Everest Climber

spinflyer

Although I am also a diver I have joined rebreather world to gain more insight and help with a high altitude rebreather system which I have been working on. I have done limited testing on Aconcagua in South America and Mt. Everest last year. I intend to use it to attempt to go all the way to Everest summit next year. For now I am just exploring all the information available. Thanks.

almity1

I was thinking about the same thing the other day.

Good Luck with it!!!!

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almity1 - http://www.almity1.com

gtzavelas

welcome to Rebreather World from a former mountain climber.
I can imagine the advantages of a closed system in terms of humid and warm air.
Do you have any pictures of your system?
what kind of mask are you using?

welcome again and good luck with your system...
george

koputai

A couple of Australian companies have produced special rebreathers for mountaineers over the last 20 years or so. Unfortunately, though the idea is good, the logistics always put it in the 'more trouble than it's worth' basket.
With today's materials and methods I would think it's more do-able, but it would be very costly.
It would be interesting to see what you've come up with.

Cheers,
Jason.

lizardland

Well done! I quit my Masters degree because the buffoon director wouldn't let me research Rebreather's for high altitude use because he said the project was pointless... oh well...

Weren't they doing similar stuff at Duke? I seem to recall reading somewhere that Richard Vann was involved.

Cheers,

Stuart

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Azerbaijani Association of Technical Divers Publicity Officer and Goat Wrangler

OceanOpportunity

although I'm not too familiar with those systems used for fire/cave/mining, they are available. TACR by the Frog folks had a surge of popularity the last few years. THis may be larger than desireable for lugging up a mountain however

I would imagine a simple pendulum type would be more than sufficient. Mate it up with one of the Interspiro masks (or even a half mask), and good to go. Castoro C or P 96 would be good considerations and are very lightweight and easy to pack, and easy to plug in a basic PO2 monitor and/or HUD

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Michael Lombardi
Oceans of Opportunity
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Gear Reviewer, The Summit Journal

exploration & scientific diving resources
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lizardland

Just thinking, didn't the pre-Hillary attempt on Everest use rebreathers?

__________________
Can you imagine drifting along in the sea with your mouth open and a load of f***ing plankton going in? You'd like it, would you?

www.westons-cider.co.uk

Azerbaijani Association of Technical Divers Publicity Officer and Goat Wrangler

Sutty

I think an early attempt on Everest did use rebreathers but they had problems with freezing (surprise). The recent expedition by a team based at UCL, doing physiological research was planning to use a rebreather system when I spoke to them about 18 months ago.

Neil

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Never forget that life is a finite resource.

Duncan Price

Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans on closed circuit O2 rebreathers came within 300 feet of the summit on 26 May 1953, but turned back after becoming exhausted. Their equipment was designed together with Robert Bourdillon (Tom's father).

Four days later Edmund Hilliary and Tensing Norgay reached the summit on open circuit O2.

This is all in Hunt's book: "The Ascent of Everest" (1953)

spinflyer

I didn't expect this much interest and especially that it would be this well informed. It is true the "A" team in 1953 British expedition was using a rebreather and Hillary has said they ran away from everyone. Unfortunately their system was a CaHO based system and they had cold issues on their summit attempt. It was after that the "B" team made history.

My system uses an oxygen mask MBU-5P used in in the 70's in fighters (I am also a pilot). Our objectives are not O2 conservation but high O2 partial pressures. To duplicate sea level conditions at 29,000 takes about 75% O2 concentrations. The metabolic rate remains roughly the same - about 1.35 LPM. This may seem low but keep in mind summit day on Everest is only 3,000 vertical feet and slightly less than a mile. But at that altitude the average climber, even with supplemental O2 takes about 20 minutes to go 100 meters.

Our challenges have been 1) enviromental (-20F is average on Everest summit although I climbed Vinson in Antarctica and it was colder!) 2) weight 3) ergonomics 4)simplicity. Our first challenge was to find a CO2 absorbent that was light enough and also worked at low temps. There are several but they all have challenges. The best is lithium hydroxide (LiHO) which is perfect except it is very friable and highly irritating. We found a company that had a method of encapsulating it in a gas permeable polymer matrix and roll it into corrugated sheets (at about $200 a kilo!). We have tested in a cold chamber to -30F with great success.

My primary goal now is a simple O2 monitor that we can incorporate so we can sleep on the system at higher camps. Keep in mind that in our case no one drowns if there is a system failure. You merely revert to ambient air. Alas I ramble. I'm not sure how much anyone really wants to know.

By the way your professor was right. There is no market. On the other hand there were 10 deaths including one on our expedition. Nothing could have helped in some of those cases (our climber was killed in an ice fall collapse) but a rebreather would have made it possible for some of those people to have gotten up and walked down.

Bud