5/21/2019

A good partner for hiking! ~ Easy hiking in high elevation!

Monitoring your heart rate duing hiking helps to manage your walking pace!
This is one of a good way to manage your walking pace.

For experienced hiker, they know their best pace for hiking.  They won't get exhausted based on optimal pace.  Many seriour climbers who climed Himalaya mountains, they understand what the reaction of their body in higher elevation.

However, for many hikiers who do not have a lot of experience more than 10,000 feet. It is hard to tell what is going on for your body.   It is almost no sign for impacts of high elevation.  As a result, you may be exhausted.   Your experience of the hiking won't be great if you really exhausted.

Monitoring heart rate and manage your walking pace will help to keep an optimal pace for you and you will have a great experience for your big desstination like Mt. Whitney which is the highest mountain in lower 48 states in the United States.

Let's get a device which can monitor your heart rate during hiking!



The lowest cost solution!

Hiking season is coming!

In the US, Memorial Day weekend is coming!   It is starting a nice hiking season this summer!

Mt. Whitney which is the highest mountain in Calfornia. 
It is the highest mountain in the lower 48 states in the United States.
Due to the "highest mountain" in the main portion of the United States, 
Mt. Whitney is very popular destination for many hikers.

High Altitude Sickness

Do you know "High Altitude Sickness"?
Due to low oxigen environment in highe elevation, many people feels some symptoms when they hike more than 10,000 feet.  It is sometimes headache, dehydration and others.

If you spend more time in higher elevation, human body will adopt the altitude slowly in many cases.  However, it is hard to avoid in short term. 

Many hiking might be done within a few days and it would be too short to adopt the altitude.

Pace management in high elevation

The pace management for a hiking in higer elevation, which is above 10,000 feet, is probably very difficult for most of people.  Because almost all people could not feel the impact in the early stage of high altitude sickness where the elevation around 10,000 feet.  At this stage, you do not feel anything different from a typical hiking in lower elevation.

However, if you monitor your heart rate, you will see the difference.  Even if you walked a similar pace when you hikin in lower elevation, the heart rate is getting much higher in higher elevation.  This means you do not feel anything special, but there is sign for the high altitude sickness already.

What happens?

Since you cannot recognize any impact of the elevation in the early stage of high altitude sickness, your walking pace is eventually "over pacing".  Then it will gets worse quickly and you will be exhausted in a short time.

Most of destination for hikers is somewhere around 14,000 feet and you may be able to reach the summit without any special thing for the altitude.  But you may be exhausted and your experience might not be great.

Monitor Heart rate helps your experience!

One of a good solution for the high altitude sickness is monitoring heart rate and manage your pace based on heart rate.

It used to be not easy since there is not very good way to monitor your heart rate in real time during hiking.   However, it is getting much easier nowadays.  Since there are many devices which can monitor real time heart rate just waring a watch!

A good solution is using activity tracker during hiking!

There are many activitiy tracker devices in the market.  Also, running is getting very popular for people's health, there are many running devices with GPS function.  Those are all good devices to monitor your heart rate duing hiking!

The following device is called "Garming vivoactive 3".
This device also capable to trace where you go as your record with GPS. 
This is a very good fit for many hikers to keep tracking where you go and how much time you took.

In terms of the cost, I would recomend this device for trcking your heart rate during hiking.



Nice device with GPS function!


The next device is "Garmin fenix 5".  This is a bit expensive.  However due to a updated model is introduced this price is getting lower and now it is a bit expensive but affordable range now.

A good thing for this device is more nice features for hikers.  Longer battery life, built in compas and more profile for many other spots to track your activity.   I have been using the previous modle "fenix 3 HR" and it is really nice gear for hiking.

If you can affort this price, I would recomend this device!


More outdoor feature!

I will post how to manage you hiking pace in the next post!

(To be continue)



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