxia-inducable has been known for the years to activate a molecule, which is still operational when people are present for low oxygen, Huga Montgomery said, a mountaineer and a mountaineering at University College London, who led a mountaineer and a mountaineering, who led a mountain to study low oxygen. “So what these people have done,” he said, “originally found a way to switch to adaptation at low oxygen levels.” Whatever the group was known from medical science, he said, “And now implemented it, entertaining, for sport mountaineering.” Montgomery stated that scientists were still uncertain how Zenon triggers this reaction. While some doctors have used gas in the past to “pre -condition” patients up to low oxygen levels – for example, before the major heart surgery – the practice is not really caught on it because “it’s not as protective as it would be,” he said. “Zenon probably does much less, and is actually no distinguished scientific proof that it makes any difference,” said Mike Shutk, a professor at Cellular Cardiology at King’s College London. Experts warned that self-healing with exonnance, which has effects of anesthesia, may have overdose or death, and more study was required to understand how gas works and how it is used in mountaineering. On Mount Everest, weeks of training and interest at the lower levels of the mountain are usually necessary to avoid the “death zone”, an area above 26,000 feet where the air is particularly thin. The British group, which included members of four former special forces, took a different view. About 10 weeks before the campaign, the men started sleeping in hypoxic tents, which reduce the level of oxygen in the air and gradually increase the hikers for conditions on Mount Everest, Furtenback said. While hypoxic tents have been used by some climbers for years, the British campaign came two weeks before a big innovation tour, when men flew out to Limberg, Germany outside Frankfurt, where a doctor, Michael Fris, was experimenting with gases in his clinic. The men wore a tilted mask for the ventilator as an anesthesiologist gradually started the high level of exon in his system. Furtainback, who tried Zenon Gas on its own mountaineering trips since 2020, said that after treatment, users experienced the feeling of increased breathing and more lungs, and “when you do your workout or training, you feel better.” After arriving at Everest basis, the British group climbed the summit in less than three days, which Furtenback said that was one of the fastest time for a group that was not on the mountain. (According to the Nepalese government, the record for the fastest climb as a overall fastest climb is conducted by a Sherpa Lund Gallu, which reached the top of the mountain in less than 11 hours.) Rapid climbing and gas use by the British campaign caught the eye of the Nepali government, and the decline has intensified.

The use of gas is ‘against climbing morality’.

Himal Gautam, director of Nepal’s tourism department, who is responsible for regulating campaigns on the mountains of the country, said in an interview that the use of gas was “against morality”, and it would hurt the country’s tourism industry and Sherpas who help climbers by reducing their time on the mountain. Gautam said that his department was looking at the use of gas by the British climbers, one of which is also a member of the Alastair Corns. In an interview, Corn said that his campaign was in touch with the Ministry and clarified with the department that he did not take gas on the mountain. He said that many people who want to climb Mount Everest do not have time to spend several weeks. “The reality is that if I had six to eight weeks to climb Everest, I will do it, but I am a government minister, and I don’t have time,” he said. “We have proved what we have done that you can safely reduce the timeline.” Other people of the mountaineering community have warned against the use of gas. In January, the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation, a global network that promotes and preserves the game, issued a statement stating that there was no evidence that Zenon Gas improved the performance, saying “unfair use could be dangerous.” The Federation mentioned that Zenn has been in the list of restricted substances of the World Anti-Doping Agency since 2014 and is not approved in all countries. The statement said, “From a medical point of view, the use of off-labeled with unknown health risks should be rejected, without scientific basis and unknown health risks.” Furtainback argued that his campaigns were still using Sherpa – five British climbers were at the summit – and less time on the mountain were safe, as they reduce the possibility that climbers would be made aware of other health hazards, including avalanche, hypothermia, or falls. He said that the prohibition of gas by the World Anti-Doping Agency did not apply to mountaineering mountaineering as it is not a regulated competitive game. Montgomery said that gas is used on a main question as to why people climb the mountains in the first place. “Is this really a good idea that we all can have what we want, when we want, the sooner we want?” He asked. “Are we remembering the sacrifice that you have to do to achieve sometimes?” “I am not a critic,” he said. “But maybe taking every hill into motion means that you remember the bliss you can have.”