10000 ft is at least 3000m which would make Mt.Everest close to 12000m instead of 8850 metres.
The first thing you need to know about mountaineering, especially the eight thousanders( peaks above 8000m) is the death zone which is at 8000m. From there on out, normal human beings can’t breathe without supplemental oxygen and they camp 100m below the death zone before the final push which has to be done at one go within a limited time frame. That is only 950m from the summit but from the description of some mountaineers who have attempted and failed or succeeded, every step you take from the last camp is like trying to run a marathon with a severe case of flu. This is where most of the heartbreak occurs and most people are turned away if they don’t keep up pace or having difficulty moving up. The Everest tragedy of 1996 is a really bad decision by one of the most experienced climbers who decided to assist someone for 200m when they were falling behind and went and summited again only to miss the descent window, caught up in a fast moving storm and lost their lives. Everest doesn’t suffer fools and however experienced you are, you are at the mercy of the mountain and Mother Nature.
Now if you add 3000m to the challenge above the death zone, it’s pretty much certain death zone. I would say if Everest were 3000m higher, the chances of climbing it are virtually zero.
And here is the kicker. Everest is one of the easiest of them all to climb for an experienced mountaineer. The path on the South Col is pretty well mapped out and the Sherpas do all the heavy lifting by laying the ropes and placing oxygen cylinders in each camp. The climb from the North Col on the Chinese(Tibet ) side is much more difficult and hardly anyone attempts it.
Everest’s little sibling K2, is a much more challenging climb and so are peaks like Annapurna I and Kanchenjunga which have very high death rates, 25–35% . K2 has 25% death rate .
K2
Kanchenjunga
Annapurna I
Coming back to Mt Everest if it were 12000m or 11900m instead of 8850m, it would make the climb excruciatingly difficult if not impossible.
Mind you, the Everest base camp is at 5364m or 17600 ft so the climbers effectively scale only 3500m from the base. They fly into Lukla and then ferried to the EBC by helicopter in most cases and only some decide to trek to the base camp. They all have lots of gear and luggage so they get flown in by helicopter from Lukla to EBC.
It would be a monumental challenge if that 3500m ascent from the base camp is 6500m instead and nearly 4000m of it above the death zone.
Let’s ask the less than 75 people who have summited all the eight thousanders if a 12000m Mt Everest is doable and my guess is a big fat NO.
If it were 12000m, I think we would still be looking for the Edmund Hillary & Tenzing Norgay to achieve that feat that was accomplished 72 years ago.
if a storm quickly moves in, everyone is doomed to certain death and a 4000m descent to Camp 4 just below the death zone is an impossible task plus the window to climb gets at least two days longer and that is eternity on Everest to predict weather conditions which are described as mercurial and highly unpredictable.
So What Makes this hypothetical ascent a virtual impossibility?
I am going to be adding to this post as to why this hypothetical ascent to Everest that is 3050m higher is a virtual impossibility.and present counter arguments to some points raised as solutions.
So before I go there, people have pointed out that it’s impossible for a mountain to grow to nearly 12000m and that is a valid geological point and limitations imposed by Earth’s geology. However, for this hypothetical scenario, that valid argument is not relevant and the question is whether an ascent is possible if Mt.Everest were 11900 or 12000m instead of 8848m. And my analysis is strictly for the hypothetical scenario presented.
- Supplemental Oxygen
So some people have commented that an integrated space suit will solve the supplemental oxygen problem. Apart from this being only 10% of the problem as I will demonstrate, for argument sake, let me entertain this idea as a solution.
Do you know how much an integrated space suit weighs? If you don’t know, here is the answer. 82 kgs or 180lbs approximately if you fancy the Imperial units. The mountaineers to Everest already carry around 20–25 kgs of weight during ascent now so you add 82 kgs of additional weight to that for an integrated space suit as your supplemental oxygen source. 82 kgs is the average weight of a male climber so you will essentially be carrying the additional weight of a human and ascending above the death zone for an additional 4000m that is going to take 9–10 days round trip from the death zone edge which is the Camp 4 on the current South Col route.
You want to know why Astronauts use an integrated space suit without difficulty? Gravity. That 82 kg suit weighs only 14 kgs on the surface of the Moon. And since this mountain is still on Earth, it will be 82 extra kilogrammes.
You still think an integrated space suit for supplemental oxygen is a solution to this problem?
I have more bad news. The extra weight doesn’t stop there as you will find out.
2. Time for ascent
The current time it takes from Camp 4 which is at 7900m at the edge of the Death Zone to the summit and back is 18–22 hours for a 950m altitude gain and back. Getting to the summit is half the challenge and most die on the return while getting down.
So if the hypothetical ascent from the edge of the death zone to a 11900m peak and back will take approximately 9–10 days considering you are severely limited in your ability above 8000m and people usually take two steps and then rest for a few minutes. Even 9–10 days is a very optimistic estimate.
So 10 days in the death zone with 20–25 kgs of gear plus this integrated space suit that weighs 82 kgs on Earth but that is not the end.
3. More weight than the space suit?
Yes, much more additional weight than the spacesuit . How? Well, unless you think the mountaineers can survive in the cold without food or shelter, that is 10 days of food, gear, stove to cook and melt water etc etc. That is conservatively another 40–50 kgs.
And before you bring up helicopters as a solution to this conundrum, helicopters will not go above 7200–7500 m in such thin air atmosphere. Currently, the helicopters can go up to Camp 2 which is around 7000m or so only in cases of emergency rescue. So if you have to rescue someone stuck near the summit and you want to save them, be physically prepared to drag them down to Camp 2 where helicopters will pick up.
