The North Ridge of Everest by Greg Child
Though they come nobly prepared, no special equipment or hardened physique can ready them for the heights that they seek. The supreme test of their endurance is not tangible. It comes only with the rarified air of the earth’s highest places. It is altitude.
With each labored gasp, a climber’s assault on the summit of a great mountain becomes a struggle for survival. Without oxygen, he becomes weak. His ascent slows and mental processes blur with the vertigo of exposure.
The human body cannot successfully acclimatize to heights above 21,000 feet. The physiological effects of extreme altitude take climbing the world’s highest mountains into an entirely new range of difficulty:
“The policy of gradualness breaks
down, for the muscle tissues begin to deteriorate fairly rapidly and the
climber’s resistance to cold, his fortitude in the face of wind and weather,
are weakened. He tends to lose the prompting of appetite and thirst and
he is denied the relaxation of normal sleep... from 21,000 feet onwards,
he really needs greatly to speed up the rate of his progress and employ
'rush' tactics. But this he cannot do ... he is increasingly handicapped
by the height as he climbs and his progress becomes painfully slow; the
mental effort, like the physical is infinitely greater.”
- The Ascent of Everest, John Hunt.
