Within a 24 hour period, I think Kinabalu at 4,101 m is about my limit. On Cook and Fuji at 3,700-ish m, I was getting fairly tired towards the top. Staying at the hut at Mt Kenya at 4,200 m and Mutsagh Ata (4,400m?) at base camp after 1 night below I was really sick on both occasions.

MoapaPk wrote:

Diego Sahagún wrote:

Diego Sahagún wrote:Were those 7620 m/day running Moapa

It says 11500 ft/day but you've talked about 25000' (7620m)/day. I don't understand you

My bad, I misread the note. Rick and Michael "walked" the 25000' --they started at night, and finished pretty late in the day (they caught the last tram down).

It's so much anyway, so much...

radson wrote:Within a 24 hour period, I think Kinabalu at 4,101 m is about my limit. On Cook and Fuji at 3,700-ish m, I was getting fairly tired towards the top. Staying at the hut at Mt Kenya at 4,200 m and Mutsagh Ata (4,400m?) at base camp after 1 night below I was really sick on both occasions.

radson, Wouter asked for elevation gained/day. Did you climb Kinabalu, Mount Cook or Fuji starting at 0 meters

Diego Sahagún wrote:

radson wrote:Within a 24 hour period, I think Kinabalu at 4,101 m is about my limit. On Cook and Fuji at 3,700-ish m, I was getting fairly tired towards the top. Staying at the hut at Mt Kenya at 4,200 m and Mutsagh Ata (4,400m?) at base camp after 1 night below I was really sick on both occasions.

radson, Wouter asked for elevation gained/day. Did you climb Kinabalu, Mount Cook or Fuji starting at 0 meters

Ahh, I see, I was taking it from an acclimatization perspective.

Umm, biggest accents in a day for me probably Tete Rouse Hut to Mt Blanc (4810 - 3167 = 1,643 m) More if you include the walk up to Tete Rousse in the morning.

Thanks guys, interesting to see the differences. Although, as I knew before it would be hard to measure this, as conditions, distance, actual gains, ... will no doubt have a big impact as well. I'm actually going to Gran Paradiso with a group of the Swiss Alpine Club this weekend, so it will be pretty interesting to see where I stand.

I did a day hike in Switzerland that was about 5700 ft. (1700 m) net gain. I was only carrying a small pack and by your calculation method there was no elevation gain since I finished at the same place that I started.

The most change in elevation, though, was going from Lima to Lake Titicaca - about 12,000 ft. (3660 m). By airplane and bus of course.

Wow, I feel like a total wuss. The best I can say is that I went from sea level to the summit of Whitney in about 15 or 16 hrs.--a total of 14,494'--though only about 6300' of that by foot.

Buz Groshong wrote:I did a day hike in Switzerland that was about 5700 ft. (1700 m) net gain. I was only carrying a small pack and by your calculation method there was no elevation gain since I finished at the same place that I started.

That's why I quote accumulated gain, not net gain.

MoapaPk wrote:

Buz Groshong wrote:I did a day hike in Switzerland that was about 5700 ft. (1700 m) net gain. I was only carrying a small pack and by your calculation method there was no elevation gain since I finished at the same place that I started.

That's why I quote accumulated gain, not net gain.

I agree this is the way to go, but I don't have a fancy tool that tracks this automatically for me and I can't be bothered to go over maps and try to figure out how much I gained/lost, if that could give you remotely accurate data anyway. I see a lot of people quoting 24hours as a day, but for me a day is pretty much six hours. As I said, I usually don't take any real breaks and keep a high pace, so I feel six hours more than does it. Since this far it's been winter ski ascents, my nights have been quite long too.

Wouter, I also think that 1500 m is a sufficient gain for carrying a big pack. For AT, probably it would be less than it. And if I would be you I'd take a 10 minutes break after every hour of ascent. You could add 30 or 60 minutes (to 1h 30 min or 2h) to the first stretch but I think that your method is not good after 2 hours ascending. What do you all think about the breaks when mountaineering

Diego Sahagún wrote:What do you all think about the breaks when mountaineering

Thanks Diego, I'm indeed also very interested in that. I tend to always push it to my limits, but there's some logic behind keeping a buffer as well.

WouterB wrote:...people would race up and then be too tired to ski down.

Close to 2500m climbed up and down in one day and in 9h of hike (I ran in the end to escape a thunderstorm) in the Pyrenees, when I made it to the top of the Punta Alta starting from Pont de Rius in Val d'Aran. I mis-read the map scale, and moreover underestimated a bit the hike down to Estany Negro... I wansn't feeling tired yet while reaching the top, but I felt it was getting really an insane hike as I was hiking up again to Cap deth Port over the Restanca hut, while threatening grayish cumulus were growing as fast as mushrooms. Past the Cap deth Port, I ran down until the car scared as a cat, under thunderbolts...
It was in late 2000, some ten years ago... I was young
Since then I have hiked many times close to +/-2000, but I have the slight feeling that over this limit, an additional 50 or 100m more gets exponentially heavier to cope with, depending on what you have totalized before during the same day...
Getting older I have also the feeling this is not only a question of musculature and endurance, but also accustomization of ankles and knees to cope with the amount of steps. Only training on wild terrain real mountains, like having spent the several previous days in mountains, can provide a genuine training for that.

WouterB wrote:

MoapaPk wrote:

Buz Groshong wrote:I did a day hike in Switzerland that was about 5700 ft. (1700 m) net gain. I was only carrying a small pack and by your calculation method there was no elevation gain since I finished at the same place that I started.

That's why I quote accumulated gain, not net gain.

I agree this is the way to go, but I don't have a fancy tool that tracks this automatically for me and I can't be bothered to go over maps and try to figure out how much I gained/lost, if that could give you remotely accurate data anyway. I see a lot of people quoting 24hours as a day, but for me a day is pretty much six hours. As I said, I usually don't take any real breaks and keep a high pace, so I feel six hours more than does it. Since this far it's been winter ski ascents, my nights have been quite long too.

I prefer net gain, but then net gain is high point minus low point not finish minus start. Total gain is for type A freaks.

For me:

Gain = SUM of all slopes in ascent

Total descended = SUM of all slopes in descent

p.s: I've got a friend who bagged the Aneto with his fellows in one day from Luchon. What's more they managed to find the time to rescue one guy who was slightly injured on the glacier !