The Friday Matinee

If it's Friday - checks calendar - and it is, then it can mean only one thing, it must be time for the OUTDOORSmagic Friday Matinee, your shameless excuse to while away a few empty afternoon hours before the weekend.

This week though, we're going to be educational, which must be a first. If you think back, you'll probably remember a team of British doctors conducting physiological experiments on subjects while climbing Everest. They were accompanied by a team from the BBC's Horizon series and the results really are fascinating.

We particularly like the bit where one of the doctors notes that he's never before seen such a low oxygen concentration in the blood of someone who's still alive. Just what you want to hear when you're at 6400 metres on the world's highest mountain.

And then there's the sobering footage of the team's involvement in a dramatic rescue of a broken climber on the Lhotse face. "All he was doing was climbing closer and closer to death," as one of the doctors says afterwards, yet the stricken climber's own team seem incapable of helping him...

Finally you have to check out the film of one of the docs riding an exercise bike for experimental purposes at 8000 metres on the South Col of Everest as the researchers attempt to work out why some climbers appear to be capable of using oxygen much more efficently than others at altitude. And of course, they do eventually reach the summit via the Hillary Step.

Finally, You can also find raw footage from the summit day on YouTube in a much bigger viewer :-)

That's all for this week, have a good weekend and don't go carrying exercise bikes up the Ben...