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General Climbing Discussion

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Mountaineers Please Help 18-Mar-2003 At 12:57:22 AM Joe

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Yeah, I agree with A5, different people are affected very differently. I saw a fit woman in her 20's had to be evacuated with pulmonary oedema at the very modest altitude of 3600 metres. This was quite an extreme case and most people i saw were ok at this altitude. I think there is a rule over 3000 metres, something like no more than 400 metres height gain per day to acclimatise... not sure but it's something like that. But again, it just depends and you won't know until you are there. Like Neil said... if you feel sick go down straight away. I have seen very ill people from around 4000 metres up have to be carried down in the middle of the night vomiting the whole way, as soon as they lose altitude they are ok. If your friend takes time to acclimatise and drinks plenty of water she'll probably be fine at altitudes of 13,000 feet. Also if she is on some kind or organised trek they tend to go pretty slow anyway, so the time required to acclimatise should be no problems. People that mostly experience trouble while trekking to Everest are those that fly into Lukla and don't acclimatise. I didn't have any problems up to around 5000 metres, past that got a slight headache. The cool thing is once you're acclimatised you can fang up 2000 metres in a day!