Into Thin Air #3

In the book Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer talks a lot about altitude sickness. Altitude sickness occurs when someone can't get enough oxygen at higher altitudes. Common symptoms are headache, loss of appetite and trouble sleeping. Here in Park City I live at an elevation of 6,900 feet and I've never actually experienced altitude sickness but I've witnessed many other people with this sickness. I know I'm sometimes the one to point and laugh at the tourists that have altitude sickness often caused because they didn't drink enough water; but I hadn't realized how painful altitude sickness is until reading Into Thin Air. 

Jon dealt with a bad case of altitude sickness at the elevation of 17, 600 feet, which was at base camp and a camp one 19, 500 feet, his altitude sickness only got worse. He described it as a horrible pain that came with consistent vomiting and dizziness which isn't the best state to be in while trying to climb. The summit of Everest is at the elevation of 29, 035 feet, the oxygen availability at the top is a third of what it is at sea level. And to give you an idea of how high up that is, commercial airplanes fly at an elevation of 39, 000 feet.

Jon Krakauer said, "The full force of the headache struck a few minutes later, as I was chatting with Helen and Chhongba in the mess tent. I'd never experienced anything like it: crushing pain between my temples-pain so severe that it was accompanied by shuddering waves of nausea and made it impossible for me to speak in coherent sentences....The headache had the blinding intensity of a migraine." It turns out this wasn't from the altitude but the effect of being so close to the sun and the intensity of the ultra violet rays.

Doesn't it appear that the mountains on fire?

The one thing that doesn't make sense to me is that Mt. Everest is freezing cold, at the top of Everest it's typically -76 degrees F, but the sun's intensity plays a major role of when climbers can climb. On their first day climbing to Camp One they had to turn around at 10 am no matter where they were because the sun would make climbing on ice unstable. Is the sun melting the ice? But how is that possible if its way below freezing?

I also didn't know until reading this book that it takes months to climb Mt. Everest. This is the case because half of the battle is adjusting to the high altitude. Climbers will climb the same thing multiple days and climb back down to help adjust their body to the high elevation. I just didn't realize how difficult it is to adjust to such a dramatic elevation change but now I understand the consequences of doing so.