Introduction: Finally, it’s the hour that you have waited for your entire life. After nearly 30 years, your childhood dream is about to become an unexplainable reality and triumph. This journey has definitely tested both your mental and physical strength as an individual and has been the most grueling thing that you have ever done. Throughout the journey you have seen some of your fellow brothers and sisters fall victim to the great beast and others stand tall in the face of adversity. You even faced severe weather conditions and had to spend several weeks trying to acclimate your body to the new and unusual surroundings. Now, you are about to embark on the hardest, but most glorious part of the entire journey: climbing from the infamous “Dead Zone” to the summit of Mount Everest. As of this point, fear begins to course through your severely weakened body. You begin to second guess your decision …show more content…
Every spring, the bar-headed goose travels from its wintering grounds in India, at sea level, over the Himalayan Mountain range, down into its summer breeding grounds of central Asia. According to Professor Graham R. Scott and others from the Zoology Department at the University of British Columbia, hypoxia or a low concentration of oxygen in the blood and tissues for many lowland species, can prove to be very debilitating at high altitudes, but for some the acquisition of “genetically based physiological adaptations has helped with the minimization of hypoxic effects” (Scott, et al. 2009). The bar headed goose, unlike many other migratory bird species, has acquired these certain “genetically based physiological adaptations” to help it minimize the effects of hypoxia during the strenuous flight over the largest mountain range in the