Reply to post: Re: I'd have to ask...

Re: I'd have to ask...

The difference is it's a rapid ascent to 10,000' (aircraft was a twin engine turbo-prop with a removed rear door, also used for photographic runs - there was a seat by the door with a five-point harness and a large segmented box for putting camera gubbins in so they didn't fall out the door) with a climb rate in excess of 2000' per minute; the speed of the ascent causes the effects to kick in much more rapidly than a gentle ascent - your body has no time to acclimatise. After we reached altitude and levelled out there was a period of acclimatisation at which point we started to recover some (but by no means all) of the functionality we had lost. Effects also differ widely from person to person, some exhibited severe reactions well below 8,000', one person was barely affected even at 10,000'. It was designed to give prospective pilots a taste of hypoxia without exposing them to undue risk.

Personally among the symptoms I experienced were loss of fine motor control, impaired decision making, severe headache, and loss of communication skills.

I have also been above 10,000' whilst trekking in the Rockies, but that took several hours to get from sea level to Denver, another few hours to get from Denver to the camping ground, a night's sleep at the camping ground, then several hours walking to get to the highest elevation. On that occasion I did not experience any of the above symptoms.