Post 01615
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The summit of Pike’s Peak is an excellent place to study the effect of altitude upon lowland visitors. Individual observations and the special investigations of scientific men show that altitude has been a large, unconscious source of nature-faking. During the summer of 1911 a number of English and American scientists, the “Anglo-American Expedition,” spent five weeks on Pike’s Peak, making special studies of the effects of altitude. Their investigations explode the theory that altitude is a strain upon the heart, or injurious to the system. These men concluded that the heart is subjected to no greater strain in high altitudes than at sea-level, except under the strain of physical exertion. The blood is richer in high altitudes. For every hundred red corpuscles found at sea-level there are in Colorado Springs, at six thousand feet, one hundred and ten; and on the summit of Pike’s Peak, from one hundred and forty to one hundred and fifty-four.
“The danger to people suffering from heart trouble coming into high altitudes is grossly exaggerated,” says Dr. Edward C. Schneider, one of the Anglo-American expedition. “The rate of circulation is not materially increased. The blood-pressure on the Peak is not increased; it is even lowered. The heart–if a person exercises–may beat a little faster but it does not pump any more blood. The pulse is a little more rapid. If a man suffering from heart trouble rode up the peak on a train, remained in his seat, and did not exert himself physically, his heart would not beat a bit faster at the summit than when he left Manitou. But if he walked about on the summit there would be a change, for the exercise would make the heart work harder.” But exercise is not injurious; it is beneficial.
As I found in guiding on Long’s Peak, the rarefied air of the heights was often stimulating, especially to the tongue. Rarefied air is likened by the scientists to “laughing-gas” and furnishes a plausible explanation of the queerness which characterizes the action of many people on mountain-summits. “We saw many visitors at the summit,” said Dr. Schneider in explaining this phase, “who appeared to be intoxicated. But there was no smell of liquor on their breath. They were intoxicated with rarefied atmosphere, not with alcohol. The peculiar effects of laughing-gas and carbon-monoxide gas on people are due to the lack of oxygen in the gas; and the same applies to the air at high altitudes.”