Are you kidding me?

I'm in Singapore, 3:30 a.m. local time, waiting for my flight to Kathmandu in the morning. I was featured on ABC15 news at 10:00 o'clock the night before my departure. Some enterprising burglars put two and two together, realized I would be gone for a couple of months, and decided to break into my Biltmore home, the one I'm raffling off for charity. (See www.ArizonaDreamHouseRaffle.com for details.) My neighbor stopped another crew that was trying to steal my Rolls Royce! I know times are tough, but just how low can you go? I mean, seriously, are you kidding me? Who would break into a house that is being used to raise desperately needed funds for the Child Crisis Center, a charity that helps prevent child abuse and neglect? I guess no good deed goes unpunished. I'm surprisingly calm and unruffled about the whole thing, but I really didn't need the distraction as I prepare to climb the highest mountain in the world. I wish the burglars well, and I hope their circumstances improve during these hard times to the point where they no longer target people who are trying to do a little good in the world.

I'm leavin' on a jet plane ...

T-minus 10 hours and counting before I begin my journey to Kathmandu, Nepal. The first leg is an early morning United Airlines flight from Phoenix to San Francisco. From San Francisco to Kathmandu I'll be flying Singapore Airlines all the way with a fuel stop in Tokyo, a long layover in Singapore, a change of planes, and a direct flight from Singapore to Kathmandu. I'll arrive in Kathmandu around noon on Wednesday. The last time I was in Kathmandu was 1994, so it will be interesting for me to see what's changed over the years. I look forward to meetin the other members of the expedition in person. We'll be staying at the Yak & Yeti Hotel for several days before flying to Lukla to begin a 9-10 day trek to Everest base camp.

I'm feeling a whole rainbow of colorful emotions right now. I'm worried, concerned, even a little fearful of the daunting challenges that lie ahead. The area above Camp IV, from 26,000 feet to the summit of Everest at 29,035 feet, is known as the "Death Zone" for good reasons. So many people have perished attempting to climb Everest. Yet I'm also feeling a profound sense of quiet confidence and certainty that this is what I'm supposed to be doing right now. I honestly don't think I could have trained harder or smarter, especially sleeping in my altitude tent for purposes of acclimatization. I've had the hypoxic generator set at 20,000 feet for weeks now. I'll soon see how well my training prepared me for the climb, especially the first time I make the arduous ascent through the infamous Khumbu ice fall. I don't think there has ever been a climber gasping for breath on the summit ridge of Everest who thought to him- or herself, "You know, I wish I hadn't pushed myself so hard with all of the training. This is a walk in the park." I'll soon be grateful for all of the effort.

Our expedition leader, Alex Abramov, informs me that we'll have a satellite uplink to the Internet and our own wi-fi network at Everest base camp. I'm taking a pair of laptops, a Macbook Pro and a Macbook Air, to stay in touch while I'm climbing Everest. That means I'll be able to update this blog regularly once we get established at base camp. I've also just figured out how to use Skype to make video calls over the Internet, so with all of this technology I'm going to have a very different experience on Everest compared with what things were like on the other big mountains I've climbed. I had some porter help on Kilimanjaro, but everywhere else I had to carry everything I needed myself. On Everest most of the heavy load carrying is done by Sherpa, so you're not going to catch me boasting that I climbed Everest by myself. No way. I will give credit where credit is due. My chances of successfully summiting Everest are so much better precisely because of all of the help I anticipate from Sherpa.

I'm so very thankful for all of the help and support I've received from friends and family far and wide. I absolutely thrive on the positive energy, prayers, and best wishes so many people so generously send my way. I couldn't do this without you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Did I say Tibet? Oops! I meant Nepal.

The Chinese have done it again. They've effectively closed Everest from the Tibet side for the second year in a row. At least this time we had a little more advance warning, enough time to switch to the Nepal side. I guess I'm not surprised. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama's exile, so the last thing the Chinese want when Free Tibet protests inevitably erupt this spring is a bunch of western mountaineers sympathetic to the Free Tibet cause hanging around Tibet with their digital still and video cameras, satellite uplinks, and access to the internet. It's harder to shoot teenage nuns in the back and leave them for dead in the snow when a video of the atrocity is going to show up on YouTube right away. The Chinese closed Tibet to tourists for the entire month of March. That prevents Nepalese sherpas from entering Tibet in time to prepare base camp and start moving tons of supplies up the mountain. Logistically, April is too late to start the process and hope to have everything in place in time for an Everest summit bid when the weather opens up toward the end of May. There was no guarantee the Chinese would open up Tibet to tourists in April anyway, so it was not a tough decision for Everest expedition organizers to switch to Nepal. That comes with a big price tag, however, both in terms of money and the potential for bottlenecks through the Khumbu ice fall and the Hillary Step. I've had to cough up an extra $14,000 to make the switch, and with the Nepal side of the mountain filled with climbers who were otherwise going to make the climb from the Tibet side, there's bound to be some traffic jams at key points along the route. I'm disappointed, naturally, because I was really looking forward to seeing Tibet, and although climbing Everest from the Tibet side was going to be more of a technical challenge higher on the mountain, I was happy about the fact that there is no equivalent to the treacherous Khumbu ice fall on the north side of the mountain. Now, having switched to the Nepal side, I can look forward to ice climbing and crossing deep crevasses walking on crampons across aluminum ladders lashed together to bridge some of the wider chasms.


