Sorry to go on about all this altitude stuff on the blog, but it is very interesting how altitude affects your body, and I am particularly interested (paranoid actually as you will see with the running entries) as I seem to feel the effects of altitude more than my peers and this means that I am usually slower in ascending mountains and still get nervous with the possible onset of AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) which I suffered from in Nepal in 1988 and don't really want to get it again. I struggled around Base camp at 5500m and suffered quite badly at the summit of Kilimanjaro at 5895m. For those not familiar with relative heights of mountains, in the UK, Ben Nevis is 1344m so the summit of the Little Matterhorn 3883m (the highest I have been on this trip so far) is 3 times higher. Less fit and seemingly more deserving people in my groups have not felt the effects as badly as I have, I have been known to struggle with it above 2500m more or less instantly!
Having been at between 1500m and 3883m now for 3 weeks, I do feel as though I have acclimatised (no longer feeling breathless walking up 3 steps) but the air is still so dry, so we all still wake up with dry mouths and throats and feel as though we all have a cold.
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