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Everest
Everest
Everest
Mountaineers climbing the Hillary Step during their ascend of the South face to summit Mount Everest
on May 31, 2021. Lakpa Sherpa/AFP/Getty Images
(CNN) — Thick murky clouds fill the sky, with freezing winds carrying snow faster
than 100 miles per hour. With a frigid –30 degrees Fahrenheit temperature, life-
threatening snowstorms and avalanches are frequent.
And these are typical conditions on the world’s highest mountain: Mount Everest.
The behemoth towers 29,032 feet (8,849 meters) between Nepal and Tibet in the
Himalayas, with its peak surpassing most clouds in the sky.
And yet the mountain still draws hundreds of climbers who are determined to reach
its peak every spring. Here’s what it takes to make the climb and what has motivated
some climbers to summit the world’s highest peak.
“I would put on a 50-pound backpack and do two hours on a stair stepper with no
problem,” Weasel told CNN. “So, I thought that I was in pretty good shape.” However,
the surgeon said he was humbled after discovering that his fitness was no match for
the lofty athleticism required by the mountain.
“I would take five steps and have to take 30 seconds to a minute to catch my
breath,” Weasel recalled of his struggle with the lack of oxygen available while
ascending Everest.
Climbers aiming for the summit usually practice an acclimatizing rotation to adjust
their lungs to the thinning oxygen levels once they arrive on the mountain. This
process involves mountaineers traveling upward to one of the four designated camps
on Everest and spending one to four days there before traveling back down.
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This routine is repeated at least two times to allow the body to adapt to declining
oxygen levels. It increases a climber’s chances of survival and summiting.
“If you took somebody and just plopped them up at the high camp on Everest, not
even on the (top), they would probably go into a coma within 10 to 15 minutes,”
Weasel said.
“And they would be dead within an hour because their body is not adjusted to that
low of oxygen levels.”
“Because no matter how well you are trained, once you get to the limits of what the
human body can take, it’s just difficult,” he continued.
At its highest altitude, Everest is nearly incapable of sustaining human life and most
mountaineers use supplementary oxygen above 23,000 feet. The lack of oxygen
poses one of greatest threats to climbers who attempt to summit, with levels
dropping to less than 40% when they reach the Everest “death zone.”
Tents of mountaineers are pictured at Everest base camp in the Mount Everest region of Solukhumbu
district on April 18, 2024. Purnima Shrestha/AFP/Getty Images
Camp four, the final one before the summit, sits along the edge of the death zone at
26,000 feet, exposing climbers to an extremely thin layer of air, subzero
temperatures, and high winds powerful enough to blow a person off the mountain.
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“It’s difficult to survive up there,” Weasel told CNN. He recalls passing bodies of
climbers who died on the mountain – which isn’t uncommon. The bodies of the fallen
mountaineers are well-preserved, exhibiting little to no decay due to the intense cold
temperatures.
“I am probably more familiar with death and the loss of life than most people,” the
surgeon said. “For me it was just a reminder of the gravity of the situation and the
fragility of what life is… even more so motivation for appreciating the opportunity.”
High-altitude cerebral edema (HACE) is one of the most common illnesses climbers
face while attempting to summit. “Your brain is starved of oxygen,” Weasel said.
HACE results in the brain swelling during its attempt to regain stable oxygen levels,
causing drowsiness, trouble speaking and thinking. This confusion is often
accompanied by blurred vision and sporadic episodes of delusion.
“I had auditory hallucinations where I was hearing voices [of friends] that I thought
were coming from behind me,” Weasel recalled. “And I had visual hallucinations,” he
added. “I was seeing the faces of my children and my wife coming out of the rocks.”
Weasel recalled crossing paths with a friend, Orianne Aymard, who was trapped on
the mountain due to an injury. “I remember staring at her for like five minutes and
just saying, ‘I’m so sorry,’” Weasel said.
“I’ve spent over a decade of my life training to help people as a surgeon, and being in
a position where there’s somebody who requires your help and you are unable to
offer any assistance… that feeling of helplessness was tough to deal with,” Weasel
told CNN.
Aymard survived. She was rescued and suffered from several broken bones in her
foot, in addition to severe frostbite on her hands. Despite all her injuries, Aymard is
considered one of the lucky ones.
Mountaineers climbing during their ascend to summit Mount Everest on May 7, 2021. Pemba Dorje
Sherpa/AFP/Getty Images
“What most teams do out of respect for that climber, they will move the body out of
sight,” he said. And that’s only if they can.
“Sometimes that’s just not practical because of the bad weather, or because their
bodies will get frozen into the mountain,” Arnette told CNN. “So, it’s very difficult to
move them.”
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It’s been 10 years since the single deadliest accident on the world’s highest
mountain, after an avalanche killed 12 Sherpa guides. And 2023 was recorded as the
deadliest year on Everest, with 18 fatalities on the mountain – including five people
that are still unaccounted for.
“That entire night was cold,” Weasel recalled. “It’s dark, it’s windy.” But it was proven
to be worth it in the morning, he said.
“Watching the sunrise from 29,000 feet and having that pyramid of Everest’s shadow
projected onto the valley below you…,” Weasel told CNN. “It was probably one of the
most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life,” he continued.
“It’s weird standing up there and knowing that everything else on the planet is below
where you’re standing.”
The size of the mountain is humbling, the surgeon said. “I’ve never felt so small,” he
recalled. “That mixture of humility and connectedness with something bigger than
yourself is the proper place from which we ought to approach our existence on this
planet.”
Like Weasel, Arnette summited at sunrise, and experienced this same feeling of
“smallness.” At the top there were “more mountains than you can count,” Arnette
remembered. “It was a sense of enormous gratitude and at the same time I knew I
had to get back down.”
After about 20 minutes to an hour, climbers typically start to descend back to the
base of the mountain.
Jacob Weasel Jacob Weasel
He was determined to plant the feather on top of Everest “as a symbol of our people
and what we’ve endured for the past several hundred years,” Weasel told CNN.
“Showing that our spirit is not broken, but we’re able to rise above the things that
have happened to us,” he added.
“I remember planting that eagle’s feather on the top of the world and the feeling of
real privilege that I felt in representing our people.” And this is why he decided to
summit Everest, to be an example that anything is possible for young Native children
and his tribe.
“Knowing what it’s like up there, for me personally, the only real justification for going
and putting your life, and other lives, at risk is if you’re climbing for a reason that is
much bigger than you,” said Weasel.
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“My first three tries, I wasn’t clear on my why,” Arnette said. When his mother was
diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, he looked at his purpose for climbing differently.
“I wanted to do it to raise money for Alzheimer’s and honor my mother,” Arnette said.
There are approximately 300 people that have been issued a permit from the Nepal
government to climb the mountain this year, according to Arnette. And he said the
number is down from previous years.
“I think one of the reasons is because we had the 18 deaths last year, and people
realize that Mount Everest is a dangerous mountain.”
“Everest has become too commercialized with ‘you’re stepping over dead bodies’
and ‘it’s littered with trash,’” the mountain coach said. “The reality is that it is a very
small degree all of that, but there’s a lot of joy that people get out of doing it,” he
continued.