The Skeptic From 10,000 Feet: A Cheers to Karl Egloff
October 21, 2026 | By Stan Pillman
We sat down with Karl Egloff to talk about altitude gear. We came away mostly just wanting to be his friend.
If you have ever done one of his tours, you already know what I mean. The man is a force. Five minutes into our call, a guy I had never met in person was offering to help me climb Everest. By the end he was sending a bear hug through the screen and telling me to feel free to call him anytime. "I love to talk, as you see." Yes, Karl. We saw. And we loved every minute of it.
So yes, this is a blog about how one of the best speed climbers alive uses our altitude training equipment. But really it is a toast to a guy who brings a rare kind of light to this whole sport.
Karl Egloff at a glance
- From: Quito, Ecuador, at roughly 2,850 meters (about 9,350 feet)
- Seven Summits speed records: Kilimanjaro (2014), Aconcagua (2015), Elbrus (2017), Denali (2019)
- Himalaya: Makalu speed record without supplemental oxygen (2022), plus Everest no-oxygen speed attempts in 2025 and 2026
- Altitude setup: sleeping in a Hypoxico altitude tent, plus mask intervals on a stationary bike up to a simulated 7,500 meters
- Biggest payoff: recovery, better sleep at base camp, and about two weeks saved on acclimatization
He is the last person who should have needed convincing
Here is the part I love most, because it makes the gear story honest.
Karl was born and raised at nearly 3,000 meters of altitude in Quito, Ecuador. Similar elevation as Leadville. As a kid he was playing in the backyard at 10,000 feet and spending weekends on 5,000 and 6,000 meter peaks like it was nothing. His dad was a mountain guide and brought him along as a boy, with one rule: "If you are there, you are there. Don't be asking for mom every five minutes." He said yes, sir, and he has been in the mountains ever since.
So when altitude training machines came across his radar, he did what any guy born in the clouds would do. He rolled his eyes. "Someone who was born and raised in the altitude, you are not going to teach me how to train for altitude," he figured. "I thought this is just marketing."
That is the most skeptical possible customer. And he is the one who turned into our biggest fan. That matters more to me than any spec sheet.
The pandemic forced his hand
Then 2020 happened, and the mountains locked their doors.
Karl was stuck in Ecuador with the borders closed and the refuges shut. He had the south face of Aconcagua on the calendar and, for the first time in his life, no way to prepare the way he always had. So he tried the generator at home, fully expecting it to be a gimmick. "I was very skeptical. I thought, is it really going to help me?"
Then he got to Aconcagua, spent hours on that record-breaking south wall, and felt something he had never felt up there before. "I felt so strong. For me it was clear, this thing really helps you." That was the moment. Ever since, he has been all in.
Best of both worlds, from a dad who wants to be home for bedtime
Here is where it gets genuinely useful, especially if you have a life and cannot vanish into the mountains for a month.
Karl became a father of two, and that changed the math. "You don't want to be every weekend out there. You want quality time with your kids." The gear is what lets him have both. His last three Himalayan climbs, Makalu and two trips to Everest, were built on hundreds of hours of training with Hypoxico equipment. This year alone he logged 250 hours sleeping in the tent and did interval work up at 7,500 meters, the highest the adapter goes at his elevation, pushing his body to the edge from inside his own home.
The way he describes the rhythm is the smartest framing of this I have heard. When his body is tired, he stays home and plugs into the static bike for the long, boring work. When he is fresh, he grabs the car at dawn and hits a real mountain. One day a week on the real thing is plenty, he says. The rest you can do at home. Outdoor and indoor, working together.
And the payoff is time. This season he skipped two weeks of the usual on-site acclimatizing, showed up to Nepal, and felt like he had already been there a fortnight. "I won two weeks." His one honest caveat, the thing he wants people to actually hear: it is not plug in and done. "You have to do the homework." Put in the hours and the gear buys you days on the mountain. Skip them and it will not. (If you want to know how many hours that homework actually takes, start with the 200-hour rule and our guide to pre-acclimatization for big peak season.)
