High Altitude Adventure Science in the Himalaya

Hari Mix Collects Snow Samples on Lobuche East

Hari rappels off the lip of a crevasse near the summit of Lobuche East to collect snow and ice samples of the thinning Himalayan glaciers. Photo Credit: Hmix.org

Hari Mix is a PhD Candidate at Stanford University and is climbing in the Himalaya as part of a team of researchers, TripleED, who are studying decision making in high altitude environments.  Hari is collecting snow samples and lichen for two ASC projects while attempting  to summit Mt. Everest and East Lobuche. 

Hari writes:

One interesting twist in my climb was that I’ve continued to work with Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation to do some climate science projects on these trips. As long as I’m a scientist and heading to these wild places, the least I can do is help some of my peers who need data. Just below the summit of Lobuche East yesterday, I rappelled off the lip of a crevasse to get some snow and ice samples for Natalie Kehrwald, who’s work focuses on the thinning of Himalayan glaciers due to climate change and the role of dust and other particles in accelerating the melting. A huge thanks to Chris Klinke, our expedition leader, who helped me set up our anchor system, and Markus Hallgren, the head of our TripleED research project on how teams are organized. Markus let me take the time off from my main research duties to pull this off. I’ll continue doing some science projects on Everest. I hope to collect the highest plant life ever and also create an altitude transect of smaller snow samples as high as I can. I’ll just say that carrying 15 1L Nalgene bottles up to 20,000ft was plenty hard!

Take care,
Hari

To follow Hari's expedition, learn more about his research, or see more beautiful photos please visit his blog www.hmix.org.  

Sunset from Lobuche summit camp. Photo Credit: Hari Mix