By Brendan Borrell

New medications to fight the altitude sickness suffered by mountain climbers promise to aid peak performance. But the same drugs could also yield new treatments for people with breathing disorders. Brendan Borrell meets one man at DARPA, the US Defense Department’s research agency, who’s trying to move mountains for a new therapy.

Michael Callahan was racing south on California’s Highway 395 in a rented Chevy station wagon. It was early one morning in late August this year, and the night before he had faced down thunderstorms on his way back from Colorado’s Maroon Bells, two peaks that measure about 4,300 meters high. Now, he was cruising along the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range to Bridgeport. There, he would lead a joint training session at the US Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center between the military and the legendary Yosemite Search and Rescue team, a group he had volunteered with as a lanky, long-haired climbing bum back in the summer of 1989.

“They are just over the mountain from each other, and they’ve never met!” Callahan says in disbelief. (Click here to continue reading)

Image by Cessna 206 via Flickr Creative Commons