Long time lurker first time poster. (I have a Whitney question list coming up, but first thing first).
My girlfriend and I are attempting Whitney in September. We've taken the "prep" pretty seriously and have been hiking/working out every weekend possible. (Meaning 12 hikes under our belt since we found out we won a lotto spot).
Hikes have ranged from 3 miles to 16 miles in length and normally carrying 20-25% of our body weight in our packs. We live in Glendale California and hike the San Gabriels when home. Our second home is Aspendell (above Bishop) and we're there 1-2 times a month. Aspendell is 8500 feet roughly.
July 11th was hike #12 and we decided to give White Mountain Peak a try. We wanted to see what the elevation was going to feel like.
I'd say we're are reasonably smart and we research a lot of variables before tackling things. In this case we
thought we had enough knowledge to avoid AMS on this. Obviously we failed. Or rather, I failed, badly.
We've hiked the mountains behind Aspendell a lot. Playing anywhere from 9500 feet and all the way up to nearly 11000 feet at Upper Lamarck. I've never had an issue at these elevations. I've never had an issue on Mammoth Mountain and I'm a regular up there too.
I got hit with AMS real hard and real bad at White Mountain Peak. I'm going to list the variables I recall and what I think I can do better next time. I'm curious if someone with some solid AMS experience, or knowledge, can chime in and maybe point out anything I'm missing.
My variables:
- Spent ~36 hours at 8500 feet prior to starting White Mountain Peak (we generally spend a day or two at 8500 before we climb anything above 9500).
- Ate breakfast of oatmeal and started pounding water right away.
- Out of Aspendell by 4am and driving to the gate at White Mountain Peak (~12000 feet?)
- Took maybe 2 aspirin before hike.
- Started have a very minute tiny fuzzy headache after Barcroft station.
- Fuzzy headache got worse, very slowly, until we started the switchbacks up White Mountain Peak.
- We made sure we took a 10 minute break every hour. Took off packs even and just lounged.
- We believe we were doing really good with water & food, but after the hike was over... it's possible we weren't doing as well as we thought on the water portion (we had too much left over we think).
- I'd guestimate about a mile from the peak I got really nauseous and vomited (the nausea had been slowly building up).
- My first mistake was not stopping when the fuzzy headache became a real one. After I vomited, I think I made a real bad mistake.... my second mistake. After I vomited I felt fantastic. I felt great. Something analogous to throwing up when you're really drunk... you just feel good afterwards
- We wondered if maybe I had an upset stomach from food or aspirin.
- It's embarrassing, but I'm listing the facts. At this point my girlfriend started getting hit with diarrhea (I mention this because I don't recall diarrhea being associated with AMS).
- Made it to the peak and right near the end my symptoms returned.
- We cooked up some Beef Stroganof at the peak to recharge ourselves, fuel up, and warm up. I ate a couple spoon fulls, and started on a banana and out of nowhere: more vomit. And the girl was nailed by more diarrhea.
- At that point I said we need to get down and off this mountain (I was in a lot of pain).
- One more bout of vomit for me and then near diarrhea too by the time I finished getting down all the switchbacks.
- From the first time I hurled I was no longer keeping down water or food. So I was still hiking and not replenishing my calories I was burning.
- Probably one of the single most painful headaches I've ever had.
- It took me a few hours to make it to Barcroft. One of the students was heroic and hooked me up with a ride down to the gate (2 miles) when he saw how wrecked I was.
- The ride out and back to Bishop was hell. I curled up on the backseat. Every jostle on that dirt road just flared an already killer headache.
- Ended up at Bishop ER. Doc said yes to AMS. Stayed there for about 3-4 hours while they pumped IVs into me (2 liters).
- Finally started feeling better and checked out.
I'm sorry this is long, but with Whitney coming up, this is pretty important to me to tackle this scenario better.
My working assumption(s) are this:
1. Even staying ~36 hours at 8500 that was probably not good enough climatization to hike to 14000+ feet from 12000 feet. Especially when you drive from 8500 to 12000 in.. what... an hour'ish?
2. I'm suspecting the fireroad didn't help. It never dawned on me until afterwards, but for those unfamiliar with White Mountain Peak, it is basically a fireroad from gate to peak. It is very easy walking. What this means is I believe one might tend to walk faster compared to backcountry hiking on skinner, sketchier, rougher, single track type trails. We believe the fireroad accelerated our rate of ascent possibly.
3. I didn't hydrate enough. I'm pretty dang good about this, but I think I failed. I was carrying a full 100ounce camelbag and two 32 ounce nalgenes. Now granted I was unable to hold down water the majority of the hike, I still only went through 3/4 of my 100 ounces. That was it for all my water consumption during the hike. I thought for sure I was going to burn through the 100 ounces on the uphill and then use the remaining 64 on the downhill.
Now my Mt. Whitney hike is September 2-4. I plan on being in Aspendell as early as August 28 to stay several days at 8500 feet and possibly get in one casual hike to something like Blue Lake or Upper Lamarck prior to Whitney.
Because of the AMS experience on White Mountain I'm really looking at what I can do to stem this off. Right now I'm almost certainly going to head down to Lone Pine on September 1st and stay ~24 hours at Horseshoe Flats. Basically stay there all day Monday and sleep there Monday night. Tuesday drive to the portal and start my hike. The goal is to hike to the Trail Camp and then relax and sleep the day/night away. Day two attempt summit then come back down and head to Outpost Camp and stay there the night. Day three head back down to portal.
I'm hoping several days at 8500 feet, nearly 24 hours at 10000 feet, and then a slow ascent to Trail Camp will help. That's my current game plan.
I can't go to Horseshoe flats on Sunday because I need to see the demolition derby in Bishop
It's tradition.
I also thought about camping at Outpost camp on the first night up, but that doesn't work our in our schedule properly. Our goal was to break the return hike up because we didn't want to go from Trail Camp, to peak, to Portal in one day.
Again, I'm sorry about the length of this, but just researching a better game plan for the next round.
Thanks!
