The view at the top

Whitefish man reaches Everest summit

He made it to the top of the world.

Mount Everest's summit: 29,028 feet above sea level.

Dave Rasmussen, a cinematographer from rural Whitefish, was thrilled, disappointed and out of breath.

His oxygen mask didn't work properly on the very last leg of the early morning climb. So Rasmussen was much more tired than expected, slowly staggering on his final steps to the top.

The summit was a mess.

Maybe 20 people crammed themselves on the small conical summit, surrounded by steep rocky drops of more than a mile.

Climbers had to avoid entangling their crampons - climbing spikes attached to the soles of boots - in the countless Buddhist prayer flags scattered about the top from previous climbs.

Discarded oxygen bottles laid about.

For years, numerous climbers have left mementos at the top - pictures, knick-knacks, stuff that no one but themselves care about. Wind, snow and other climbers kicked around all the memorabilia that awaits future mountaineers who will have no idea what those items mean.

But then there was awe.

For weeks, Rasmussen and his fellow mountaineers kept looking up at the mountain tops looming over them, the pathways, glaciers and cliffs ahead of them. The peaks pretty much blotted out everything else.

Now, that was no more. Nothing was higher.

The view was beautiful. It was really indescribable. Huge mountains became bumps below.

"You're finally looking down at the rest of the world," Rasmussen said.

SCIENCE, NOT glory, took him to Everest's summit on May 23.

The British Broadcasting Corp. hired Rasmussen, 49, to film a medical research expedition that used Everest as a high-altitude laboratory.

What the researchers wanted was thin air - lots of thin air. They needed enough thin air to run lots of tests on almost 200 people at 17,600 feet above sea level and on smaller numbers at higher altitudes, including up to 10 people at or near Everest's top.

This medical research has nothing to do with mountaineering.

It's about the low oxygen levels experienced by hospital patients in intensive-care units. Low oxygen levels threaten the lives of numerous patients as they cope with many ailments.

A BBC story quoted the Everest expedition's medical leader, Dr. Mike Grocott, as saying: "Low oxygen levels are pretty much a universal feature of patients who are very sick. Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to separate out the effects of low oxygen back in the wards from all the other things going on."

The medical world has some knowledge of the physiology of depleted oxygen in people, but it needs more. The University College of London's medical school is tackling that research.

A basic research principle is that a large number of test subjects are needed to make any conclusions statistically reliable.

That ruled out oxygen chambers because only a few people can be kept in them at a time. And those test subjects would have to spend weeks in those chambers to deplete their oxygen intake to levels required for the research.

An extremely tall mountain offers the needed oxygen conditions on a scale large enough to produce valid scientific tests. The air on Everest's summit has about one-third of the oxygen found at sea level.

"Strange as it may seem, Everest is a brilliant model for looking at how humans adapt to low oxygen levels," Grocott told the BBC.

The medical school found 208 volunteers who underwent 32 different tests on their blood, lungs, brains, cells, biopsy samples and mental abilities to function in sea-level atmosphere.

Then roughly 180 of those volunteers flew to Nepal. In groups of 15, they trekked from its capital, Katmandu, at 4,446, feet above sea level, to a permanent base camp at 17,600 feet in altitude on Mount Everest's southeast slope . They received the same sea-level tests along the trip in Nepal and at Everest's base camp.

The medical expedition itself had about 60 people scattered along the route, at the base camp, at the permanent Camp Two at 21,300 feet, and at the permanent Camp Four at 26,000 feet. The expedition's members themselves were the test subjects at Camps Two and Four.

Ten researchers and Rasmussen, plus several Sherpas, initially were earmarked to climb to the top, where one test - an arterial blood sample - was scheduled.

The Everest expedition collected raw data from the test subjects. It will take three to five years of analysis before concrete conclusions are expected to emerge.

Rasmussen noted that high-altitude medical research has been around for roughly 100 years.

"Our one medical team will double the amount of medical information on this subject," he said. "They were trying to solve what seems a simple problem of the body not getting enough oxygen. But it's very complex. We were there to be in a low-oxygen environment, not to climb Mount Everest."

THE FIRST Americans reached Mount Everest's summit in 1963 - 10 years after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made the first successful ascent.

Rasmussen was in elementary school in Gettysburg, S.D., at the time. He remembers a school lecture on those first Americans reaching the top and recalls the lecturer saying that breathing on the summit felt like breathing through a pillow wrapped around his face. Rasmussen went home and tried it.

That began a lifetime of keeping tabs on significant events that unfolded on Mount Everest. It wasn't an obsession or a really powerful dream, just a steady interest.

After high school, Rasmussen worked on a sailing schooner and backpacked around Africa and Europe before majoring in cinematography at Montana State University. He fell in love with Northwestern Montana, meeting and marrying his wife, Margie, at Glacier National Park. They have three children.

Rasmussen carved out a niche as a documentary-oriented cinematographer, specializing in outdoors and nature projects. One project was on life at a base camp on Pakistan's K2, the world's second-highest peak and universally considered more dangerous than Everest. That led to two Everest jobs.

He filmed a 2003 expedition on the southeast slope that put an Italian woman and a Sherpa on Everest's summit. And he filmed a 2006 British Army expedition that almost made it to the top of Everest by its most difficult route - the Western Ridge - before avalanche-prone conditions forced it back.

On an Everest expedition, typically a small group out of the overall party goes to the top. Both times, Rasmussen was not in the summit group. His highest point on Everest had been roughly 24,500 feet.

The British Army attempt led to a contractor who hired Rasmussen to film the 2007 medical expedition for the BBC. Rasmussen and his BBC producer, both 49, were the oldest expedition members.

The film will be used as part of a documentary expected to air in Great Britain this fall. Then the show likely will go to the Discovery Channel in the United States.

