Sitting on top of the world

By RICHARD HANNERS

Whitefish Pilot

The third time was a charm for a Whitefish man who summited the world's highest peak on May 23.

David Rasmussen, a cinematographer hired by a British medical expedition, shared the Everest's 29,035-foot-high summit with 15 other climbers from his group. The difficult mountain conditions, however, had their effect.

"Once you've done the climb, you want to go home," he told the Pilot.

This was Rasmussen's sixth trip to the Himalayas, and all were work related. He filmed festivals for Royal Nepal Airlines in 1986 and 1987, filmed climbers at the base of K2 in Pakistan in 1999, filmed Italian speed climbers on Everest in 2003 and filmed British Army climbers on Everest last year.

In addition to special clothing and climbing gear carried to the summit, Rasmussen's video and still camera equipment weighed about 10 pounds. He also carried an 18-pound oxygen cylinder that ran out before he reached the summit.

"I didn't know it was empty, but I was wondering why I felt so tired," he said.

Extreme conditions

In addition to steep, icy slopes and lack of oxygen, Rasmussen had to struggle with food, lack of sleep and extreme cold.

"I really struggle with the rice, dahl bat, curried potatoes, pasta and Spam (not the computer stuff) cooked up in the Sherpa cook tent," he said. "I lost 18 pounds on this trip, mostly muscle. You always lose weight at altitude, but it doesn't help when you're tired of the food that's served."

Lack of oxygen made sleeping difficult. Rasmussen thought he had a lot of trouble sleeping in Camp 1, at the top of the Khumbu Icefall, but he didn't get much sleep on the trip back to Montana either.

"The trip from Kathmandu to my home took 72 hours, including a 'rest' day in London, and during that 72 hours, I managed to get four hours of sleep," he said.

High altitude cold and wind can prove deadly. On their first climb toward Camp 4, at 26,000 feet on the South Col, four doctors from the expedition turned back because of an incoming snow storm.

"No snow storm appeared, but it's still good that we came down because the temperatures at the South Col were about 30 to 70 degrees below zero with the wind chill," he said. "Stick a little finger out in that for a moment and it will turn black with frostbite."

Rasmussen said he thought the glacier that flows out of the Western Cwm and spills over the edge to form the Khumbu Icefall seemed to be "breaking up more," compared to what it looked like in 2003.

"There are huge crevasses that have formed above Camp 1, so walking to Camp 2 is no longer a straight route," he said. "After about six zigs and zags, you have a straight mile and a half walk to Camp 2," a trip of about two to three hours.

The Khumbu Icefall is one of the most dangerous parts of the climb. Whereas climbers above Camp 2 encounter breathing difficulties and extreme wind chill, hazards in the icefall include gaping chasms and collapsing towers of ice and snow.

"There are so many places through that icefall where you are thinking, 'Don't fall, don't fall,' not of yourself but of that house-sized block of snow and ice leaning over you as you breathlessly try to hurry past it," he said.

Rasmussen said fees paid by climbing parties go toward paying "icefall doctors" who pioneer a route up the Khumbu Icefall and maintain the fixed ropes the climbers clip into for safety.

More than 3,000 people have climbed Mount Everest since its first ascent in 1953, and more than 200 have died. Their names are inscribed on a monument at Base Camp, below the icefall at 17,500 feet.

Safety first

One day, Rasmussen passed by an "older man" on the Khumbu Icefall. Rasmussen is 49 "but this guy had at least 12 years on me," he said.

Having just completed a difficult trip to Camp 3 at the base of the Llotse face, where he had climbed to twice in 2003, Rasmussen was disturbed by the man's dismay at learning how difficult the trip would be to Camp 4 at the South Col.

"I had to think to myself that here is an 'old man' who late in life thinks he has to climb Mount Everest," Rasmussen said. "And everyone who comes out here, usually as a client, thinks they can actually climb this thing."

Rasmussen says he was committed to safety and getting home.

"I will try to climb to the top as a part of my job, but safety is first," he said in an e-mail to family and friends. "The summit is not essential. Coming home to my family is the desire of my 'old age,' instead of proving myself when it is already too late to do so."

Rasmussen said he was so busy with his job and team members that he didn't know much about the dozens of other climbing groups at Base Camp. But he heard about "nutty things" happening on the north side of the mountain.

"There was a guy called the Ice Man who was climbing in shorts," he said. "I've always been with real climbing teams, not nuts. You can't trust them."

While the Caudwell Xtreme Everest expedition had no serious accidents, they participated in one rescue and witnessed a climber fall to her death — both on the same day.

A woman from an all-Nepalese team was left behind on The Balcony, a flat spot halfway between the South Col and the summit. Doctors at the South Col laboratory provided medical attention, and then climbers began to carry her on a stretcher down the Llotse face to Camp 2.

Halfway down, an experienced Sherpa woman with a team climbing Llotse fell like a "rag doll" down a rock-and-ice face across their path. She died in the fall. Rasmussen said he knew the Sherpa woman's brother, a man who organized treks out of Kathmandu.

"She was a very unusual Sherpa woman," he said. "She could speak seven different languages."

Medical research

As far as the climbing went, the Caudwell Xtreme Everest team was very successful. Sixteen people reached the summit at the same time, including eight research doctors and 10 Sherpas.

Five of the 10 Sherpas summited Everest for the first time, and four of the 10 were brothers. One of the brothers had climbed other 8,000-meter peaks, including K2 and Dhaulagiri, and was summiting Everest for the 12th time.

"This was a record and a real boost to their careers," Rasmussen said about the Sherpas' achievement.

The Caudwell Xtreme Everest expedition was huge. Porters hauled in 24 tons of equipment to base camp, mostly laboratory equipment and generators to power them up. It took 100 Sherpa loads to get a laboratory set up on the South Col — including two 2,000-watt generators in the highest-elevation laboratory in history.

Including laboratories in Kathmandu and two villages along the popular trekking trail to Everest, the $4 million expedition included 45 doctors and 200 volunteers who helped in the research.

The goal was to study hypoxia — the shortage of oxygen in the body. While lack of oxygen is a killer at high altitudes — causing pulmonary or cerebral edema — the ultimate goal of the research was to help patients in hospitals.

About a quarter of patients with hypoxia die, Rasmussen said. Many have diseases of the lung, such as pneumonia, or red blood cells, such as anemia.

The research doctors performed much of the tests on themselves, including riding stationary bikes equipped with electronic monitoring. Some tests were extremely painful, such as muscle biopsies.

"They put a hole in your leg and extracted some muscle tissue," Rasmussen said. "For the next three days, you felt like you got kicked in the leg by a horse."

The climbing team was exempt from such invasive tests, he said. While the results of the test have not been officially released, some findings were very surprising.

"If the same results were found in a person at a hospital at sea level, the person would be dead," Rasmussen said.