HAPE, high altitude pulmonary edema doesn’t care if you are a finely tuned athlete with an at-peak functioning cardiovascular system or an out-of-shape desk-rider. It can strike those who go up too fast from too low.
The procedure should be to “go slow”, “stay well hydrated”, “take a couple of aspirin a day”, and at the first symptoms of headache, cough, or other general malaise, head down.
I remember at an anesthesia conference at Breckinridge, a local emergency medicine doc telling us they would have one or two deaths a year at the resort. These would be folks who’d fly in from the coast, get their skis and be on the hill in hours, get sick, go to their condo and die in their sleep. Sometimes, young, fit folks.