The thing he kept coming back to was recovery
Ask Karl what actually changed pre-Hypoxico versus post, and he does not say speed. He says recovery.
Training in the real mountains beats you up. The cold, the exposure, the nights, the long days. You come down wasted and you need to recover before you can go again. With the tent, he says, you adapt and win red blood cells without destroying your body to do it, which means he can push hard right up until the last two days before he flies out.
He pointed to something I had never heard framed so well. On Everest, climbers go on and off supplemental oxygen, plug in and plug out. That on-off feeling is almost impossible to rehearse in normal life. But interval training on the bike with the mask does exactly that. Take the mask off and it is like breathing bottled oxygen. So when race day comes, your head already knows the feeling. Nothing about it is a surprise.
"I've never slept so good in base camp as this expedition."
— Karl Egloff
And the sleep. Karl will be the first to tell you he is a bad sleeper, always has been. But because he had spent weeks building up in the Hypoxico tent, by the time he reached Everest he was resting at base camp better than he ever had. "I've never slept so good in base camp as this expedition." For a guy who climbs the death zone without supplemental oxygen, sleep at altitude is not a luxury. It is the whole game.
Why he actually goes up there
I asked Karl something I ask a lot of climbers, because it bugs me how Everest has become a box people check. Why do it?
His answer was the opposite of ego. "I just want to know what a human being is capable of." He will not touch K2 despite the reputation, because he has kids at home and he can live without it. He could honestly live without Everest too. The mountain that actually lights him up is Denali, or Antarctica, the middle-of-nowhere places where it is just him and a GPS and the goosebumps. "This has much more the feeling of mountaineering."
That is the guy. Speed-record setter on four of the Seven Summits, one of the fastest humans ever to move at altitude, and what moves him is being alone on a mountain feeling five years old again.
A real cheers
We got on that call to talk about tents and generators. We got a story about a mountain-biker who got dared up a volcano in 2012, felt free for the first time in his life, and never looked back. We got a skeptic who became a believer. We got a dad who figured out how to chase the death zone and still be home for his kids. And we got a genuinely good human who, in his own words, just wants to keep spreading love.
If you have ever climbed with Karl, you already knew all this. If you have not, now you do.
Cheers, Karl. The whole crew here is lucky to know you. Keep spreading love, and keep coming home safe.
Want to build your own home base camp the way Karl does? Explore Hypoxico altitude generators and altitude tents, or try a system first with an altitude system rental. You can also read how other climbers prepared in our 2025 Everest season recap.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Karl Egloff?
Karl Egloff is a Swiss-Ecuadorian speed climber and mountain guide from Quito, Ecuador. He has set round-trip speed records on Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua, Elbrus, and Denali, and a speed record on Makalu in the Himalaya without supplemental oxygen.
How does Karl Egloff use altitude training?
He sleeps in a Hypoxico altitude tent and does interval sessions on a stationary bike with a mask at up to a simulated 7,500 meters. He pairs that home training with roughly one day a week on a real mountain. In his most recent season he logged about 250 hours in the tent.
Can altitude training at home shorten acclimatization?
For Karl, it did. He skipped about two weeks of on-site acclimatizing and arrived in Nepal feeling like he had already been there that long. His caveat is that it only works if you put in the hours.
Does altitude training help with recovery?
Karl says recovery was the biggest change. Training in a tent let him adapt without the wear of cold, exposure, and long days in the real mountains, so he could train hard closer to departure and slept better at base camp.
Karl Egloff is a Swiss-Ecuadorian speed climber and mountain guide who has set speed records on four of the Seven Summits. You can follow his adventures and his guiding at karlegloff.com.
Photo courtesy of Karl Egloff.
Stan Pillman handles marketing and PR for Hypoxico. He is a former Hypoxico employee and a lifelong hockey goalie who trains at altitude a few days a week, which is how a guy his age keeps closing the door on shooters half his age. He recently, and to his own surprise, discovered he likes trail running.
< Back to Altitude Journal