Latest posts for the topic "Altitude sickness when skiing?"

Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sun, 3 Oct 2010 00:23:30 GMT

Has anyone ever suffered from altitude sickness when skiing?
The British NHS advice is that mild Altitude sickness can occur above 2500m (8000ft) & severe above 3600m (1200ft). Given that alot of ski areas are above 2500m altitude sickness must be a pretty common problem.

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sun, 3 Oct 2010 00:54:40 GMT

When younger I had occaasional dizzy spells when ascending rapidly in a cable car, but not proper altitude sickness as such. I've not really suffered as I've got older, I think it's something you can get used to.

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sun, 3 Oct 2010 08:05:15 GMT

Never

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sun, 3 Oct 2010 08:07:45 GMT

Hi Finn,
We had quite a long discussion on this subject several months ago. The thread was supposed to be about motion sickness, but a lot of other stuff (as usual!) crept into it, including some very useful information on altitude sickness.

http://www.j2ski.com/ski-chat-forum/posts/list/48/7749.page

Ally

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sun, 3 Oct 2010 08:24:50 GMT

For many years I suffered mild symptoms, frequent headache, poor sleep patterns, snotty nose and nosebleeds. Always during the first week of a two week alpine trip. Both winter and summer. I started taking Gingko Biloba for unrelated reasons and was very pleasantly surprised the next winter, to find that most of my symptoms had gone. It could all be a coincidence, perhaps I outgrew all the symptoms at once :mrgreen:

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sun, 3 Oct 2010 08:59:02 GMT

bandit wrote:For many years I suffered mild symptoms, frequent headache, poor sleep patterns, snotty nose and nosebleeds. Always during the first week of a two week alpine trip. Both winter and summer. I started taking Gingko Biloba for unrelated reasons and was very pleasantly surprised the next winter, to find that most of my symptoms had gone. It could all be a coincidence, perhaps I outgrew all the symptoms at once :mrgreen:

Bandit
out of interest were you skiing above 2500m? Was it worse on bad weather days in periods of low pressure.

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sun, 3 Oct 2010 09:33:07 GMT

Typically in higher level ski stations. Most miserable time in Breckenridge, where the town is at 10,000ft. Also suffered in Val Thorens, Tignes and at the top of the Aguille du Midi 3800m. I did not notice if I was worse on bad weather days or not, it used to be all pervading!

I have learned the value of ski high, sleep low. I sleep well at 1600m these days, with no ill effects.

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sun, 3 Oct 2010 19:49:26 GMT

I had no probs at Breckonridge. but it was evident that plenty of people do, there is a medical centre locatedd next to the bottom of one of the main runs, and most of their business was AS.
I have suffered once, only slightly, at 10.000 ft, but skied at 13,050ft at Arapahoe Basin without bother, but my OH was seriously affected. She was OK, once she started skiing ~ attagirl!
In, Breckenridge, 9.500 ft, they advise 3 days without alchohol, yeah, right......

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Mon, 4 Oct 2010 16:55:35 GMT

You can really notice going from sea level to just under 4000m when unfit, however it never takes more than 2 days in resort to get aclimatised (in my experience). I have never had problems sleeping at moderate altitude, In Portillo (Chile) the hotel was bang on 3000m, my bedroom is now about 1680m.

The big thing is how much work you are doing, if you are profficient and ski easily, then you will not need to work so hard to keep yourself oxygenated, however if you are perpetually on your arse, the work rate goes up and then you notice.

My mate who helped me move to Zermatt a week or so ago, said he really felt it going from 100m at home to 3900m and working, had some dizzyness, however nothing drastic.

Everyone reacts dfferently of course, small steps (or time periods) are probably best if unsure.

