North side of Everest

Rapid is not enough, it should be as fast as a flash. This could describe the concept of the Austrian expedition operator Lukas Furtenbach: for eight-thousander aspirants with a big pile of money, but little time budget. After the US operator Alpenglow had halved the duration of an Everest expedition with their “Rapid Ascent Expedition” from about 70 days to 34 days, the 39-year-old Tyrolean wants to go one step further next year. In spring 2018, the “Everest Flash Expedition” of Furtenbach Adventures on the Tibetan north side of the mountain is to last a maximum of four weeks.

Up to 16 bottles per person

Lukas Furtenbach

This is Furtenbach’s plan: The pre-acclimatization of the clients takes place at home for six to eight weeks with a special training plan and a newly developed hypoxic tent system, which is capable of simulating high camp nights up to an altitude of 7,300 meters. On the spot, there will be no more acclimatization climbs, but – of course, depending on the weather – a summit attempt. Furtenbach guarantees unlimited oxygen for each member. The plan is to use a special regulator “designed for us by Summit Oxygen, with a possible flow rate of up to eight liters per minute” (a flow rate of four liters per minute is currently common on Everest) and a total of up to 16 (!) oxygen bottles per client on the mountain.

Battle of material

“Alpine moral – if you want to use this terrible term – makes no difference whether half a bottle or 16 were used,” Lukas writes to me from Kathmandu. “It remains a climb with supplemental oxygen. But more oxygen makes the climb definitely safer. That’s a fact.” Material and staff should be “100 percent redundant”, says Furtenbach: “Bottles, masks, regulators and even Sherpas on the bench.” The whole thing has its price, which is on the upper end: US $ 95,000. Nevertheless, the expedition operator from Austria is convinced that his tactics “will develop into a new industrial standard within just a few years”. In his opinion, commercial climbing on the eight-thousanders has remained “on the level of the early 1990s”.

“Great room for experience”

Camp 1 on Everest North Col

This spring, Furtenbach will be with a team on the north side of Everest. Once again he wants to test the newly designed regulator during the expedition. It is clear to Lukas that he will trigger off a discussion with his radical concept. Here are his answers to three other questions I asked him:

Shorter expedition time also means less time for the Nepali or Tibetan staff. Will less money remain in the respective countries?

We need more Sherpas for the “Flash Expedition”, and they will be hired for at least the same time as on conventional expeditions because they prepare the route. Significantly more money will remain in the respective countries, definitely. We pay our Sherpas significantly better than other Western operators usually do.

Does the new concept lead to even more summit aspirants on the eight-thousanders, who actually do not have the necessary skills – because they say: Cool, that suits me, under these circumstances even I can do it?

Furtenbach on the summit of Everest (in 2016)

We look very carefully at each aspirant – no matter whether on a Flash or a normal expedition. If someone seems to us inexperienced or unsuitable, we offer him a special program to develop his skills, which may take a longer period, or we reject him in principle. The real problem on Everest is currently the uncontrolled hordes of mostly completely inexperienced Chinese and Indian clients of essentially two Nepali low-cost operators, who have been responsible for most of the deaths (clients and Sherpas) of the past years.

Flash Expeditions are certainly more attractive for the clients because they are not missing work for such a long time. However, doesn’t the special expedition experience fall by the wayside due to the short duration?

Four weeks are still a long time with plenty of space for adventure. For most people, even a four-week holiday is a far-away dream. Nevertheless, we continue to offer a classic expedition on Everest, in which the members can approach the mountain in the way climbers have been doing for almost 50 years.

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.