A scientific approach for Mt. Whitney hiking (3)~ A better strategy to hike 14,00 feet class mountains

The summit of Mt. Whitney (September 2014)

Hiking to higher altitude

Mt. Whitney hiking is one of good examples to apply “heart rate base pacing”.   Because the popular “Mt. Whitney Trail” is very long trail, the round trip is about 22 miles.  Most of hikers to make their trip around a few days.   So, it usually requires a very long day at least.   The other factor is Mt. Whitney is 14, 505 feet height and almost all hikers could get “high altitude sickness”.  The high altitude effects makes people to get a right pace.

Indication of impact for the altitude

The symptom of high altitude sickness is vary.  Also, the altitude people feel they have high altitude is vary as well.   Even if the same person, it might be different each time.  That is one of difficulty to deal with the symptom.

It is known that a human will be able to adopt low oxygen environment to a certain altitude.   So many expeditions like climbing big mountains in Himalaya have a strategy how they adopt the altitude.  The expedition is long enough to do.   However, hiking to 14,000 feet Class Mountains is a bit different situation.   Many cases the duration of hiking is not long enough to adopt the low oxygen environment.   Most of cases, people will complete their hiking within a few days.  So the strategy for climbing mountains in Himalaya cannot be applied.  I think we need to think about different way to deal with this.

A pulse oxy meter is used for expedition to mountains in Himalaya.   It indicates saturated oxygen ratio which is almost 100% in a typical environment in our daily life or lower altitude.  The measured number is going to lower when people are in high altitude.   Then, once the people adopt the low oxygen environment it is getting higher.   So the value is used to quantify the adoption in a sort of longer time range.   In a short period, it may be useful, but it is hard to make judgment if it is all right or not.  The value is getting lower anyway, but how low a person is all right to continue to going up.  Off course if the value is extremely low, people could tell it is not a good situation.   So it is not very useful in a short period hiking.  Only way to use this equipment could be to learn how we can breathe.  If we change the way to breathe, the reading value of pulse oxy meter will be changed as well.   Just looking the reading value and people will be able to learn what would be a good way to breathe to keep the value higher.  It may help to minimize the impact of low oxygen environment.

On the other hand, the heart rate could be a good parameter to understand the impact of the low oxygen environment.   It is a normal reaction of the human body to adjust the heart rate based on the demand of oxygen.  I think we can apply the concept of heart rate based training / pacing metrology from the running world.

(To be continue)

Alviso Marina County Park ~ Walking while kids were in Japanese school

It was nice weather and view!

Friday two weeks ago, I caught a cold and I was not feeling well more than a week.  So that I could not update the blog last week.   Finally, it is getting better.  Last weekend, I went Alviso Marina County Park while kids were in Japanese school.   Spring is probably the best season to visit this park, it is not too hot, not too cold, there are many flowers along the trail.

The round trip is about 10 miles.  This time, I could not run due to the injury in January and I walked all the way.  It took about 3 hours, but the far side of the trail was really nice!!

Here is the timelasp video for the sky of the day.

 Timelasp video

 This week, I will be able to resume the topic about the Mt. Whitney hiking.

By the way, finally I got a weekend spot for overnight permit for Mt.Whitney.   I made the reservation.   Also, April 30 is the last day to make reservation for the permit that people won the lottery.  After May 1, spots people did not make reservation will be available for all people.   If people did not win the lottery and still look for a spot for Mt. Whitney hiking, it is better to watch the reservation site if there is any spot.   I think there might be a chance!

A scientific approach for Mt. Whitney hiking (2)~ A better strategy to hike 14,00 feet class mountains

West side of the main ridge on Mt.Whitney Trail

Today, I am writing what is available to look into the tracking data and a concept of the heart rate based training for running.

Visualize tracking data

One of key thing to look into a tracking data is how we can visualize the data.  I think this is a key to get some idea from the tracking data.

There are many vendors to sell such GPS product in the market place.   Since my first GPS device from Garmin, I have a couple different GPS devices from Garmin.  So all data for this posting is captured by a Garmin device.   There are some other vendors / manufactures offer similar devices.  So you might get a similar data from a device from other vendors.

