Stairway to Everest

Stairway to Everest

02/02/2021 By: Ismael Fernández Cuevas Home

January 23th will be not easy to forget in the Faculty of Sciences for Physical Activity and Sport (INEF). Francisco Manuel San Cristóbal, a final year student at this Faculty from the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) faced the challenge of reaching the 8.848m from Mount Everest by going up and down 312 times the seven floors of the main building from the faculty.

Everest Challenge Team. Francisco San Cristobal wears a blue t-shirt.

This challenge makes part of his Bachelor´s degree final project. Francisco started at 7:00 am and was assessed using infrared thermography before and every hour during the whole challenge. In addition to that, nutrition, hydration, blood glucose, heart rate, and weight were measured every hour. At 1:04 am of the next day (after more than 18 hours) he finally reached the last step to the summit.

Manuel Sillero, Nieves Fernández, Francisco Manuel and Guadalupe Garrido during the challenge.

Thermography assessments were performed on the lower limbs, both front and back. Besides the thermal images taken during the challenge day, pre-test thermograms were collected in December during their training period and also 36 and 72 hours after the challenge.

Francisco Manuel during a training session
Thermography evaluation during the challenge.

It is very interesting to observe a baseline condition with almost no thermal asymmetries, and how throughout the challenge the repetitive effort was creating a clear asymmetrical pattern.

Thermal asymmetry tracking report from the lower limbs during the challenge (ThermoHuman software report)

In addition to that, it is extremely interesting to analyze the coefficient of variation, showing hypothermic values during the first 4 hours and how this tendency was getting to the opposite on the following hours.

Coefficient of variation tracking report from the lower limbs during the challenge (ThermoHuman software report)

A more detailed description will be performed in a scientific report.

Europa Thermohuman ThermoHuman has had the support of the Funds of the European Union and the Community of Madrid through the Operational Programme on Youth Employment. Likewise, ThermoHuman within the framework of the Export Initiation Program of ICEX NEXT, had the support of ICEX and the co-financing of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

CDTI Thermohuman has received funding from the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI), in participation with the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), for the R+D activities involved in creating a new tool, based on thermography, for the prediction and prevention of rheumatoid arthritis. See project detail.

CDTI