Starting past two years, Nepal is using drones to stock food and supplies in the lower camps that would avoid helicopters and relieve Sherpas. But drones have the same limitations as helicopters in thin air as to how high they can fly.
4. Weather
So now that we established this ascent is going to take at least 10 days round trip, let’s talk about the weather and the weather window. From 9000m elevation to 12000m elevation, the air temperature is anywhere from -45 degrees F to -68 degrees F and the higher you go, the lower the air temperature gets.
Do you know how it would be like to be exposed to that temperature range for 10 days straight? The storms that suddenly move in and kill mountaineers including the infamous 1996 disaster on Mt Everest that killed Rob Hall and Scott Fisher and 9 others. The temperatures were around-35 to-4p degrees F during the storm and most of them died because hypothermia set in and incapacitated them and they just laid down and gave up. Anatoli Boukreev , Scott Fischer’s chief guide wrote in his book that when Fischer’s Sherpa who was also his best friend and worked with him for years tried to save him and bring him down, Scott Fischer was lying down completely frozen by hypothermia and all he could tell him was “ I am already dead. Go down and save yourself “. Fischer was an experienced climber with multiple ascents but no match for Mother Nature. His Sherpa didn’t give up and ended up dying right next to him.
So exposure to that temperature for 10 days straight is certain death and most people won’t last more than a few days let alone 10.
And the weather moves in really fast on Everest and storm systems from the Bay of Bengal quickly move in and without warning. Predicting weather for a 10 day window is almost impossible and once you get past the death zone, there is no turning back for 10 days which no human can survive the odds.
Also an extra 3000m is going to make the mountain extremely steep for ascent and make it a conducive environment for another feature on the 8000m peaks… Avalanches.
Avalanches have buried and killed many experienced climbers including Tenjen Sherpa, who along with Kristin Harila of Norway, set a world record for climbing all the 14 peaks in 93 days. Tenjen Sherpa would die less than a year later on Mt. Shishapangma, the second least difficult 8000er and less than 8100m higher and Tenjen was buried alive and died by an avalanche. They occur more commonly and more frequently on K2 and Annapurna I which makes them extremely dangerous peaks.
The odds of any human surviving 10 days in that weather and unexpected weather phenomena and natural phenomena are virtually zero.
5. The “ We put a man on the moon so we can do this “ argument
Believe it or not, this is the false equivalency argument from some on the comments section.
As charming as it sounds, this is the most absurd argument. Going to the moon on a spaceship built by NASA with a Mission Control team guiding you all the way and give you instructions on what to do is not even in the same post code as ascending a physically impossible mountain that is beyond the realm of human capability.
This would be the challenge of putting a man on Mars or perhaps Venus , if I were to use your same absurd logic. And just like Mars, the journey to long and arduous and extremely hostile to humans.
Using the moon landings as a false equivalency for everything else is a bit obtuse to say the least.
At least for now, I am going to conclude this and I will present counter arguments for anything else that might arise in the future and the challenges.
So, given the sum total of all the problems facing the climber who would ascend a 11900m high Mt. Everest, I will let you decide if this is a physical possibility for a human or beyond human capability. And that is with it without the integrated space suit for supplemental oxygen.
Without the space suit, you are looking at carrying enough oxygen cylinders to last each person 10 days and that would weigh more than the space suit and there is no way to get the oxygen up there except by carrying it up. The same goes for camping equipment and food and other supplies like stoves to last a 10 day journey and probably enough supply of Dex to combat pulmonary and cerebral edema which affects high altitude climbers.
Ah, one last fun fact. Nepal has instituted a policy for the past few years and they are strictly enforcing it now that every climber must bring back their garbage and also human waste back from the mountain so as not to pollute the mountain. You are supposed to bring back about 9 kilos of rubbish plus all the poop bags you collected your human waste, in order to get your deposit back and also not be banned from all mountains in Nepal for 5 or 10 years for non compliance. There are climbers who have complained that rubbish is piled up in the current upper camps and it smells really bad because of human waste disposed off along with rubbish and Nepal, in the recent years, is severely cracking down on this. So suppose you survive the 10 day journey by a miracle, you will also be carrying all your waste you generate including poop on your way up and down.
10,000 feet makes 3,050 m outside ‘Murica, and that would make the total height of Everest as 11,900 m.
The answer is no, Everest would have not been climbed.
The reason is simple. As every skydiver knows, temperature decreases 5 deg C per each 1000 m up, and at 12,000 m, the temperature is -60 degrees C. So it would be too cold for humans to survive without really heavy clothing.
Moreover, the air pressure at 12,000 m is only 25% of that at sea level. The air is simply too thin to breathe, so extra oxygen would be needed. Yet there are no oxygen tanks large enough to contain enough oxygen to climb from 7,900 m (which is the highest altitude to thrive for a long time without extra oxygen) to 11,900 m. Those who climb to Everest do it in one day from the South Col.
Anything above 8,000 m is known as death zone in mountaineering. The air is too thin to breathe, and the amount of oxygen is insufficient to sustain human life for an extended time span. Altitude sickness is a significant threat at this elevation and can easily prove fatal. It is also difficult to sleep, and most climbers’ digestive systems have significantly slowed or completely stopped. This is because it is more efficient at this altitude for the body to use stored energy sources than to digest new food. Most climbers will have a maximum of only two or three days for making summit bids. 4,000 m from South Col is simply too much to be climbed in so short period.
