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Ed Viesturs Ed Viesturs
Ed Viesturs

Ed Viesturs, known as "The Chevy truck of mountaineering," is one of the world's pre-eminent high-altitude climbers and guides. Among his many mountaineering accomplishments, he has reached the summit of Everest five times, three of which were without the help of supplemental oxygen. His experience has made him an astute observer of how humans are affected at high altitudes.

NOVA: Do you prefer climbing with or without oxygen?

VIESTURS: For me, climbing without oxygen is much more enjoyable than climbing with oxygen. Even though physically it's harder, I feel less encumbered by the apparatus and oxygen mask on my face, which tends to be a little claustrophobic. I breathe huge volumes of air up there and I often have to take the mask off to get enough air. It's a weird sensation; even though it should be easier with oxygen, for me it seems like it's easier without it. Whether that's psychological or not I don't know.

NOVA: Do you think that you personally have a better ability at altitude than others? If so, what do you think accounts for the difference?

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VIESTURS: I think I have a better ability at altitude than other people. It just happens to be genetic. Luckily, I'm in the right sport. I was born with the genetics that allow me to climb at high altitudes, to acclimatize very well and to deal with the altitude. It's a combination of genetics and physiology, training and experience. Knowing how to climb at altitude, knowing how to climb's a combination of all that. Also, being at the right place at the right time on summit day, especially when you're climbing without oxygen—the weather has to be perfect, the snow conditions have to be reasonably good and you have to have the right mental attitude. When all that stuff clicks on that one day, then you can have a super summit day and really enjoy it. That's what it's all about. Getting to the summit, having a great time, and coming back to talk about it.

NOVA: Why do you use oxygen when you act as a guide for other climbers?

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VIESTURS: It's a safety factor when you're guiding to be using oxygen. The theory is that when you're guiding with oxygen, you're more mentally alert, you're warmer. Typically, when you're guiding you're going quite slowly simply because the clients are going at a normal, average pace. To go at that speed, at that altitude, you need to stay warmer so oxygen provides you with the warmth. It provides you with a little bit more mental acuity. When I'm climbing without oxygen I constantly test myself mentally to make sure that I'm in control, and if I feel that I'm not I should turn around.

NOVA: When you're guiding, how do you determine whether a client continues climbing or not?

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VIESTURS: When we're guiding here on Everest as in any guiding situation, we're always assessing our clients every single day. Just because they got here and paid their money does not mean that they get a chance to go to the summit. They have to prove to us from camp to camp that they're capable of going to the next higher camp. The whole process is an evaluation. That's the only safe way we can do this. Mount Everest is the biggest mountain in the world and a lot of people assume when they get here that they'll get a chance at the summit. We try to educate them and tell them that they have to prove themselves and show us that they're capable of making a summit attempt. The final day is the hardest day by far, five times harder than any other day. If they flounder on any of those other days, it shows us that they are not capable of going to the summit.

NOVA: Can you describe for us a situation where you might determine that one of your clients is being adversely affected by the altitude? What do you look for?

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VIESTURS: You always have to be evaluating and looking at their performance. We look at their physical fitness and how they perform day to day and camp to camp, how they react to the altitude, what they look like and how they feel when they get to a certain camp. Do they still have enough energy to perform basic tasks? Do they have enough energy to get down? Getting up is half of the climb, getting down is the second and most important half of the climb. It's a combination of things—their mental attitude and their acuity.

NOVA: Have you ever seen an example of one of your clients with cerebral or pulmonary edema?

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VIESTURS: I haven't seen any of our clients with cerebral edema but we have seen people who have developed pulmonary edema. They show a great amount of fatigue and they can't catch their breath. Their judgment is slightly impaired. It doesn't only happen on the way up; sometimes it happens on the way down and then becomes a strange event. When we're coming down and somebody is having problems, you're thinking that they're very exhausted, or there is some sort of respiratory problem going on.

NOVA: On the summit day, what happens?

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VIESTURS: On a typical summit day we would get up at around 9 PM, and start preparing to leave at 11 PM. It takes at least two hours to get enough fluids, get a little bit of a snack, get dressed, put your boots on, get suited up, get the oxygen systems ready and all that. We would be climbing then at 11 o'clock at night with headlamps. The reason we do that is we want to get to the summit and get down before it gets dark. It's much easier to go uphill towards a point in the dark rather than coming down where everything spreads out in the dark. We allow ourselves 12 hours to get to the summit. That is a reasonable amount of time, that uses about two bottles of oxygen, and gives us one bottle of oxygen to come down with (with plenty of safety margin). It should only take perhaps four hours to come down, but by leaving at 11 o'clock we then have six hours to get down before it gets dark. If anything happens, we have plenty of time.

You might think that if you stretched the summit day longer than 12 hours, say by bringing more oxygen, you could climb for 15-16, 18 hours but by then people would be very tired, and it wouldn't give you any margin of safety for coming down. So we begin the ascent around 11 PM and we're about halfway to the summit when the sun rises and it's a really spectacular day. We crest the Southeast Ridge and we can see Makalu and Kanchenjunga. From there we continue on the Ridge, over the South Summit. You have to be a good climber to climb Mt. Everest safely. It's steep, it's exposed, there's rock, there's snow, there's ice. Not anybody can just put on an oxygen mask and climb Everest. It's very dangerous to assume that.

The last 300 feet to the summit you would think is only 300 feet but at those altitudes (at 28,700 feet) the amount of effort that you need is exponentially increasing in difficulty. It is not a gradual increase in difficulty. It is an exponential increase. The last 300 feet take one to two hours to climb. It is the steepest and most rugged terrain of the whole climb. From the South Summit you traverse a knife-edge ridge that is vertically exposed on both sides so you have to be very careful. The Hillary Step at 28,800 feet is a vertical snow and rock step that you have to climb. At those altitudes, it is quite physically difficult. Once you are above that, it is probably 200 yards to the summit at about a 30-degree snow slope.

It doesn't seem difficult. Down here it would probably take 10 minutes to walk that, but up there it is a very slow and arduous process. You breathe six to eight times and then you take another step and then you breathe six or eight times. Often you just think about taking another step, you breathe six or eight times and then you finally take that step. It's quite a physical and mental effort just to think about taking each individual step. That's how you have to break the summit day down. You can't look at the whole ascent. You have to break it down into small sections and into tiny little steps. You put your mind to taking each step and slowly you chew away and finally you are on the summit.

On a good day, I've spent as long as an hour and a half on the top. If there is good weather, if we have plenty of time, we hang out for an hour or so and take pictures. If it is a bad day, we might spend five minutes up there. It's hard to really relax. You're happy that you're there but you can't really relax and let your guard down because you know that you still have to get down. I always tell people that getting to the summit is optional but getting down is mandatory. A lot of people forget the fact that climbing down is often as hard as climbing up. They use all their energy to get to the summit and then that's it. And for me, it doesn't count if you don't get down. It's very important to remember that.

NOVA: Describe the descent.

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VIESTURS: The descent is quite arduous. People are tired. You're physically spent. You have to think about what you are doing. You can't just stagger and slug your way down. You have to be very careful. You don't want to fall. A lot of accidents in mountaineering occur on the descent. It's because people get to the summit and totally let down their guard; they have used all of their energy just to get to the top. We're constantly evaluating our clients to make sure that not only can we get them up but that they have enough energy to get down. If at any point on the ascent it looks like they are starting to become very tired we turn them around and take them down. It is more important for us to get them home then to get them to the summit.


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© | Updated November 2000

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