Kenny Baillie (with Matthew Bates, Roland Partridge, Martin Schnopp, Alistair Simpson & Roger Thompson plus Dr Andy Sutherland, 20 heroic 'volunteers' and a BBC 'Tomorrow's World' film crew). March-April 2001

After 4 days in La Paz at 3600m, this team travelled by bus to the Chacaltaya fixed laboratory at 5200m 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 back to La Paz, the research programme was conducted almost exactly in line with the original plan: it involved research into the function of systemic and pulmonary circulation, ventilatory control, high altitude cough and blood markers of mountain sickness. Later, 7 of the survivors made a guided ascent of the highest peak in Bolivia, Sajama, 6542m, in the Cordillera Occidental.