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sat, 9 Oct 2010 11:48:00 GMT

I have been to breckenridge a few times and seen people suffer. As a climber we get more information about this problem than skiers seem to. Firstly it's about you not your level of fitness or your behaviour on the piste or mountain. Ski high sleep low is good advice if you do suffer, and yes if you can lay off the booze. I don't ski on day one at Breck despite the temptation. No-one talked much about advanced or severe symptoms... the onset is headaches then nausea and then you start getting into oedema territory and that gets awful serious. If you do get a bout get oxygen and by all means try the genko... anything that works for you really. Given time your blood will adjust... on a one week holiday, however, this isn't ideal. One last point, it is more about where you rest than how high you go up to during the day... A-Basin is a must do before you die place so practice going high.

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sat, 9 Oct 2010 13:13:53 GMT

Never had it and skid up to 3200m. Closest I came was a summer trip up the Agile d midi in Chamonix.

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sat, 9 Oct 2010 13:36:17 GMT

AllanNevilleRogers wrote:Never had it and skid up to 3200m. Closest I came was a summer trip up the Agile d midi in Chamonix.

Lunch at the Klein Matterhorn Restaurant should establish if you are affected )

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sat, 9 Oct 2010 14:31:19 GMT

Divers can be a bit vulnerable. They can have type two symptoms for a while on day one ( nervous tissue damage ) Blurred vision and tiredness, often just a bit of a cleanout going on but uncomfortable none the less. fortunately for us humans the body is pretty good at repairing this kind of light damage.

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sat, 9 Oct 2010 14:45:24 GMT

My Ex hit problems in Vail but me and my daughter were fine. Plenty of advice around the hotel and town in general on how to deal with it

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sat, 9 Oct 2010 16:16:04 GMT

Patrick Damant wrote:Divers can be a bit vulnerable. They can have type two symptoms for a while on day one ( nervous tissue damage ) Blurred vision and tiredness, often just a bit of a cleanout going on but uncomfortable none the less. fortunately for us humans the body is pretty good at repairing this kind of light damage.

I'd be interested to see some evidence for that and a citation. My understanding was that divers are at immediate risk at altitude or in a high pressure environment and that the effect was around 24 hours with an incidence rate around 0.004%. I've never heard of a long-term adverse impact and I'm struggling to understand what the mechanism might be.

Before everyone gets a bit carried away it's worth pointing that most skiers suffering from altitude sickness simply aren't. Some places like Breckenridge are high enough to give someone living at sea level problems but 99% of ski destinations simply aren't.

The highest ski station in Europe is only 1850m in the village where you have about 80% of what's called partial pressure, as a measure of how thin the air is. Just bobbing up over 2500m for a few hours isn't really going to trouble any normally healthy person. You're not going to have symptoms whatsoever that aren't fixed by going back to village level.

Something you quickly realise if you do deal with high altitude medical problems is that any number of other conditions present just the same as AMS. For skiers it's rather more likely they're suffering with tiredness, unexpected exercise, interrupted sleep from travel and dehydration.

And in answer to an earlier question, no, it-s not going to make any difference what the weather is like. The difference between a low and high pressure front will be worth not much more that 300m of altitude. It won't make your apartment feel like Everest.

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sat, 9 Oct 2010 17:21:07 GMT

ise wrote:[

The highest ski station in Europe is only 1850m in the village where you have about 80% of what's called partial pressure, as a measure of how thin the air is. Just bobbing up over 2500m for a few hours isn't really going to trouble any normally healthy person. You're not going to have symptoms whatsoever that aren't fixed by going back to village level.

Val Thorens (France) think they are the highest ski station at 2300m )

So what would be the effects there?

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sat, 9 Oct 2010 18:10:32 GMT

bandit wrote:
So what would be the effects there?

zero

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sat, 9 Oct 2010 19:05:58 GMT

I haven't had altitute sickness, but I have been affected by sunstroke and dehydration. It was horrible. I slept for 24 hours solid. Not a good use of time on a ski trip. I now ski with a 3L camelback so it never happens again.

