HYPOXIA

When I Started flying Hang Gliders here in Telluride and Central Colorado
and the Owens Valley I made dozens and dozens of trips up into the low 20's
without O2. I also look back and found my self in the landing zone not
remembering much on how I got there!...

This is the sort of thread that can shed a whole lotta insight into such
things as: info/knowledge diffusion/comprehension rates throughout targeted
special-interest populations (hang-glider/sailplane types); hypoxic realities;
etc.

All hypoxia-related stories are the same, but different!

I musta had sufficient imagination & curiosity to both seek out info on the
topic and believe what I read, even before availing myself of the opportunity
of a chamber ride back in the '80s. (For the record, I - then, anyway - was
one of those people who essentially lacked "any obvious symptoms" [arguably,
the most at-risk kind?] other than "the usual mental degradations"...no blue
fingernails, no giddiness, no "B&W vision symptoms"...just mental
dullness/sloppy-handwriting/etc/) By then I owned a ship w. an O2 system...and
after then, I *believed* (!!!).

Ever-after, part of me was amazed/appalled whenever encountering someone
ignorant-of/unbelieving of altitude-related hypoxia (think: any Himalayan
mountain climbing tale). Flying from Boulder, CO (at the eastern base of the
Rockies), it wasn't uncommon for "a hang glider type" to either stop by the
field for a chit-chat, or occasionally land there from a cross-Divide flight.

One in particular sticks with me. After relating my amazement to having
encountered a hang glider near 18,000' on one bitterly cold March day above
the Williams Fork Range and asking him how he dealt with such wind chill, he
related a flight to that altitude that all he remembered anything about was
the takeoff and subsequent post-landing landing somewhere he knew not where,
miles from his launch site..."coming to" long after he'd landed. He put it
down to "the cold"; I noted he might want to do some research about hypoxia!

Cowabunga!!!

Bob W.

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