Cho Oyu (seen from Gokyo Ri)

The world tends to gasping. It is caught somewhere between Snapchat, snapshot and a 140-character Twitter message – and it jumps onto every train, the main thing is, it’s running. The moments of leisure fall by the wayside. In the not too distant future, we will probably wonder how an expedition to an eight-thousander could ever last for two months. The American climbers Adrian Ballinger and Emily Harrington have reached their goal: Just two weeks after they set off from their house at Lake Tahoe in California, they opened the door again – in their baggage a successful climb of the eight-thousander Cho Oyu. Nine days after their departure, Adrian and Emily stood on the 8188-meter-high summit in Tibet. Then they skied down. Time to head home.

Cabin fever and loss of strength

Emily Harrington (r.) and Adrian Ballinger

“Living for months in a little yellow tent at or above 18,000 feet may sound super adventurous to those who haven’t done it before,” Harrington said in an interview of the magazine “Vogue”. “But it can get pretty isolating and you develop a sort of cabin fever after a while.” And there is the loss of weight and muscle mass, says the 30-year-old, adding that it normally takes her half a year to rock climb again at the same level as before. “I’m hoping this trip won’t do as much damage.”

Manageable length

Her life partner Adrian Ballinger, head of the operator Alpenglow Expeditions, points out in the same interview that he has spent seven to eight months a year living in yellow tents on expeditions around the world since 1997. “I’ve loved the epic, meaning: long expeditions,” the 40-year-old told the “Vogue”. “But now I want to use all I’ve learned to shorten Himalayan expeditions to a more manageable length.” Alpenglow already offers eight-thousander expeditions lasting only for one month.

On prepared route, with breathing mask

The successful two-week trip to Cho Oyu and back was a successful advertisement for these so-called “Rapid Ascent Expeditions”: Members get used to thin air in hypoxic tents at home instead of time-consuming acclimatization on the mountain and don’t arrive at the foot of the mountain until it is prepared with fixed ropes. On Cho Oyu, Ballinger and Harrington also climbed on the already prepared route, with Sherpa support and with bottled oxygen from Camp 2 at 7,200 meters. “But we were still carrying a huge amount of personal gear on us,” Adrian said. “Each day was brutal, but we knew we only had to perform at a really high level for four days.” A successful “snapexpedition”, perfectly suitable for Snapchat, snapshots and Twitter. The model for the future? Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer the stamina in little yellow tents.

Upper slopes on Cho Oyu

Who will stop the grey gentleman? The time-thieves who are wreaking havoc in German writer Michael Ende’s  novel “Momo” seem to have invaded the Himalayas. Western operators have noticed over the past few years that the chance to sell expeditions is the higher, the shorter the trips to Asia last. There are not too many employers who approve a two-month holiday application of an employee who wants to go to an eight-thousander expedition.

Saving acclimatization time

The US operator Alpenglow Expeditions has recognized the predicament potential eight-thousander aspirants are getting into and offer so-called “Rapid Ascent Expeditions”: members get used to thin air in hypoxic tents at home instead of time-consuming acclimatization on the mountain and don’t arrive at the foot of the mountain until it is prepared with fixed ropes. So Alpenglow melts down the duration of an Everest expedition to the Tibetan north side to 42 days. This fall’s Cho Oyu expedition of the US operator takes only 30 days.

On prepared slope

Hypoxia training at home

Adrian Ballinger, the head of Alpenglow, wants to prove that it works even much faster. The American, aged 40, has flown to Cho Oyu along with his partner in live, the 30-year-old professional climber Emily Harrington, to climb Cho Oyu. Within less than two weeks, the couple wants to be back in the US. Ballinger and Harrington have completed an intense hypoxia training at home at Lake Tahoe in California – and followed very closely the forecasts of the meteorologists for a good weather window on this mountain. Without the usual acclimatization rounds, they want to climb directly on the normal route, which is already prepared with fixed ropres, to the 8188-meter-high summit, as high as possible without additional oxygen. For the upper parts of the mountain, however, oxygen bottles should be available, which will have been deposited there before by the Sherpas of the Alpenglow commercial expedition. The couple is planning to ski down from the summit and to travel back afterwards to the United States as fast as possible.

End of deceleration

Time thieves (seen on a graffiti wall in the German town of Trier)

If Ballinger and Harrington will finish their “instant expedition” successfully, that will, of course, be best advertisement for Alpenglow’s Rapid Ascent Expeditions. But that’s what falls by the wayside: the deceleration during an expedition, the immersion in foreign countries and cultures, the encounters with the locals, with the other expedition members, and not least with himself, in short the actual expedition life. And the gray gentlemen rub their hands.