APEX Bolivia 2001

After four days in La Paz at 3,600m, this team travelled by bus to the Chacaltaya fixed laboratory at 5,200m which offered an ideal venue for five Edinburgh University medical students to investigate the effects of altitude on the human body. Although several people were affected so severely that they had to be evacuated to La Paz, the research programme was conducted almost exactly according to the original plan, which covered research into the function of systemic and pulmonary circulation, ventilatory control, high-altitude cough and blood markers of mountain sickness. Later, seven of the survivors made a guided ascent of the highest peak in Bolivia, Sajama, 6,542m, in the Cordillera Occidental.