Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board altitude sickness question

I was able to summit yesterday (day hike) and I have a question about altitude sickness. At about the cables on the switchbacks I was getting unusually sleepy. I couldn't tell whether it was a symptom of altitude sickness, or just because of lack of sleep due to leaving early in the morning and a bit of exhaustion. There weren't any other symptoms. Anyway, at that point I decided to push on a bit and see how I did. I kept a slow pace and moved higher and eventually the sleepiness went away. I'm curious to know whether this was a symptom of altitude sickness or just a result of an early start.

I'm no physician, have spent a lot of time at altitude, often leading groups. My guess is that you were going through a blood sugar problem, your metabolism was adjusting to the work load.

"Altitude sickness" has basically three forms, HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema), HACE (High Altitude Cerebral Edema) and AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness). What you had wasn't HAPE or HACE, and while weakness and tired are a part of AMS I've never seen that alone, without the headache and various other problems.

And as I said, I'm not a physician. That's simply an opinion of a layman.

That would make sense. I do have blood/sugar problems if I'm not careful about eating enough. Although, I was taking advil regularly to avoid headaches, so perhaps that symptom was just masked. Thanks for the opinion.