On a much more positive note, I took some time off from training this past Friday to speak about my upcoming Everest expedition and my quest to reach the highest point on each continent at Laird Elementary School in Tempe. The kids were very attentive, seemed to love the pictures, and asked lots of interesting questions. There was a palpable sense of positive energy at the school, a can-do sense of hope and optimism, a sense of meaning and purpose. Kudos to the faculty, staff, parents, and students. It was an honor and a privilege to speak. The whole experience made me think of my own third grade teacher, Mrs. Fry, who spoke these words to me, words I'll never forget: "Michael, there is nothing in this world you can't accomplish if you set your mind to it." I believed her, and that has made all the difference.

Camelback

I reached a milestone of sorts this past Sunday morning, a personal best time hiking to the top of Camelback Mountain from the Echo Canyon trailhead: 24:27. (As a point of comparison, the best I could muster last year, just before the Chinese pulled the plug on all Everest expeditions planning to climb the mountain from the Tibet side, was 24:59.) Now I'm wondering just how much faster I can go. As it is, I have to run all of the traverses. I use my Sunday morning jaunt up Camelback as an unerringly honest gauge of how effective my training is. The mountain simply doesn't lie. A lower time means that my cardio-vascular workouts in combination with sleeping in my altitude tent are paying off. Yes, there are world-class athletes who could probably still kick my butt climbing Camelback, but I've said many times that you're in great shape if you can climb Camelback in as many minutes as your age. What does it mean that I can climb Camelback in less than half as many minutes as my age? I suppose I should feel ecstatic, but the reality is that I wonder if it's even close to being enough for a challenge as big as Everest. Yesterday, I climbed Camelback with my pack filled with over six gallons of water. The total pack weight was around 70-75 pounds. It took me an agonizing 55 minutes to reach the top. To save my knees on the way down, my plan was to dump the water out at the top, but not wanting it to go to waste I first offered it to anyone at the summit who wanted to top off their water bottles. A line of about two dozen people quickly formed, all thankful for the water, and all probably quite convinced that I was crazy. I look forward to Sunday morning, when I will once again see if I can lower my (unladed) personal best time.

Flat Iron

For training this past weekend I climbed to the top of Flat Iron in the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix. There is slightly more than a 3,000 foot elevation gain to the top, so with a purposefully heavy pack it was a good summit day simulation--or it would have been if I'd been breathing through a narrow straw and only one lung was functioning. I imagine that's what it will feel like to breathe on the summit ridge of Everest at 29,000 feet.

Cheyne-Stokes respiration and the Potala

Days remaining before I leave warm and sunny Arizona for the Himalayas: 49. Simulated altitude at which I am sleeping with my hypoxic generator: 14,500 feet. Today's training: 60 high-intensity minutes on the elliptical machine, 60 high-intensity minutes on the step climber, and four sets of 10 leg presses @ 400 pounds.



