75 Quotes About Summit

The summit of Mauna Kea should never have been developed as it is not safe for humans up there. I am now locked into an endless loop of doctors visits for what appears to be classic very high altitude heart, lung & brain damage because I was unfortunate enough to have worked there.

Biological science is clear that the Mauna Kea Observatories must be shut down to protect the long term health of the summit workers. It will be interesting to see how long astronomers willfully ignore the science.

I regard taking healthy sea level adapted children to the 13,796 feet very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea as a form of child abuse.

The life can always change for any of us, and the one who was on the bottom once might turn up on the top when you least expect it, and vice versa.

14,000 Feet: Many people will be showing serious signs and symptoms of Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS). Some people may be experiencing visions and hallucinations. Many people will be displaying mental impairment, often called “Summit Brain”. Immediate descent to lower altitude is recommended for these people. Most people will be in oxygen starvation, also known as Asphyxia.

The need to use oxygen to offset ‘Summit Brain’ was never discussed during my job interview. Using oxygen daily came as a nasty surprise once I started working at the Mauna Kea Observatories.

At the W.M. Keck Observatory on the very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea, there was no routine monitoring of mental functioning, blood oxygen levels, blood pressure or heart rate of workers.

So if you, O subsequent ones, ever deign to look down at us from your summit of effortless superiority, remember that you have only scaled it on the back of our efforts. For it is thankless to grope in the dark and tempting to rest until the light of understanding shines upon us. But if we are led into this temptation, your kingdom will never come.

I was on the Big‬ ‪Island‬ of ‪Hawaii in 2015 and managed to characterize the ionizing ‪‎radiation‬ ‎levels‬ in the south of the island. ‪Mauna‬ ‪Kea‬ was the radiation hot zone with approximately a doubling of radiation levels at the Mauna Kea Visitors Center at 9,200 feet as compared to sea level. I did not venture to the summit due to the known biologically harmful environmental conditions to the sea level adapted human that exist at 13,796 feet.