PREACCLIMATE.com

Snapshot:

I’m Brian Oestrike, an ambitious, high-altitude mountaineer hailing from a suburb of Cleveland, OH, but currently calling Portland, OR home. I’ve been fortunate enough to have traveled, climbed and lived all over the globe; in fact, my travels have brought me to some of the World’s highest peaks… Mt. Everest being the highest. Now, in an effort to combine career with passion, I head up the mountaineering division of Hypoxico, a world leader in altitude training systems.

The long story:

I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio playing competitive soccer until I moved to the mountains of Colorado Springs, CO. Over the next 10 years I have switched sports almost as much as I rotated locations. I’ve lived in Missoula, MT, Seoul, S. Korea, Portland, OR, and almost everywhere in between. Although I love rock climbing, my cardiovascular background has driven me to pursue high altitude mountaineering in the great ranges of the world.

My travel adventures have been oriented around a pursuit of career development while traveling and living in 25 plus countries. Along the way I acquired an MBA, fluency in Korean, proficiency in Spanish, all while priding myself on inter-cultural communication. As for climbing, I have reached the summit of Everest without Sherpa support, successfully climbed 19 6000 meter peaks, and enjoyed several speed ascents on lower mountains.

I became interested in Hypoxico after a long successful ascent of the NE Ridge of Everest in May of 2007. Our self-supported team of two chose to pre-acclimatize on smaller peaks because we essentially had to “Sherpa” our own equipment up through the camps. This resulted in being away from home for over two months with a great portion of the time spent simply sitting at camps. I believe the majority of this time can be avoided by pre-acclimatizing with Hypoxico technology.

This concept of pre-acclimatizing motivated me to attempt an accelerated ascent of 22,984 ft. Aconcagua in December of 2007. The normal itinerary for Aconcagua is generally 12-18 days, but by pre-acclimatizing I managed to reach the summit in 63 hours. I’m confident that this approach can be used on the “Seven Summits” and other expedition mountains around the world reducing itineraries to less than half. I will be attempting the 4th largest mountain, Lhotse, in a similar fashion in May of 2008 with a goal of reaching the summit in under 30 days!!!

1 Comment »