What, exactly, happens to the body of the climbers in “The Death Zone” (i.e. on Mount Everest) that causes their death?
In: Biology
Some of the biggest factors are called HACE and HAPE; high-altitude cerebral edema and high-altitude pulmonary edema. Both of them involve fluid accumulating in a place where it shouldn’t due to the body’s stress at high altitudes – for HACE, fluid is accumulating in the brain, causing confusion and disorientation, while for HAPE, it’s accumulating in the lungs causing shortness of breath. And when you’re up on a mountain fighting exhaustion, weather, and the climb itself, either of those can prove quickly fatal. I believe that HAPE-related deaths are one of the most common, specifically, at high altitude.
And the scary thing about HACE and HAPE is that they can seemingly happen to anyone, anytime at high altitude. Being physically fit and acclimating to altitude slowly seem to reduce the chances, but even some of the most fit and prepared mountain climbers have died due to those conditions. If you’ve ever seen the movie *Everest* or read *Into Thin Air,* about the 1996 disaster on Everest, they note that Gary Ball, one of the founders of the Adventure Consultants company, died a few years before that disaster due to HAPE – and he was one of the most physically fit and well-prepared mountaineers in the world. Some of the guides and mountaineers who died on Everest that day were showing possible signs of HACE, possibly impacting their abilities to make decisions and move effectively.
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