Training Archive: stoneIn the 7 days ending 2007-01-07:
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Saturday Jan 6 | ||
| Cycling 2:00:00 [2] | |
| In the north in the Atacama desert, the driest place on earth. I'm in San Pedro de Atacama, super touristic.
Renting a bike to go out to the desert and visit some nice canyon. After taking several wrong paths due to the horrible map, I finally arrived. Great stuff! In the evening, wanted to see the famous sunset in the Valle de Luna, but even though I pushed real hard on the 200m uphill, I was a bit too late. | ||
Wednesday Jan 3 | ||
| Running 2:00:00 [2] | |
| Day 4.
Descending from base camp down to Baños Morales in 5h and heading back to Santiago. Felt perfectly fine today, slept like a rock last night at 3100m... Even though we did not succeed, it was definitely not a failure! I got to know my body better again, and got some first experiences with higher altitudes. And at least we were higher than th Mont Blanc ;-) Thinking back, it simply cannot work out, going from 500 up to 4200 in 24h and then trying to spend a night there, at least if you're not aclimated enough. I had been up on 3000m the past weekends, but never spent a night there, and that's what really counts in terms of aclimatisation. But I'm quite sure that with an additional night at 3600-3700m before the 4200m camp, all would have worked out fine. We just did what people suggested to us, but the problem here is that as a European who only knows the Alps, you lose the relations a bit. Because 4000m is absolutely nothing here, the temptation to make the mistake and go up too quickly is very large. And back home, 1000m of altitude gain seems like a piece of cake. But at 4000+, and with 15+kg on your back, doing only 300m an hour is not something old grandmothers could do. I have also gotten a first glimpse of what mountaineering is really about. It is not about speed and power. It's about patience and humbleness towards the nature of the mountain and your body. Maybe this is a reason why most people in this sport are between 30 and 50 ? In a week, between the 10th and 20th of January, I will take part in an expedition up to Volcan Tupungato, one of the world's highest volcanoes at 6520m. I am confident that with the experience and the additional aclimatisation from the past days, and if the weather gods like us, I will succeed next time. I will post some pics shortly. | ||
Tuesday Jan 2 | ||
| Running 3:00:00 [3]+700m | |
| Day 3.
After a cold night with temperatures a lot below 0, I still felt ok. The water in the bottle inside the tent was frozen solid... but I never felt cold, seems that the material is worth the money. We had to melt snow to get drinking water, as outside everything was frozen solid too, of course. Next time, we'll fill up all bottles in the evening, another one of those little details... We started ascending further, now constantly walking in huge fields of penitentes. These things can become quite large, up to 2m !! As soon as we started climbing, there was that pressure in the head and slight headache again. Hans had to go really slow and had trouble breathing. Nonetheless, we were gaining altitude steadily, but also my headache was increasing steadily again. The strange thing was that in my legs, lungs and heart, I had absolutely no problems! Felt perfectly fine, just the head was not how it should be. We reached camp 2 after about 3h. But I had decided long before that I could not sleep up there as we had planned. Maybe with more drugs it could have been possible, but I want to get to know my real current limits and besides, it can be very dangerous not to listen to the signs of the body. So, we decided that we would go up to 5000m and then descend back down to base camp at 3100m. As the weather was also getting worse with lots of fog, we decided to descend at 4900m. With every meter less, the pressure in my head decreased. Back at camp 1 (4200m), I felt almost fine again. My head was like a balloon slowly losing air and pressure. Back down at base camp I felt totally fine again. I think another day/night at 4200m would have been enough for me to eventually reach the summit, but we did not have this extra day, as Hans had a flight to catch back to Germany and me to the north of Chile (although I would have been ready to miss mine to get to the summit, wasn't very expensive). | ||
| C • nice story... 1 | ||
Monday Jan 1 | ||
| Running 4:00:00 [3]+1200m | |
| Day 2.
