How Alpkit Foundation grants have backed altitude research, mountain medicine bursaries and hands-on trauma training for remote and extreme environments.

The further you go from help, the more it matters that someone nearby knows what to do when things go wrong. Small grants from the Alpkit Foundation have backed the unglamorous work behind that: research into what altitude does to the body, training for the doctors and rescue teams who treat people in the mountains, and the hands-on drills that turn theory into muscle memory when it counts.

Understanding what altitude does to the body

APEX 5 sent a team of medical students back to Bolivia to build on research first carried out on the summit of Chacaltaya. The project studies how the human body adapts to hypoxia, low oxygen at altitude, through blood sampling, vision tests and questionnaires taken before and after acclimatisation. Team member Becky Dru explained the method: test volunteers at sea level in Edinburgh first, then again at altitude, to measure exactly how the body's immune response, blood clotting and vision change as it adapts.

The findings apply well beyond mountaineers. Millions of people ascend to altitude every year, but the same research into low blood oxygen also has bearing on patients with conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Three researchers from the original expedition returned for APEX 5 as organisers rather than participants, part of a deliberate effort to keep developing the next generation of expedition medics and researchers, including through workshops run for local schools along the way.

Training in mountain medicine

Hathersage Mountain Medicine Festival is a two-day event run by a group of anaesthetists and critical care doctors from Chesterfield Royal Hospital, built around improving the knowledge and skills of anyone working in mountain medicine. A grant went toward the festival's bursary award, covering the cost for around ten people who otherwise couldn't afford to attend. "Recipients of these bursaries typically include paramedics, nurses, MRT members, teachers and students from health-related backgrounds," said organiser Jeremy Windsor. "These opportunities make a real difference to those starting out in the field of mountain medicine."

The same team also runs a Mountain Medicine blog and a winter webinar series with the British Mountain Medicine Society and the University of Central Lancashire, free to access alongside an online mountain medicine resource. Members of the society, paramedics, nurses and doctors among them, use it to keep their mountain medicine knowledge current between expeditions and callouts.

Practising for the worst case

Wilderness Dentistry runs practical workshops on the primary management of facial trauma in austere environments, for Search and Rescue, Mountain Cave Rescue, Special Forces and postgraduate students on the World Extreme Medicine and Royal College of Glasgow masters programme. Burjor Langdana, who runs the workshops, explains that two things are hardest to replace in an injured person: blood and heat. Preventing heat loss in a casualty, through shelter, dry clothing and cover from wind and rain, is one of the core things the workshops teach.

"Water conducts heat 25 times faster than air," Burjor says. "As the casualty gets cold it causes biochemical changes within the body that delays the speed of blood clot formation, increasing bleeding and making it more difficult to stop." A grant from the Alpkit Foundation funded a Kapar 8 emergency shelter, so the workshops could train casualty packaging and transportation under realistic cover rather than in theory. "We train hands on, with the real stuff, in real time," says Burjor. "So that when faced with an actual incident, their formative response will benefit the casualty, improving the outcome."

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The Alpkit Foundation supports the training and research that keeps people safer in remote and extreme environments. If you run a project doing this kind of work, find out how to apply.