MOUNTAIN CLIMBING in the Himalayas has long periods of boredom.

That's because it takes a long time for the human body and its lungs to adjust to thin air. That means moving to an altitude, resting, getting acclimated and taking short practice climbs.

The food usually tasted terrible. Everyone lost weight. Rasmussen eventually would drop 18 pounds.

He left the U.S. on March 15 and arrived at Everest's base camp at 17,600 feet a couple of weeks later.

Many acclimation climbs were on nearby mountains. That's because the route from Everest's base camp to Camp One at 19,900 feet goes through the Khumbu Icefall - 2,000 vertical feet of slowly moving and crumbling glacial ice.

In an April 20 e-mail to his wife, Rasmussen wrote: "Not only is the Icefall difficult to climb through, it is very dangerous. The problem is that the Icefall is moving.

"Occasionally you see it move as some massive chunk of snow and ice releases with a thunderous crash and a rising cloud of snow. The trick is not to be under that massive chunk of ice when it does break. That is what kills people in the Khumbu."

EVENTUALLY, THE expedition's core group went to Camp One through the Khumbu Icefall with Rasmussen mentally asking the overhanging ice chunks to "don't fall, don't fall."

The trip from Camp One to Camp Two was relatively short as a bird flies. But several long, deep crevasses turned it into a long zig-zag journey.

April and early May consisted of filming the scientific work - which fascinated Rasmussen - plus trips to Camps Three and Four and as well as back to the base camps.

Many preliminary tests results thrilled the scientists - even though the numbers will have to be crunched and recrunched before anyone can know if the initial excitement was justified.

Camp Four is on a platform-like feature called the "South Col" at 26,000 feet. The South Col is the final springboard to reach the summit. And it ended up as the science site for 15 researchers - the 10-person summit team, five support doctors and several Sherpas. It was the expedition's highest lab site.

During this time, the night and wind chills sometimes plunged the South Col's temperatures to 30 to 70 degrees below zero. But on one day, the daytime sun reflected off the snow at Camp Three's 24,500 feet to create a temperature of 108 degrees inside Rasmussen's tent.

WEEKS OF monotony weighed upon Rasmussen.

In an e-mail to Margie, he wrote: "Some days, I look up to the tower of Everest and think: 'I think I can do that and am anxious to try.' Other days, I look up there and wish I could turn around and go home." Rasmussen had met an exhausted, demoralized climber in his early 60s returning to base camp from Camp Three through the Khumbu Icefall - and trying to psych himself up to later tackle Camp Four and the summit. That older man caused Rasmussen to ponder climbers' obsessions to reach Everest's top, and defining themselves by achievement - especially when fixating on that goal as an old man.

Rasmussen wrote: " I will try to climb to the top as a part of my job, but safety is first. The summit is not essential. Coming home to my family is the desire of my 'old age,' instead of proving myself when it is already too late to do so.

"In this life, I do not think we prove ourselves on mountains, but at home with family and friends. I wonder about the exhausted old guy in the Icefall. Will he be a better person if he summits? Will people like him more? I hope we do not have to do the 'impossible' to be happy in our old age."

SIX DAYS of preparations and science finished on the South Col. It was time to go for the top.

The wind howled at 9 p.m. May 22 as the summit team left the South Col. Mountain climbing is primarily a night and morning activity because the afternoon sun's heat increases chances for avalanches.

Rasmussen's team consisted of him, five researchers and 10 Sherpas.

The route has two major stops - first the flat "balcony" and then the "South Summit," a shorter peak on the way to the top.

The wind died down. The research team mixed with other climbing groups - creating a slower-and-slower, stop-and-go single file to the summit.

Rasmussen's field of vision was narrow because of the hood over his head. He looked mostly straight ahead because turning his neck in the heavy clothes and gear took too much effort. The jammed-up line of climbers frequently limited Rasmussen's view to another guy's backpack just ahead of him.

His headlamp was just enough to illuminate his feet in a small pool of light.

Rasmussen wanted to be in front of his expedition to film its leader as he struggled to the top. But at the "balcony," he found himself mingled with other groups and in the middle of the single file - unable to work his way back to the front.

The pace was slower than he liked. The frequent stops and starts frustrated him.

Dawn's first streaks came at 4:09 a.m.

Darkness slowly transformed into unimaginable white and crystalline beauty by the time Rasmussen reached the South Summit.

There, unknown to Rasmussen, his oxygen mask went bad.

A permanent rope line led from the South Summit to the top - a combination of safety feature and guide.

Each year, Sherpas install a new rope line. But they don't remove the old lines.

Consequently, the rope line is really a tangled mix of old and new ropes.

Old ropes are frayed. Newer ropes are tied to older ropes. The mess tangles up crampons. Frequently, a climber doesn't know which rope to hook up to.

"The hazard there is not the climb, but the ropes that impede the climb," Rasmussen wrote.

Rasmussen and his group summited at roughly 6:30 a.m.

OOPS!

Where did everyone go?

After dealing with some video equipment problems and his shortness of breath, Rasmussen began filming on the summit. But his researchers disappeared.

The one medical test scheduled for the summit was an arterial stab.

Someone would drop his pants just enough to expose an artery in his groin. Another researcher would stick in a needle and withdraw arterial blood for future analysis.

At the top of the world, in the cold, in the wind - this would be a clumsy process that exposed skin where such exposure would be ill-advised. Consequently, a tent was to be set up to shelter the men doing the procedure, but the wind was too strong to pitch the tent. And the summit was too crowded to do so anyway.

So the researchers went back to the South Summit at 28,700 feet to do the arterial stab. No one thought to tell Rasmussen, but he found out where they went and scurried down to film the arterial stab.

Reporter John Stang may be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at jstang@dailyinterlake.com