Each vendor usually provides an application and / or a web service to visualize the tracking data.  For example a plot of the pace, the elevation, the heart rate and so on.   People can see overall profile and statistics from them.   It also show a track where people ran / walked.  At least, people can see the overall idea how they performed for each activity.   Accumulating activities is one of motivation to do running, hiking and etc.

Heart Rate based training

Because of those device, heart rate based training is also getting popular in running world.  Before those device is getting popular, it was not really easy to track the heart rate information during each training.  There was no good way to capture the real time heart rate information.  So that people sets their goal for a training / a race based on a pace and / or total time.   However, it is not really easy to set the right goal for many people.  I guess the goal is tended to be too high / hard for most of people.

The heart rate based training is using a “target heart rate” to define the strength of training.   The heart rate value has some relationship with the strength of exercise based on many studies.   Based on the heart rate value, we can define a strength of exercise instead of using pace.  Also, a person’s condition / situation can be vary for each training, sometime a person is getting very tired, or not the best condition something like after sickness and so on.   Then even the same physical strength, the stress level to the body could not be the same.   Using a pace for index, then people need to adjust it based on the condition.   However, the heart rate is already including those factor.  Therefore, people can use the same heart rate value for each training.   People can define the strength more logical way if they use the heart rate as an index.

I am not talking about a top level runners, I am talking about a regular numbers who is challenging their personal record for fun.   A long distance race like “full marathon”, the pacing is one of a key factor to get a better result.   To optimize the pace for a race is a key to get a good result.   Especially over pacing is not very good way for long distance running.  I think a similar methodology can be applied for hiking, especially if it is a sort of long distance.  That is the motivation, I wanted to look into the record for each hiking.

Direction for this series of posting

 Today's post does not seems to be related "hiking" at all.  But they are very important to look into the real tracking data for hiking.  "Visualization" is important because we need to see what each data profile looks like.  Then we also want to see the relationship with the heart rate.   Then we can apply a similar concept of "heart rate based training" to "hiking".

Next post will talk about altitude and heart rate.

(To be continue)

 

A scientific approach for Mt. Whitney hiking (1) ~ A better strategy to hike 14,00 feet class mountains

Mt. Whitney from the visitor center in Lone Pine

In the other blog in Japanese, I keep positing a topics about Mt. Whitney hiking with some data analysis for my past tracking data for Mt. Whitney hiking.  It seems that many people are interested in the topic even I am writing in Japanese.   Because Mt. Whitney is a mountain in California, I guess more people might be interested in this topics if I write in English.   So I decided to write a similar thing in English here.   The contents won't be exactly the same as what I wrote in Japanese.  But I will try to summarize some points here.

Here is the basic idea and direction for this series of positing here:

1.  To analyze the past GPS tracking data for hiking in Mt. Whitney Trail
2. Summarize my analysis result
3. Looking into a relationship between the altitude (elevation) and a heart rate
4. Considering to apply a similar methodology of heart rate based training for running to a hiking

Regarding item #4, it might not be a good option for a short hiking, but it might be a useful option for a long hiking around 14,000 feet class mountains.  The type of activity for such hiking could be very similar as running very long distance like full-marathon.

Prologue!

I am also a runner other than hiker.  I usually do some training for running regular basis after age forty.  I used to do running when I was young.   After I resumed running, I found out there is a big innovation for running gears especially, running watches.   When I was young, digital watches were getting popular and it has a feature for "stop watch".  Then people can wear a watch and look at the time when they run.   Nowadays, there is many "watch" with GPS function.  It can track / log the location information while people are running.   Based on the moving distance, it can easily calculate running pace or speed.   After running the tracking date can be shown with visualized format with an application and / or a web based service by the device vendors / manufactures.   It is very convenient for runners to understand their performance and progress of their training.   I think many runners using such device for their daily training and races.  It is getting very popular for runners nowadays.   Some of advance feature for those devices / gears are "monitoring heart rate", "running cadence" and so on.  So that we can capture many different data during running activity.

