Smart hiking (2) ~ Hiking over 9,000 feet

Hiking over 9,000 feet

When people hike over 9,000 feet, they might start feel some symptoms for high altitude sickness.  There are some popular destinations over 9,000 feet, such as Mt. Fuji in Japan, Mt. Whitney in California / USA, Mont-Blanc and etc.   Depending on seasons, but it is probably not so difficult in summer time and many hikers are there.  The symptom is typically not really serious in many cases for those destinations, I guess it is something wrong / different for many people and they might be able to reach the summit and come back without major problems.

However, many people feel this is different from hiking in lower elevation.  Therefore there might be some tips such as stay higher elevation in the previous night, walking slowly and etc.  They might be coming from strategy from expedition to mountains in Himalaya.   Basic idea is taking more time to acclimatize the elevation.

My experience on Mt. Whitney trail

I had a several experiences to hike to Mt. Whitney in past years.  I also tried to stay higher elevation in a previous night like many articles suggested.   However, I did not feel any clear difference.  On the other hand, I had very different feeling in a few different hiking.  I felt really exhausted once, but I felt really easy in other.  The major difference is probably walking pace.   It seems to be common sense if people walk slowly, it must be easy.   However, after I collect heart rate data during hiking, I think there is a better way to manage the walking pace.  Obviously, it might be impossible to avoid any symptoms for high altitude sickness, but I believe there might be a way to optimize the pace to minimize the impact of high altitude sickness.

This is the topic I will post as a series to this blog.  I wrote a book about this experience in Japanese and I plan to publish English edition after this series.  After publish the Japanese Edition, I got some extra data / thought, therefore I will reorganize the contents and post in this blog.

(To be continue)