Why do we need acclimation when climbing high mountains?
People live at low altitude can have altitude sickness, i.e. a physical distress from difficulty adjusting to lower oxygen pressure at high altitude. Most cases of altitude sickness are mild, but some may be life-threatening. Symptoms tend to occur within hours after arrival at high altitude and include headache, nausea, shortness of breath, and inability to exercise. Mild cases may resolve in one to three days. Severe cases may require oxygen, medications, and moving to a lower altitude.
Typically altitude sickness starts to occur at ~ 8000 ft elevation.
The key to adjust to high altitude is by acclimation. Driving from low altitude to high altitude and refraining from high intensity activity for some time is the natural process of acclimation for us before climbing Mt Elbert.
Beaver Creek State Wildlife area
We stopped at Walsenburg, CO on the way to Mt Elbert, for our first stop after ~ 9.5 hour drive, and had some light activity the next morning at Beaver creek.
As noted in the trip plan post, this place is not easy to find due to mistake in Google Map search. We called the wildlife management office to find the way to get there but not the address - there is no address for it! We were the only group at the wildlife area on that day.
It is a well protected area, trees and grasses naturally grow. It is very green, we could hear birds chirping allover the places, but barely see any. The birds were either in the trees or camouflaged so well on the tips of tree branches.
There were many wild flowers, and a couple types of butterflies, which kept flying in front of us
It was so quiet there - we only heard our own footsteps, bird chirping and occasionally bird calls, the sound of wind in the trees and rustling leaves, and of course the running beaver creek.
When we reached the creek, the trail continues on a "long island" which splits the creek into two streams, converging at southern end of it. We were surprised to hear people talking in the creek because there was no other car at trail head! We saw two young women standing in water, we said hello to each other and continued. At the other end of the "long island", where the creek diverges into two, Lily spotted a large bird in front of us, on a tree, it flew passing us when I got the camera out.
Sans the frustration of locating the trail head, it was an excellent side trip.
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| Beaver Creek |
Mt Elbert Trail head
We went to the north trail head after we checked in at our hotel at Leadville. The final 3 miles of the road to the trail head was very rough and bumpy, slowing down was the only way to minimize discomfort and to reduce potential damage to tires.
Test drive the route to trail head has been a practice to prevent losing way in the early morning rush and know what to expect ahead of time.
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| View of Mt Elbert from half moon road |
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| Test hike on the 1st mile of the trail |
Twin Lakes & Turquoise Lake
Two days driving plus quite some hiking, we were tired and decided not to climb Mt Elbert on Day 3 of the trip but Day 4. Good weather was forecast for both days.
On day 3 we proceeded as planned for acclimation - visiting Twin Lakes and Turquoise Lake
Twin Lakes are claimed to be one of the most beautiful places in Colorado, with the #1 and #2 peaks in Colorado - Mt Elbert in the center in above photo, and Mt Massive on the right. Hiking, kayaking and boating, camping would be the best activities there. It was very cold that morning, and we did not want to hike too much, and it was not a good time for water sports either, so we just walked along the lake shoreline a bit to enjoy the vista.
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| View of the Twin Lakes from Mt Elbert |
It was only ~ 10:15 am when we left Twin Lakes. We continued on county road 24 to stop by South Mt Elbert trail head, hiked only 1 mile round trip to have a top view of the twin lakes; also stopped at Mt Elbert Forebay before returned to Leadville for lunch.
We went to Turquoise Lake in the afternoon, another beautiful place, for boating (bring your own boat), hiking, camping and angling. It also claims to have ospreys diving into the water to catch trouts - but we saw no large birds over the water, maybe not the season or time when we were there.
Steams from mountains at west, merge and rush into the lake. Lush land surrounds the inlet area.
There were a few people fishing near the inlet, one motor boat was sailing on the lake, two little girls were playing at the edge of the rocky beach, and a few more people, including us, just sat there, watching, listening, enjoying the tranquil, majestic lake.
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| Wildcat Mountain (12093 elevation) streams feeding into Turquoise lake |
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| The lake is looks more dark blue than turquoise |
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| Just got one! |
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| two little girls played at the edge of the rocky beach |
After 30 ~ 40 minutes, we drove around the lake and left for our hotel to get ready for next morning's ascend of Mt Elbert.
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