If Mount Everest was 100,000 feet instead of 29,028 feet above sea level would anyone reach the summit?

You can't even fly a helicopter that high, and very few airplanes.

What was your highest level of education?

Maybe you're aiming for science fiction here since your asking climbers to ascend past the ozone layer and into the stratosphere, far above the ceiling height for both commercial and military flight.

When you sober up you probably won't remember this one.

I'm just trying to start a discussion. I know nobody would likely be able to do it but I'm wondering what is the highest anyone would ever reach. Obviously it must be much higher than 29,000 feet if so many hobby hikers can do it these days. The question is how much higher.

Everest itself yields the limit: the death zone. It's in and out before you start dying on a cellular level. You don't have much time.

Your blood is hardly oxygenated. Hemoglobin thickens your blood, making it harder for the heart to pump blood around the body until your circulation comes to a crawl. You're pushing blood around that has hardly any oxygen in it. The brain will shut off.

Above 26000 feet (8000m) the body cannot acclimatise and will quickly lose vital functions, prolonged time at this altitude leads to almost certain death. So no, they couldn't reach it without permanent oxygen supply.

At 100,000 feet you would have less than 1% oxygen. All air is literally freeze dried. Your organs would implode while your suffer DNA damage from radiation from a barage of istopes. You'd die from radiolysis.

Too much fantasy. /End

It is impossible to climb to Everest without training and an oxygen cylinder :) It is already hard to go above the middle of this mountain without oxygen.

There is no limit to where a person can climb, we have it in our blood, conquer peaks and climb somewhere, you understand. Above Everest is a matter of life and safety, but everything is real, sure!

Ok but nobody has answered any of my topics. What would the world record height be without oxygen if Everest was higher? And what would the record with oxygen be, assuming the person carries as much oxygen as they are able to? If you took the greatest runner(Bekele), I wonder what height he could go. Would anyone manage 10,000m?

Everest has been climbed without oxygen. What is the limit? I don't know but even 29000 feet is too high for me, not just because of the cost, but the extreme danger.

If people can get from 8000 to 9000 and back down to 8000 again without dying, then they could probably get to 10000 and back down to 8000 without dying about as easily, if they had a sheer cliff to jump off of with a parachute. And speaking of Bekele, 10,000 meters is his event.

Asking questions like this is how ultrarunning got started.

Banana Bread wrote:

Ok but nobody has answered any of my topics. What would the world record height be without oxygen if Everest was higher? And what would the record with oxygen be, assuming the person carries as much oxygen as they are able to? If you took the greatest runner(Bekele), I wonder what height he could go. Would anyone manage 10,000m?

Humans made it to the moon, so 238,900 mi or 384,472,282 meters.

Bad Wigins wrote:

If people can get from 8000 to 9000 and back down to 8000 again without dying, then they could probably get to 10000 and back down to 8000 without dying about as easily, if they had a sheer cliff to jump off of with a parachute. And speaking of Bekele, 10,000 meters is his event.

With supplementary oxygen, yes. Without it, maybe not?

No. Altitude above 8,000 meters (approx. 26,000 ft) is known as the “death zone”, where the body starts shutting down, even with supplemental oxygen.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/mount-everest-death-zone-what-happens-to-body-2019-5

Someone who knows more tell me I'm wrong, but there is no set "death zone." It depends on the person, their V02max, their economy, and other factors.

I find it really hard to believe that some of the old, untrained people climbing Everest today are anywhere near the limit of human capacity.

-The world record breath hold is 22 minutes and 22 seconds, average is probably 1 minute.

-The world record Vo2max is 96, average for men is about 37.

-The deepest free dive is 702 feet. Average person can hardly swim.

All three of the records above point to huge outlier potential in the human capacity to deal with pressure change, absence of oxygen, and oxygen utilization.

At about 27,000 feet there is a little more than 50% as much oxygen is there is at sea level. If your Vo2max is roughly triple another persons and there is 50% as much oxygen, aren't better off as the 96 guy?

I don’t think so. It’s not just that it’s hard to breathe, at that altitude you literally start dying. You have an increased risk for heart attack and stroke and you’re at risk for HAPE and HACE. You have trouble sleeping, and your muscles are wasting away.

Banana Bread wrote:

Ok but nobody has answered any of my topics. What would the world record height be without oxygen if Everest was higher? And what would the record with oxygen be, assuming the person carries as much oxygen as they are able to? If you took the greatest runner(Bekele), I wonder what height he could go. Would anyone manage 10,000m?

Should have guessed what the thread was about

The air contains 20.9% oxygen at all altitudes, the air pressure decreases as altitude increases effectively reducing the amount of oxygen your body can utilize. At 27,000' there is effectively 35% of available oxygen as there is at sea level, at the summit its 33%.

The people I know that have summitted without oxygen generally think 31,000-32,000 would be the absolute limit and it would involve frostbite no matter what clothes were worn.

At 27000 feet there is only 35% of the sea level oxygen available. The two men who climbe Everest without oxygen, Rheinhold Messner and Peter Habeler didn't have a high V02 max.