High altitude acclimation

From Mt. Dana summit

Mt. Dana as a part Mt. Whitney plan

    As I reported yesterday, I went to Mt. Dana in Yosemite National Park.  The mountain is more than 13,000 feet elevation, almost 4000m elevation, and it is very easy to access such high altitude.   Therefore I found out that many people go up this mountain as a part of high altitude acclimation for Mt. Whitney.  Some people will go to Mt. Whitney within a few days after hiking to Mt. Dana.  Some people plan to go there a few weeks after the hiking.

Is this a good strategy?

    Actually I did not think about acclimation for Mt. Whitney in my past hiking.   Personally, I doubt that just a day hike to this elevation is really a good thing for Mt. Whitney hiking.    I have a couple reasons:

1. It is probably not helping for Mt. Whitney hiking if the pre-hiking is a day trip to 13,000 feet.
2. It probably does not help if the pre-hiking is more than 1 week apart. 

   I did one/two overnight hiking to Mt. Whitney a several times.   Most of them, I just went to Trail Camp in the first day and the summit attempt on the second day.   The elevation of the trail Camp is lower than 13,000 feet.  But I guess it is close enough.   Especially, I camped at Trail Camp a day before the summit attempt.   However, I have never felt that I acclimate the altitude on the second day.  So that, just day hike a few days before the hiking, I am not sure if it is really helping or not.  If the pre-hiking is more than 1 week apart.  I really doubt it helps.  Even if I spend two nights at the trail Camp, the third day, I still had some headache at Trail Camp.

   Based on that experience, I personally a day trip to 13,000 feet before the hiking might not help except to get an experience to the altitude.   The experience might help to understand how a person's body react to the altitude.  For that point of view, it may be helping, but in terms of acclimation, I do not believe it helps.  Probably, try a couple times before Mt. Whitney hiking could help acclimation.   Or a few days camping in a similar elevation.  But Mt. Dana won't be a good place to camp in such high elevation.

   White Mountain could be a good place to do such acclimation.  Unfortunately,  the trail to White Mountain is not a good place for camping.  But there are some camp sites below the trail head.   Camping over there and hiking up to White Mountain would be a better way for acclimation in my opinion.

Training in advance

   If the final target is Mt. Whitney, I would think to have a good training before Mt. Whitney Hiking would help better in my opinion.   Since to train your aerobic training will help to improve LT (Lactic Threshold).   Then as I mentioned in this blog, using heart rate number to manage the walking pace would be a better way.   In a reality, I would not believe a human body can acclimate within a few days to around 13,000 feet.   But aerobic training help to improve to get oxygen efficient way.   Then, using heart rate number to manage to limit oxygen consumption during a hiking.

   As long as I did a reasonable training in advance, I did feel a small symptom of high altitude sickness, but it was not too bad. 

   For some people, hiking to Mt. Whitney could be a big event.  So they might be willing to take some extra days off for Mt. Whitney hiking.  So they might have extra time to visit some other mountain.   I think it is great to visit the other mountain.  But it might not help for acclimation.  As long as people want to visit other mountains, it is good.  But if the purpose is just preparing Mt. Whitney Hiking, I would recommend to have enough training more than a few times a week.