In hiking / climbing world, GPS devices are also getting very popular as well.   Especially a device with a small display which shows map information.  It can track the location information where people went through.   It is very useful gear for the navigation in a field.  Also, it can keep all records for each hiking / climbing.   People does not have to write down their record on paper any more.

Originally, I bought a GPS device just collecting records for my hiking.  It works very well and I can accumulate data on a web site.   One time, I tried to use the heart rate monitor function during a hiking.  Since then, it becomes my habit to collect the heart rate information for each hiking.  Now I have many cases for different hiking and I tried to look into more detail for those data.  That is the starting point for this idea.

(To be continue)

Brokeoff Mountain backcountry skiing in Lassen Volcanic National Park

Brokeoff Mountain

I went backcountry skiing last weekend, April 3, 2016.  Here is the report:

Brokeoff Mountain (2814m / 9239ft)

Elevation Gain / Loss: 823m (2700 feet)

Ascend Time: 2:30

Descend Time: 1:00

Round trip: 9.2km (5.7 mile)

Total: 3:50

About Brokeoff Mountain

Brokeoff Mountain is the second highest mountain in the park, next to the Lassen Peak.  While the approach to Lassen Peak is long in the winter closure, Brokeoff Mountain is really short approach from the south entrance of the park.  It allows us to make a day trip, actually a half day trip to Brokeoff Mountain in a reasonable condition.

Starting location

Typically, people who are heading to Brokeoff Mountain start right before the source entrance.   There is a small parking space before reaching the park entrance on CA-89.  However, I tried to approach from the parking lots after the entrance in front of the visitor center this time.  So that the starting location is the visitor center.

In the beginning, toward north from the visitor center for a few minutes.  There is a wide open slop on the northwest side (on the left side of CA-89 with facing to north).   From the south end of the slop, I got into the forest toward Brokeoff Mountain (toward to west).   Small creeks were covered by plenty of snow and the route was across small creeks without hassle.   After thirty minutes to one hour, the summer trail is merged and gets into a really nice slope on the east side of Brokoff Mountain.  There is very few trees and wide open slope.

 East face of Brokeoff Mountain

The route is diagonally up toward left side (south side of the summit).   Based on the map, the summer trail is on the lower part between trees.  In a good condition of the snow, we can climb above the tree line to short cut.   When we traverse the base of the east face of Brokeoff Mountain, we need to be careful to watch the east face side, avalanche, falling rocks and so on.

The last section of ascending toward the summit

Once we reach to the ridge toward to the summit, there is another wide open slope on the southwest side of the mountain.  The slope is getting a little steeper, but it is probably nice slop for skiing down.  On the ridge, it may be getting windy and people need to wear a jacket.  This time, the southwest slop got wind slab and the right below the summit was getting heard and icy.   I left my backpack and skis right below the summit and wore crampons to climb the final steps to the summit just in case.  

 Right below the summit

East side is very steep and west / south west side is a nice slope for skiing

 A nice view from the summit

(Lassen peak is on the center and Mt. Diller on the left)

After taking photos and videos, I descended where I climbed up.  Although the snow condition around the summit was icy, once descended a little bit, the snow is getting corn snow and it was easy to ski overall.  I did ski down following the ridge toward south.  The view is spectacular, the sky is really blue, mountains and hills which all covered by snow.  I wore an action cam recorder and I can share the view as a Youtube Video.

Youtube Video

It is a nice slop along the ridge, but to back to the visitor center we need to turn left (or toward to east) somewhere.   This time I turned left where the summer trail turns left based on my GPS map.  Probably we can turn left a bit higher location to get into the nice slop on the east side of the Brokeoff Mountain.

 Lassen peak on the south ridge

There is not many trees on the slop along the creek near the summer trail.  However, to back to the visitor center where I parked, I had to get into the forest and traverse.  Probably it might be good to start at the summer trail head next time, then we can follow the creek and enjoy skiing.  This time, there was enough snow and I still could ski between trees during the traverse.  Then the last slop toward CA-89 was not too bad.  But due to high temperature at the day, the snow was getting wet and heavy.

This was my first backcountry skiing to Brokeoff Mountain.   It is nice route for backcountry skiing in Lassen Volcanic National Park.

[End]