Climbing Mount Everest has long been a process that requires 6-8 weeks of acclimatization. It’s a process that happens at altitude, which risks not only death by HACE/HAPE and also involves lots of dangerous climbing up and down through risky ice falls and avalanche paths. That is, apparently, until now.

As I wrote about earlier, a climbing group was experimenting with xenon gas therapy. It has long been known that when using the right amounts of xenon gas during medical anesthesia, it can dramatically increase red blood cell count. The mechanism is not understood – but the effect is. So why not use that effect to speed acclimatization?

Well, a group of British men did exactly that and they summited Everest in less than a week. Even casual users of xenon gas reported feeling dramatically better during their climbs.

It’s now causing a real ruckus in the climbing community. Many are saying it is against climbing ethics. The world doping council has xenon on it’s list of banned substances, but personal climbing is an open, unregulated activity. Others bring up the old argument against the use of bottle oxygen, is that ‘unfair’ too?

However all this comes out, it’s going to be an interesting time in the climbing community. The dramatic success of these climbers means the use of xenon is unlikely to disappear soon.

Links:

• https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/world/europe/mount-everest-xenon-gas-nepal-uk-climbers.html
• https://mattfife.com/?p=13268
• https://explorersweb.com/you-can-now-climb-everest-in-a-week-using-xenon-doping-the-implications/