Tips & Tricks for High Altitude
I have climbed over two hundred 5000m+ mountains, the majority of them in the Andes, and seen over 200 people acclimatising (or not) to these conditions. Despite this I am still learning new ways of coping with the problems of high latitude mountaineering and camping. Here are some of the bits and pieces I have learned over the years, might save someone out there a lot of trial and error. I didn't invent any of these tips and tricks myself, I'm just passing them on.
Warning Any new idea or technique, including all of those featured here, should be practised in a controlled and safe environment first, and tested in a variety of circumstances. High altitude is not the place to learn anything, form ice-climbing to pitching tents in a wind, mainly because one of the biggest effects of low oxygen is that your brain does not work very well. So learn and practice at home before you go to high altitude. Warning
These tips and tricks are currently in no particular order.
Camping
Plan how you will pitch your tent before you leave - on almost all mountains tent pegs are completely useless and a waste of time carrying them. On many peaks making "rock-guys" to anchor your tent to locally available rocks is the best solution, but think about how you will load these so that the tent is not loaded by the wind in an unusual way. In snow use plastic bags or other snow anchors ( see out regular tips&tricks page).
If you'll be +camping on snow take a board to put your stove on, otherwise it will melt itself into a big hole in the snow. I make them from plywood or similar, pretty lightweight and disposable. Metal obviously doesn't work too well...
My 8th time on the summit of Aconcagua, out of 6 expeditions.
Yourself
Looking after yourself is the most important thing you can do. There is all the obvious stuff about acclimatising slowly etc, well covered elsewhere.
Your Performance - There is an enormous difference in how well people o at altitude, and most of this seems to be something you are born with, genetics or blood chemistry or something. Some perfectly fir people will just never do well at altitude. If you are one of these then give up and do something else instead. Others, like myself, with no great claim to fitness do very well every time we go to altitude. Get fit before you leave home then once at altitude go at your own pace and don't try to get sucked into any macho bullshit or races.
Fitness - Get fit before you go. Whilst being fit is no guarantee that you will do well at altitude, if you are unfit you will certainly struggle (you would at sea level anyway!). The fitter you are the better you will do.
Water - Drink as much as you can. I certainly don't advocate having to sip cold and unappetising water though. I much prefer my water with some heat, tea, milk and sugar in it. See below for the "tea is a diuretic" fallacy. Glugging a litre of tea will re-hydrate you much more quickly and much more effectively than sipping small amounts of cold water.
Caffeine - I'm all for this, within reason. Caffeine has been banned by the IOC because it is a performance enhancing drug. From what I have read it is particularly effective for endurance events, which high altitude climbing certainly is. There is a lot of nonsense talked about caffeine being a diuretic. In theory it is, but that doesn't mean that a litre of tea will de-hydrate you. While an espresso coffee might be a problem at altitude, if you drink a litre of tea you will retain 90% of that fluid. So as above, you will re-hydrate much more quickly and much more effectively drinking tea than sipping small amounts of cold water.
Diamox - I'm generally against using Diamox at altitude, though I have never tried it myself. People who know well such as the base camp doctors on Aconcagua don't think it is a good idea. There are several reason for this, it appears to hide some of the symptoms of the edemas, so rather than preventing them it may just disguise them until it is too late So my advice would be to take your time, drink plenty and don't muck about with quite powerful drugs in remote places.!