The plan was to ascend to camp 1 at 4200m. While Hans complained about bad sleep and being out of breath from the beginning, I felt excellent. I felt almost like a machine up to 3800m, had absolutely no trouble breathing, legs felt powerful and the backpack felt much lighter than the day before. Weather again fantastic, and we were gaining altitude steadily. We were already thinking of going up a bit further without the backpack after setting up camp, just to check out the route for tomorrow... At about 3900m, I started feeling some slight pressure in my head and some light headache, but nothing to worry about, I thought. Because of this, I took it easier than before, walked slowly, as there's also no use going fast and then waiting for your colleague. I really wanted to avoid altitude sickness, and tried to do everything people told me before to avoid it. So I thought if I would just take it easy now, drink enough, all would be fine. At about 4000m (first time ever in my life!), we saw the first 'penitentes', very strange peaks of snow that exist only in the Andes, and nobody knows why they are formed. We reached camp 1 at 4200m at about 1pm, Hans being exhausted but otherwise fine, and me still having that pressure in the head and a light headache. After setting up camp and lying down in the tent, problems started. Hans fell asleep immediately after 5h of hiking, whereas I started feeling better and the headache seemed to go away. Ok, so probably it was just the really strong sun here that fried my brains a bit before. Must watch out even more to protect my head tomorrow. Towards the evening, however, the headache got stronger again, and also I felt crappier and crappier, just thinking of food almost made me puke. Hans was more or less recovered in the evening and wanted to prepare dinner, but I didn't even want to think of food. Headache was also stronger now. Ok, this is what altitude sickness must be like. You stupid idiot, seems that 'wer nicht hoeren will muss fuehlen'. Finally, I did the one thing I definitely did not want to do on this expedition: take an aspirin. I want to get to know my limits with out drugs, and the plan was to go to those limits but not further. Then on the other hand, you only get to know the limits if you cross them, but this was not what I wanted to do. Luckily, I started feeling much better with the aspirin, and eventually was able to eat dinner normally. I considered myself lucky that this helped, because the swiss girl we met at base camp said that she took several, but it didn't help. But for me, this was definitely the last option, and we decided that I would take just this one and then see how I would feel during the night. If the headache comes back after the 6hrs in which the aspirin has an effect and I would need another one, we would descend immediately in the morning, basically the only thing you can do in case of altitude sickness. The night was actually quite ok, I got quite some sleep, which doesn't necessarily have to be the case at 4200m, and the headache didn't come back and I felt more or less ok in the morning. Hans again complained about being exhausted, but his head was fine. So, we decided to give it a try and ascend to camp 2 at 4800m. | ||
| Skiing 1:00:00 [3] | |
| Skating mit den Jungs. Nur Madulain - Samedan, fühlte mich schlecht heute, Erkältung richtig ausgebrochen. Scheine immer noch anfällig zu sein, andererseits ist eine 400%ige Steigerung des Umfangs nicht zu verachten.
War der Hammer diese Woche, immer strahlend blauer Himmel und schön kalt für gute Schneeverhältnisse. Madulain-Lager wie üblich toll :-) Bin auch sehr zufrieden mit dem Training, vom Tempo her hab ich fast nichts eingebüsst, und 12h gute Qualität in 6 Tagen hab ich auch schon lange nicht mehr gemacht :-) | ||
| Skiing 1:00:00 [3] | |
| Skating mit den Jungs. Nur Madulain - Samedan, fühlte mich schlecht heute, Erkältung richtig ausgebrochen. Scheine immer noch anfällig zu sein, andererseits ist eine 400%ige Steigerung des Umfangs nicht zu verachten.
War der Hammer diese Woche, immer strahlend blauer Himmel und schön kalt für gute Schneeverhältnisse. Madulain-Lager wie üblich toll :-) Bin auch sehr zufrieden mit dem Training, vom Tempo her hab ich fast nichts eingebüsst, und 12h gute Qualität in 6 Tagen hab ich auch schon lange nicht mehr gemacht :-) | ||