Suresh Kumar Bista sent in this photos, taken while he was flying at 28,000 feet, towards and over Mount Kanchanjunga in east Nepal to look for missing mountaineers (French nationals and few Sherpas), who claimed to have reached the top without use of supplemental oxygen. They went missing, he reports.
Must be years of training, ” an indirect way of committing suicide”.
AOPA’s article on O2 use in Aviation at: http://www.aopa.org/Pilot-Resources/PIC-archive/Pilot-and-Passenger-Physiology/Oxygen-Use-in-Aviation is an interesting read. According to the author the “Time of Useful Consciousness” at 28,000′ MSL is 1 minute, and the “Effective Performance Time”… i.e. to get on O2 is just 2.5-3 minutes. The article also says that straight O2 is ineffective in maintaining 02 saturation above 25,000′ MSL. I wonder how the French climbers determined they would function in this very hostile environment while engaged in strenuous activity with high O2 demand?
Climbing mountain tops without supplemental oxygen sounds very scary and crazy too but YES ! there are mountaineers who claim to achieved the feat. However, unlike those of Hilary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa where they had to carry oxygen bottles, these days you can easily carry little bottles of oxygen inside your jacket. Would be a great friend indeed.