what we do
We are a team of volunteer medics and researchers delivering clinical care at altitude, and building the evidence base to make that care better year on year. In our first full season in 2025, we ran medical posts at Base Camp (3,600m) and Advanced Base Camp (4,400m), delivering 124 consultations over eight weeks to climbers, trekkers, guides, porters and local residents. Our team managed everything from blisters and chronic disease to severe Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS), High Altitude Pulmonary Oedema (HAPE) and High Altitude Cerebral Oedema (HACE), and ran structured education sessions on acclimatisation and altitude illness, in English and local languages. Throughout, we worked alongside local medical partners, contributing to a growing body of research on how high-altitude medicine is best practised in the field.
why it matters beyond the mountain
Altitude medicine is still a young science. At 7,134m, the air holds less than half the oxygen available at sea level, and AMS affects somewhere between 40 and 95% of people above 5,000m – rising the higher you go. HAPE and HACE are rarer but far more dangerous, and there simply isn’t enough research yet on how to prevent, manage and treat these conditions in the field. Every consultation we run, every ascent profile we record, adds to a small but growing body of evidence that can make high-altitude medicine safer everywhere – not just on this mountain.
where we’re heading
Slava Mountain Medicine is built to last. We’re growing our clinical, research, training and education work on Lenin Peak, and building relationships with mountain medicine organisations working at altitude elsewhere in the world – because the lessons learned on one mountain should travel to the next. This is a long-term commitment, not a single expedition.
We exist because Slava Topol’s death didn’t have to happen the way it did – and because the next climber, guide or porter in trouble on this mountain deserves better than hoping someone nearby knows what to do.
