Day One

In 48 days, I'm going to climb a mountain, specifically either Mauna Kea or Mauna Loa (haven't decided yet.)

That gives me seven weeks less a day to get in serious enough shape to climb 13,000ft- way more than anything I've ever climbed in my life. The closest comparison I have is hiking Bat Lake and Lookout Trails in Algonquin Park this past fall, with the former consisting of 5.7k length and a peak height of about 470m and the latter a 1.9k loop with a peak height of 530m.

I did each in about a third of the allotted time, but that was child's play. A half-kilometre peak height is under 1/8 of what I'll be planning to scale, or just over 10% of the planned height.

To put Mauna Kea/Loa into perspective, each is just a little less than half the scalable height of Mount Everest, the mighty mountain that kills a small handful of people each year. The Maunas are a little easier because there won't be the same level of snow, frigid weather and steep altitude, nor does it contain a death zone (heigh above 26,000ft where humans can't sustain themselves for longer than a few hours.)

At just over the halfway point on the Mauna (7,000ft), the body's saturation of oxyhemoglobin starts dropping.

At 16,000ft (3,000ft less than the Mauna), the body's partial pressure of oxygen is half its value.

At 12,000ft, there's 40% less oxygen to breathe in than at sea level.

Here I go.