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sat, 9 Oct 2010 19:42:41 GMT

ise wrote:

bandit wrote:
So what would be the effects there?

zero

Bandit wrote:
For many years I suffered mild symptoms, frequent headache, poor sleep patterns, snotty nose and nosebleeds. Always during the first week of a two week alpine trip. Both winter and summer. I started taking Gingko Biloba for unrelated reasons and was very pleasantly surprised the next winter, to find that most of my symptoms had gone. It could all be a coincidence, perhaps I outgrew all the symptoms at once

Must be a coincidence then, 20+ years of alpine nosebleeds and the rest, gone in a flash. Or perhaps I'm really unfit )

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sat, 9 Oct 2010 23:39:21 GMT

bandit wrote:
mild symptoms, frequent headache, poor sleep patterns, snotty nose and nosebleeds. Always during the first week of a two week alpine trip. Both winter and summer. I started taking Gingko Biloba for unrelated reasons and was very pleasantly surprised the next winter, to find that most of my symptoms had gone. It could all be a coincidence, perhaps I outgrew all the symptoms at once

Must be a coincidence then, 20+ years of alpine nosebleeds and the rest, gone in a flash. Or perhaps I'm really unfit )

It's not a coincidence, you didn't have AMS.

"snotty nose and nosebleeds" are not symptoms of AMS. Simply having headaches and poor sleep does not register on the Lake Louise Consensus on the Definition of Altitude Illness scoring system so according to the International Hypoxia Symposium, you don't have AMS.

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sat, 9 Oct 2010 23:44:08 GMT

leavesj wrote:I haven't had altitute sickness, but I have been affected by sunstroke and dehydration. It was horrible. I slept for 24 hours solid. Not a good use of time on a ski trip. I now ski with a 3L camelback so it never happens again.

And you are now everyskier ) Add to that some nasal damage from breathing cold air and you've precisely diagnosed what most people are actually suffering from.

If people had been to extreme altitude and dealt with AMS for real they know the difference soon enough.

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 08:23:20 GMT

I was not suggesting that I had suffered Acute Mountain Sickness. Having looked at the link in your post, both of us have had some of the symptoms listed in the AMS box. We both suffered from mental dysfunction and sharp headaches on the Aguille du Midi, which were achieved without going outside of a heated environment, as the weather was awful.

The American College of Physicians made a study of travellers to moderate elevations (6300 to 9700 feet), of over 3000 travellers to the Colorado Rockies.

Their findings:

Conclusions: Acute mountain sickness occurs in 25% of visitors to moderate altitudes and affects activity in most symptomatic visitors. Persons who are younger, less physically fit, live at sea level, have a history of acute mountain sickness, or have underlying lung problems more often develop these symptoms.

Article from 2004 here http://www.annals.org/content/118/8/587.abstract

Ski high, sleep low I reckon :D

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 09:21:20 GMT

Hi Ise, nice to see you back again :D

Thanks for that link Bandit :D

I couldn't get to see the full text, only the abstract, but I could get to see the full text of this one, in Pediatrics - an American paediatric journal, which suggested that perhaps children are less affected, not more affected, by altitude as compared with adults (although their sample was quite small).

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/123/1/1

48 Swiss children and adolescents were taken rapidly up to 3450m for 3 days and studied in a laboratory (poor kids - some holiday!). Only 38% of them suffered from mild altitide sickness, as compared to 84% of adults also brought rapidly up to a similar altitude at a different location. The kids mainly suffered from fatigue and sleeping problems.

I know that when sleeping and ski-ing in high altitude resorts I suffer from; feeling tipsy (Kaprun), becoming very short of breath with physical exercise (La Rosiere), and insomnia - waking up at about 3 a.m. (Val Thorens). I was much better sleeping in Courchevel 1550 last year.

I would suggest the most dangerous thing about these mild forms of altitude sickness is that one can become very tired and confused towards the end of a long day without realizing it, and therefore more prone to make mistakes and get hurt.

I wonder if anyone has done any research into comparing accident rates for good skiers in low and high altitude resorts on, say, day four of their holiday.

Ally

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 12:42:40 GMT

My Sis-in-Law suffers with motion sickness on chair lifts !!!!

