Peter Hackett (mountaineer)

Peter H. Hackett is an American mountaineer and medical doctor. He is the third person to have summited Mount Everest in a solo ascent, climbing from South Col to the top on October 24, 1981. He studies the effect of altitude on human physiology, and is the founder of a medical rescue camp on Everest and a rescue clinic and lab on Mount Denali, and the director of the Institute for Altitude Medicine in Colorado.

Biography

In 2000, Peter Hackett was an emergency physician in Grand Junction, Colorado, and a Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle. By 2009, he was the director of the Institute for Altitude Medicine in Telluride, Colorado, and a professor at the School of Medicine at the University of Colorado.

Medical research

In 1973, Hackett was a co-founder of the Himalayan Rescue Association. It established a clinic near Everest Base Camp (which is at 5,380 m (17,700 ft)), where the sick were cared for and information was gathered about mountain sickness. In 1981, as a member of the American Research Expedition, he helped set up a "well-equipped" lab at 5,180 m (17,000 ft)) and a smaller lab at 6,300 m (20,700 ft). In 1982, he and Bill Mills started a rescue clinic and lab on Mount Denali in Alaska, at 4,267 m (14,000 ft) (funded by the US Army and the National Park Service), where again they treated patients with altitude sickness and gathered information. Hackett has also published on drug use among Everest climbers; his 2016 study, co-authored with Andrew Luks, Colin Grissom, and Luanne Freer and published in High Altitude Medicine & Biology, suggested that the use of performance-enhancing substances, "while present on the mountain, isn't a serious problem".