kkingThe pace of a trip at high altitude needs to be managed correctly for your safety and success. The pace and heart rates at which you exercise on the trail need to be lower than the heart rates that you trained for during the months of preparation. This is extremely important to understand and implement in your training. If you want to learn more you can keep reading or contact us and learn more. Join our Facebook group.
Importance of Maintaining a Minimum Pace at High Altitude
At high altitudes, maintaining a minimum pace is crucial for safety and success. Our experienced guides are trained to set a pace that ensures the well-being of each individual and the team as a whole, facilitating a safe and successful journey. If a client is unable to keep up with this minimum pace, or if they show signs of pressure or stress on the trail, our guides are instructed to make the difficult decision to turn them around.
This decision is based purely on safety concerns, as the risks of continuing can outweigh the potential rewards.
We emphasize the importance of adequate preparation for your chosen trip, and we’ve provided extensive resources to help you get ready. Following our guidelines and training recommendations is essential.
Please understand that this policy is in place to protect all participants, and while we strive for everyone to reach their goals, summits can never be guaranteed. Your safety is our top priority, and group trips are structured with these safeguards to ensure the best possible experience for all.
Pacing at High Altitude
You might consider pacing irrelevant or something that is not important on a long distance high altitude trip. We know some people are used to going fast. However, we can assure you that the correct pace and heart rates going to high and extreme altitudes will make all the difference with recovery, rest and sleep. We recommend you train hard and climb easy, so you can enjoy your chosen adventure.
Having a slow pace and lower heart rates on the offer you better acclimatization, safety and success!
Maintaining the Correct Heart Rate at Altitude
Monitoring and maintaining the correct heart rate at altitude is crucial for a successful and safe trek. When you push your heart rate even just 10 beats per minute faster during exercise, it increases pressure and stress on your body. This can lead to unnecessary energy expenditure and muscle fatigue, reducing your ability to recover on a multi-day trekking adventure.
Maintain a Steady Heart Rate
Keeping your heart rate steady and at a lower rate helps conserve energy, allowing you to sustain your effort over several days. This careful management can be the key to successfully reaching your goal. On our multi-day treks, managing your pace and heart rate correctly is essential, especially when you’re part of a group. The team must stay together, and everyone’s safety depends on maintaining a consistent pace.
Too Much Stress on the Body
If a participant cannot keep up with our minimum pace, shows signs of stress, breathlessness, or struggles to maintain consistent movement, our guides are instructed to turn them around. This policy ensures the safety of the individual, our staff, and the entire group. Prioritizing proper heart rate management and pacing is fundamental to a safe and successful trekking experience.
Managing the Pace on all our Trips
Our highly trained guides are experts in setting a pace that ensures the safe ascent and descent of the entire group on challenging treks. Whether it’s tackling longer hill climbs or navigating the summit push, our guides maintain a very specific and calculated pace that is essential for safety. This minimum pace is not arbitrary; it is the slowest speed at which we can safely manage the group throughout the multi-day adventure.
If a participant is unable to maintain this pace, our guides may have to advise them to turn back. This decision is based solely on the safety of the individual and the group. All our experienced guides understand the importance of pacing to prevent exhaustion and altitude-related issues. They will ensuring that everyone has the best chance of a safe and successful journey.
Our Itineraries Have More Acclimatization Built in
All of our itineraries are designed with ample acclimatization built in, allowing for better adjustment to high altitudes. However, it is crucial for participants to arrive in optimal physical condition. Proper preparation and fitness are key to meeting the physical demands of the trek and maintaining the required pace, ultimately contributing to a successful and safe experience for all.
We Have the Proven Results
We have helped thousands of people trek to Everest Base Camp, reach the summit of Kilimanjaro and the summit of Mount Everest. Alongside reaching numerous trekking and mountaineering goals. We encourage everyone to follow our training advice for your specific trip and always available to offer advice and support.
Managing Summit Night Climbs
The management of any summit night and day is critical to your overall success and comfort during your trek or climb. Depending on your specific adventure, it’s essential to maintain a consistent movement pace, typically requiring you to hike steadily for an hour at a time with only brief rest periods of 2 to 5 minutes each hour.
Factors such as low temperatures, challenging terrain, and the necessary pace to ensure group safety can influence this requirement. To meet these demands, you need to manage consistently higher heart rates over extended periods. This ability to maintain elevated heart rates and sustain effort is crucial for summit success.
Proper training is vital to preparing for these conditions. By incorporating endurance and high-heart-rate exercises into your training regimen, you can improve your ability to handle the physical and environmental challenges of summit night, enhancing both your performance and safety on the mountain.
Prior Training
To effectively prepare for any trek or expedition, it’s crucial to train at a higher intensity than the pace you’ll maintain on the mountain. For instance, while my heart rate on Kilimanjaro typically maxes out around 115 bpm, my training involves consistently pushing harder.
In my daily training sessions, I work out for 1 hour and 30 minutes at a heart rate of 130-140 bpm, mostly carrying a weighted backpack that is double the weight I’ll carry during the actual climb. I normally build this weight up slowly over time. Check out our step by step approach to training.
Additionally, I maintain this elevated heart rate in zone 2 during hill work and longer training sessions. This approach helps build the stamina and strength needed to handle the physical demands of the trek, ensuring you’re well-prepared for the challenges of high-altitude climbing.
Do a Fitness Test
These heart rates will be different for everyone and that is why we encourage you to do a fitness test, or vo2 max test to understand your specific training zones. This needs to be built up slowly over time so you come on your chosen trip having the endurance, specific strength for multi-day adventure in remote wilderness. We have a lot of pages with this information that we can share with you.
The Correct Pace for a Safe Adventure
Our teams know the correct pacing at High Altitude to reach summits and destinations is critical for safety. Therefore, our teams will set a minimum pace for safety and to make sure they can manage everyone safely through the trip.
This does not mean you don’t need to train. Our system and pacing of our trips only works when you are physically prepared for the trip you are undertaking. Be informed and be prepared!
We give everyone every opportunity to keep up with the minimum pacing that is required to manage a safe and successful trip. If our guides tell you to return or exit the trip they are doing this for your safety and the safety of the whole team.
Learn More
Why not get in touch with us and we can better explain how we manage our trips? Our teams around the world know the importance of pacing. They also understand this is why we have success rates second to none. Please follow their instructions at all times. Follow us on Instagram or Facebook.
We have spent years developing a pace of our trips that will help you safely and successfully reach your goal. GET IN TOUCH today. We look forward to helping you in your mountain adventure.