Latest Mountaineering Stories

By Patricia Reaney LONDON (Reuters) - British doctors plan to climb Mount Everest to study the impact of low oxygen levels on the body, a project they hope will help critically ill patients. A team of 30 researchers and physicians will monitor the health of 210 trekkers to Everest base camp during the 3-month expedition next year. Thirty doctors will ascend the South Col route and 10 will go to the peak. "Our Everest ascent will involve creating the world's highest medical laboratory,...

By Helen PopperCHACALTAYA, Bolivia -- Times are hard for the world's highest ski resort, a dizzy 17,388 feet (5,300 metres) above sea level in the Bolivian Andes. Its glacier is melting so fast synthetic snow is seen as the only way to save it.Scientists say Chacaltaya's diminished piste could disappear altogether within five years due to climate change and, though this humble ski center is no Whistler or Chamonix, it is the only one the poor South American country has got."This has been...

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer, whose life was portrayed in his book and the film "Seven Years in Tibet," died on Saturday aged 93, Austrian officials said in a statement. He was the first person to climb the difficult north face of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps in 1938, but won world renown after his book, the film version of which was directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud and starred Brad Pitt. Harrer was interned in northern India by British authorities in 1939...

LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) -- Two University of Wyoming researchers are working on developing a test to diagnose altitude sickness in cattle. Cattle under a year old are especially susceptible to altitude sickness above 5,000 feet. But the condition, called brisket, can only be diagnosed by inserting a probe into the jugular vein and measuring blood pressure in the heart and lung. Mark Stayton, associate professor in the College of Agriculture's Department of Molecular Biology, and Rich McCormick, of...