Mark Mosley

Review of Thomson Safaris

Thompson is a very good tour organization for begi...

Thompson is a very good tour organization for beginners and novices. The food was great and the equipment and accommodations were all top tier. But it is not a good guide company for experienced climbers and trekkers.

On the summit day I was climbing behind the lead guide and doing fine. The pace was a bit slow for me but I was comfortable with it. At the 18000 foot level, just 1,300 feet short of the summit, my guide started commenting on my breathing. (We were all breathing pretty hard. I also have mild asthma that is fully controlled by medications.) Finally he stopped and insisted on testing my blood oxygen level with one of those pulse/blood oxygen monitors. I was concerned so my eyes were glued to the monitor. My reading was 67%, and the guide said that was alarmingly low and I needed to go down right away. I had not researched blood oxygen levels at altitude so I believed him and went down, missing the summit.

When I got back to internet range I looked it up. There are scores of articles on the internet about testing blood oxygen levels among elite climbers at altitude. It turns out that my blood oxygen level (0.67), while slightly low under the circumstances, was well within the standard deviation for accomplished climbers tested at 5533 meters (18,152 feet) in Mustagh Alta in China. They tested to 75% +/- 6 (meaning a low of 69%, which was very close to my 67%, and a slight variation in the monitor would have put me in the middle of the range). The next level up, at 6,265 meters (20,500 feet), the same group tested at 73% +/- 6.73% +/- 6, which has my 0.67% within the low end of the distribution. And these are all professional climbers, fully acclimatized and in top physical condition.

In short, my blood oxygen level was just fine.

We had all tested our blood oxygen levels at dinner time throughout the trip and I was consistently in the middle of the group. If the guide had tested all of the climbers in my group at 18,000 feet instead of just me, I am sure I would, again, have been somewhere in the middle of the range. So if he had used 67% as the cutoff, he very likely would have had to send half the group down with me.

I have concluded that I was wrongfully deprived of the summit based on my head guide's ignorance about the meaning of particular blood oxygen levels at altitude. That's a long way to go, at considerable expense, to be deprived of the summit because of the head guide's ignorance about blood oxygen levels.

What's worse, when I raised the issue after we got down, the head guide started saying that my blood ox level was actually lower than 0.67 (it absolutely was not - I never took my eyes off the monitor and 0.67 was the lowest it ever got), and also told others that I was staggering and appearing unsteady. This, too, was false - I've trekked hundreds of miles at altitude on similar and more difficult terrain and I am very sure-footed. No one on the trip ever saw me stumble even once, let alone fall to my knees or onto the ground. Others did, including one of the supporting guides, but I never did. That never happened, on summit day or on any other day.

There are two explanations for what happened and they are not mutually exclusive. Either (1) the head guide was genuinely concerned about my wellbeing and ignorant about blood oxygen levels at altitude, and he sent me down to be super safe and cautious; or (2) he felt the need to "put me in my place" in front of the others in the group, because I am an accomplished mountaineer and he needed to show the others that he was the boss. I think he is a decent man, but that it was probably a little bit of both.

The bottom line is I missed a summit I easily could have made safely - something I have never once done in 40+ years of high altitude climbing and trekking.

So while I think Thompson is an okay outfit for beginners with little or no trekking or high altitude climbing experience, it is not a good outfit for experienced trekkers and climbers. I cannot recommend them for that and will never use them again.