Word: oxygenated
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...cannot conserve oxygen,” Hart said, “we should at least preserve civility...
...whining about food became a laughable luxury. The thin air sapped our strength, and it was enough to curl up early with a good book. The first two days of the trek were exhausting, as we ascended more than 2,200 meters. Vegetation dwindled from oaks and pines to oxygen-starved, dwarfish rhododendrons. To avoid altitude sickness, we began sleeping no more than 300 meters above the previous night's resting place. This meant some days of short treks simply to acclimatize. Hours were measured out with cups of tea and swapped books. At the Thangsing camp...
...final morning, Samten got lost. The river crossing wasn't where he thought it was. At 3:30 a.m., at -15?C and 4,185 meters above sea level, this wore our patience as thin as the available oxygen. So he told us to shine our headlamps on the river, and in the halogen glare pointed out a perilous course across black rocks. I teetered giddily at the last boulder, making a leap for the bank and landing in supine embarrassment...
...only 60 meters below the summit at the base of a 12-meter vertical rock face, later named the Hillary Step, desperately hoping it could be scaled. In 1953, so much of modern mountaineering was still to be discovered. Archaic clothing and tents made Everest's frigid temperatures lethal. Oxygen bottles were three times heavier than today's. Deadly altitude illnesses, little understood, caused brains to swell and lungs to fill with fluid. Because lightweight radios had yet to be invented, it wasn't until Hillary and Tenzing had descended to within a few hundred meters of advanced base camp...
...Over the next 50 years, top climbers from around the world converged on Everest's slopes to attempt their own groundbreaking firsts. In 1978, Reinhold Messner's ascent without bottled oxygen defied the conventional wisdom that time spent without artificial oxygen above 7,900 meters?in the "death zone"?would cause irreparable brain damage. In 2000, Babu Chiri Sherpa?the most famous Sherpa?climbed from base camp to the top of Everest in just under 16 hours...