One of the many things that makes high-altitude mountaineering dangerous is Cheyne-Stokes respiration , an abnormal pattern of breathing characterized by oscillation of ventilation between apnea and tachypnea, to compensate for changing serum partial pressures of oxygen and carbon dioxide. The condition was named after John Cheyne and William Stokes, the physicians who first described it in the 19th century. This abnormal pattern of breathing, in which breathing is rapid for a period and then absent for a period, can be seen in patients with heart failure, strokes, traumatic brain injuries, and brain tumors. In some instances, it can occur in otherwise normal people during sleep at high altitudes. Maybe it's because I've had more than my fair share of traumatic brain injuries, concussions too numerous to catalog, but in this case I'm pretty sure the culprit is high altitude. Suffice it to say that I'm very familiar with Cheyne-Stokes respiration, because that's what I do when I ascend too rapidly on a mountain-climbing expedition. I got hit with it pretty bad last night, having adjusted the simulated altitude at which I am sleeping with my hypoxic generator from 12, 100 feet to 14,500 feet. I hardly slept at all. The physiology is complex, but the basic idea is that there are two ways in which the human brain regulates autonomic breathing. One, the more primitive version, makes us breathe when the partial pressure of oxygen is too low. The other, a more advanced, finely tuned adaptation, regulates our breathing as a function of the partial pressure of carbon dioxide. What happens at extreme altitude is that the body is fooled by the partial pressure of carbon dioxide into thinking that it has enough oxygen, which is decidedly not true, but you stop breathing anyway until the more primitive regulatory function--the one that works on the basis of whether there is enough oxygen--basically says "What the bleep?" What results is a disturbed pattern of breathing in which you stop breathing for a while, gasp for air, stop breathing again, gasp for more air, ad infinitum. The problem is that you typically wake yourself up every time you gasp for air, so when you finally get up after a fitful night's sleep, you feel completely exhausted. One of the benefits of my previous high-altitude mountaineering experience is that I've learned how my body responds to high altitude. That's why it is so essential for me to acclimatize with my hypoxic breathing generator well in advance of leaving for Everest. It's very rough every time I increase the altitude, but my body does get used to it, and by the end of the 8-day cycle I'm using to stage altitude increases, I'm sleeping reasonably well through the night and feeling more rested in the morning. Why go through all of this? I get to climb Everest! And on the way there I get to stop in Lhasa, Tibet and see the Potala, the palace of His Holiness the Dalai Lama before his exile 50 years ago.

The Grand Design

Days remaining before I leave warm and sunny Arizona for the Himalayas: 52. Simulated altitude at which I am sleeping with my hypoxic generator: 12,100 feet. Today's training: 60 high-intensity minutes on the elliptical machine, 60 high-intensity minutes on the step climber, and four sets of 10 leg presses @ 400 pounds.



My expedition leader is Alex Abramov, a well-known and well-regarded Russian climber who's had good success leading expeditions on the Tibet side of Everest. I need to be in Kathmandu, Nepal to meet with him and the other members of the expedition on April 1, which will necessitate leaving Arizona no later than March 30. We plan to fly to Lhasa, Tibet on April 4 and then take 10-12 days making our way to Everest Base Camp, visiting lamaseries along the way and taking our time to get used to the altitude. After arriving at base camp in mid-April, we'll begin the arduous task of moving literally tons of supplies up the mountain, establishing the higher camps and fixing safety ropes along the more dangerous parts of the route. Most of that work will be done by Sherpa, and I fully intend to give credit where credit is due for their tireless, uncomplaining work in the excruciating conditions of high altitude mountaineering. I had the good fortune to climb the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas, Aconcagua in Argentina, in the company of Lahkpa Rita Sherpa, who has reached the summit of Everest no less than 10 times! My chances of success on Everest are dramatically higher than they would be if I were to attempt the highest mountain in the world without the help of a personal high-altitude Sherpa.

High-altitutude mountaineering is all about acclimatization. Our plan involves several forays up the mountain. The first time we will go as high as Camp I on the North Col before retreating all the way back to Base Camp to rest and recover. The second time up the mountain we will attempt to reach Camp II and once again retreat back to Base Camp. The third time we will establish ourselves at Advanced Base Camp and wait for the weather forecast to predict a 72-hour window of decent climbing weather. We will then move higher up the mountain as the weather allows, ultimately positioning ourselves at Camp IV in anticipation of a summit bid. Timing is everything, because we'll be using supplemental oxygen at that point, with only a limited supply available, and we'll be in the so-called Death Zone. Even with supplemental oxygen, the human body, no matter how well acclimatized, just isn't meant to function or even survive at extreme altitudes. Once you are above 26,000 feet, your body is dying, growing weaker and weaker with every passing moment, so if you are to climb Everest you must do so as quickly as possible and then retreat to the relative safety of lower altitudes. There's a reason there are no permanent human settlements higher than 14,000 to 16,000 feet. Our summit bid will be launched from Camp IV, probably around midnight, with the expectation that we will reach the summit by mid-morning. The most challenging part of the route will be the notorious Second Step, a nearly vertical rock face about half-way along the summit ridge. In the 1970s a Chinese climbing team placed an aluminum ladder at the Second Step, significantly simplifying the ascent from a technical standpoint, but even with the ladder in place the Second Step is a huge obstacle to overcome. Imagine climbing a ladder with only a third of the oxygen available at sea level and the consequences of a fall being near certain death. Wait a minute! Why am I doing this?