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Kazakhs sound off on the hypobaric chamber
16:14 p.m. EDT Sep 24, 2003
The Kazakh national 3 in 1 team managed to accomplish 2 of their 3 peaks this past summer, Nanga Parbat and Broad; the first of which they ascended in a scant 15 or 16 days. This really grabbed the attention of a lot of climbers around the world – several of the experienced international crew who were on Nanga couldn’t keep up with the Kazakhs, and some even got sick. Simone Moro and a few, however, managed to keep near-pace with them.
Why were they so fast?
How did they do it so fast? How did this team rock Nanga Parbat the way they did? Was it training? Was it the organization and strategy? Was it favorable weather? Or did it have to do with the hypobaric chamber sessions they did before the expedition?
A hypobaric chamber is an enclosed capsule where it is possible to suck out the air at varying levels and simulate different altitudes. For two months previous to the expedition the team sessioned a hypobaric chamber for two days a week, 2-3 hours, with a weekly increase in altitude. It appears they might have broken up a day’s program into two sessions. At the end, the climbers were subjected to a simulated 9000m of altitude.
Since then, some of the Kazakh climbers have let their feelings about the chamber be known. It’s located in a military complex and is typically used to train fighter pilots, simulating such things as a rapid loss of cabin pressure – civilians know this from the airline briefings on what to do when those yellow masks come out of the ceiling of a plane.
The climbers’ reactions
The cylinder is pretty cramped – there’s a whole bunch of knobs, dials, aircraft chairs, masks, headphones, and for the climbers especially, they threw in a stationary bicycle for them to take turns on.
Up to 5000m the climbers were feeling pretty good – this is despite the rapid acceleration of 20 m/s to 4500m. For comparison a helicopter’s rate of ascent is normally 4-7 m/s. Valves in the chamber would start to hiss and pop, blood would rush to their faces, they would start sweating, and their ears would pop. At first, one of the climbers wrote that it was funny and they were laughing and joking.
Technicians were outside the chamber manning all the dials, watching the vitals of all the climbers inside, and recording the biometric readings. Only information that was needed to be known was given, otherwise for security reasons the staff kept tight lips about the details of the chamber. Descriptions given by climbers to media even had to be checked first by the military.
It wasn’t until 6000-7000m that they really started to feel rather uncomfortable. At 8000m, Sergey Lavrov wrote in a report that he went into spasms, his speech became impaired, and his lips went numb. They immediately gave him an oxygen mask and performed an emergency descent. He recovered once they dropped in altitude. All in all, from the looks of the pictures, the team didn’t feel all to hot about the chamber.
Effective or just Hypobaric hype
On the trek into Nanga Parbat, Sergey said that he still felt the effects of altitude, despite the chamber. The consensus from the athletes after many discussions was that the chamber did not help them at all. Instead the team said it was their physical training and experience that enabled them to climb so fast.
The technicians felt that a better gauge of the chamber’s effectiveness would be if there was a control group, ie half the climbers would do the chamber and the other half wouldn’t. Then the results would be clearer.
One of the climbers seen inside the chamber is Sergey Brodskiy. He was an alternate for the Kazakh 3 in1 team and did not go to Pakistan. Instead he competed in the Khan Tengri speed race and was the first to reach the 6800m turn around point, though he was not the first back down. The race occurred almost 2 months after the chamber treatment, a point that the pre-acclimatization, if there were any would have worn off. At the Khan Tengri race, a Georgian Everest summiter, Afi Gigani, was asked about the effectiveness of the chamber and said pretty strongly that it does not help.
What does this all mean?
Last year around this time ExplorersWeb did an extensive series about different pre-acclimatization techniques as well as several products that are out on the market right now. All of which tout that they are able to help speed up acclimatization. What do the findings of this recent Kazakh expedition mean to those products and to pre-acclimatization in general, especially since the military hypobaric chamber is probably the Rolls-Royce of pre-acclimatization tools?
Well, one thing should first be noted, and that is the way the chamber was used. Perhaps the program that was used on the climbers is not the most effective? Also, it was military personnel that conducted the sessions. With fighter pilots and their oft pressurized cabins, altitude is dealt with in emergency situations. Changes in atmospheric pressure happen in mere seconds, whereas in mountaineering, unless you’re falling off a cliff, we’re talking hours for just 300m or so, or days and weeks for 1000’s of meters. Perhaps the program was more geared for military applications vs. the needs of mountaineers?
Though this does give insight into the chamber, it does not give a definitive conclusion. Maybe a more controlled test setup, maybe some more hours, maybe changing the altitude shifts? After looking at the Kazakh’s pictures though, who is going to want to want to volunteer to be the next guinea pig?
Images and information compiled from our friends at Mountain.kz.
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