Originally posted by geoduck at 12-7-2010 10:04 PM
If you went skiing at 10+ plus feet you would hardly feel any altitude sickness as you're never up there long enough. You would be taking the ski lift or gondola up there and then coming back down right away. Altitude sickness takes several hours before you start feeling its effects and after 8 hours you really feel sick. 10,000 ft is the threshold and it becomes increasingly worse every 1,000 ft or so. If you do not acclimatize for a week at 10k feet and just suddenly go up to 13+ feet it could be quite painful.
At places like Colorado, many hotels are 6-8k above and its take a few days to acclimate.
Def, true that people who takes ski lifts & gondola has less effect of altitude sickness. Personally we go off road hiking with our snowboards & hiked the 14k+ hence why i felt the knees buckling. Also mild snowstorms seem to aggrate it. In the last yr or so, I sorta avoided the higher altitude places.