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 15:41:20 GMT

Try Diamox from a travel clinic
Its used for mountaineers/treckers but some friends have it for high skiing too

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 16:02:55 GMT

Our family went to Colorado a couple of years ago - we anticipated that we might suffer from AS so we purposely went for a bit longer than we normally would to allow us to perhaps have a couple of days off - and sure enough I had to have one and a half days off the slopes and my wife two! As for our two boys......nothing! Perhaps it's an age thing?

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Mon, 1 Nov 2010 14:02:49 GMT

I have now added a new symptom of 'altitude sickness' to my list - bloodshot eyes.

I'd noticed it before, but put it down to getting suncream in my eyes. However, this time I noticed my eyes were bloodshot before putting any on. The same thing happened to my daughter as well (at Tignes) and the curious thing is that about an hour after we'd been driving off the mountain back to Geneva our eyes returned to normal.

I asked the optician about it, and he said that it was due to a shortage of oxygen in the eye, and that in response to this the tiny blood vessels were dilating to get more oxygen through the surface of my eye. I didn't know that my eyes could get oxygen from the air!

Also, someone else from our chalet was so badly affected by the altitude up the mountain that she couldn't speak - which alarmed her quite considerably so she came down.

Ally

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Mon, 1 Nov 2010 14:23:42 GMT

I often get nosebleeds when stopping at altitude, but it doesnt stop me doing anything.

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Mon, 1 Nov 2010 14:38:11 GMT

I do not suffer any symptoms, I have never skied higher than just over 3000m, so that is possibly why :lol:

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Mon, 1 Nov 2010 19:57:38 GMT

At 2000m I got a burst blood vessel in one eye! Looked really glamorous- not!! Took about a week to look normal again but never happened since!

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sat, 6 Nov 2010 11:28:42 GMT

Many of these things aren't altitude sickness- the nose symproms & red eyes are more a consquence of the air in the mountains often being very cold & dry so the mucus membranes tend to get dry. The blood flow to the nose increases to warm the air that's being breathed in. If there's any crusty bits inside your nose that break down & it'll bleed that bit more. A little vaseline smeared inside the nose helps greatly.

Get fit (if you are not already) - it's stunning how many people ski who take no other exercise from year to year & wonder why they hurt so much when they do ski. Good technique helps. However a good level of physical fitness means you will get less tired (fall less) & have the muscle strength to support your joints when you do get it wrong, so reducing your chance of getting injured.
Drink enough - heavy exercise in winter gear in dry air means you will loose more fluid. The sweat evapourates easier at altitude so it's not as obvious & the sun can be strong so adjust your fluid intake.

True altitude sickness is a much more serious matter affecting mainly the brain & lungs. The younger you are the more likely you are to be affected by the cerebral effects (age shrinks the brain so it has more space to swell into). The only safe option is to descend & acclimatise. Drugs like Aceozolamide (Diamox) & Viagra may help but are not an alternative to getting down the mountain. Look on them as rescue medications to buy a bit more time to get down in a mountaineering emergency not to allow the unaclimatised to climb higher.
I don't see them having a role in a skiing holiday other than under strict medical direction. I doubt there's any justification for using them in European ski resorts. (other than for their licenced use ) )

Re:Altitude sickness when skiing?

Sat, 6 Nov 2010 11:41:57 GMT

Thanks Andymol2 :D

I put my contribution in inverted commas, because I know symptoms like red eyes aren't strictly speaking symptoms of true altitude sickness.

But, we are describing how our bodies malfunction at high altitudes on our ski-ing trips. And I don't really know what else to call it. Even these minor symptoms can be bad enough to stop one from ski-ing (like the girl who had to come off the mountain because her brain stopped working properly and she couldn't speak).

Added together, these symptoms can be quite uncomfortable, and even alarming - red eyes, waking at night, headaches, feeling queasy, mental confusion, nose bleeds, feeling short of oxygen with heavy physical activity (like skating uphill on skis) etc.

Ally