(Legal) Blood Doping at Everest

COLUMBUS, Ohio (April 30 @ 11:30pm EDT) – Just got off the Skype with Astronaut Scott Prazynski and his Media Sherpa Kieth Cowing at Everest Base Camp. Great conversation. Got a bunch of questions in from Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to leave questions you might have below. Scott is hoping to summit on May 9 – the full moon. Mother Nature may throw a momkey wrench into those plans however. We won’t have video from Scott for a few days as he is heading into thicker air – to do some legal blood-doping at a village a few thousand feet below Base Camp.

Scott’s blog is here. The maps (politcal, satellite and topographic) showing his tracks up and down the mountains – courtesy of the SPOT satellite tracking device – are found here.

Among the questions I posed on behalf of the Interweb Nation:
Neel Patel: How long does it take to acclimate to a new atmospheric elevation so that the climbers don’t develop hypoxia and hyperventilation.
Terry Kathleen Kirchhoff: What is the average cost to participate in a successful climb for an American?
Dale Andersen: Will Scott be measuring barometric pressure at the summit or if he will log it during the climb. It would make for an interesting plot.
Andrea Mikulin Winters Kalbfleisch: Which part of the climb is the hardest…base camp 2 to camp 3 for example, the summit, the climb down, the Hillary Steps?
Brian Okeefe: What is he doing to clean up the mountain?

Sabine Hope: How are his lungs feeling?

Sasha Winderbaum Dds: What are the temps like ?

fox_in_space: what’s the power source for Your equipment there? How much low temperature affects Your gear?

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Tags: Climbing, Everest Base Camp, Facebook, Mount Everest, Mountaineering, Sherpa people, Skyper, Twitter