Butterflies though, no white rabbits. That's a different song.By the time we got to woodstock We were half a million strong And everywhere there was song and celebration And I dreamed I saw the bombers Riding shotgun in the sky And they were turning into butterflies Above our nation We are stardust Billion year old carbon We are golden Caught in the devils bargain And we've got to get ourselves Back to the garden.
Great Gamow-bag-in-action photos. That's rangers Erika and Rob and your tax dollars at work. Do you have any others from that night? I don't think we have any of an actual SAR using one (rangers too busy pumping...).
As far as age as a risk factor, I haven't seen anything lately. I used to read that young males were more susceptible, but I think that was skewed because more young males hiked. The only risk factor I'm aware of now is a previous occurrence of HAPE.... . Not too useful sometimes.
The youngest I've seen is 15 or so and the oldest in his 60s. Few women, but that might be the demographics of backcountry users. The person in the Gamow photos is a woman. I can think of two other women, one of whom died (age 20 or so).
Several of you have mentioned being adequately hydrated. That affects AMS, but I don't think it's a factor in HAPE or HACE -- though I don't understand it well enough to say for sure.
And, if you want to be totally paranoid, you can get in deep weeds from drinking too much water. The symptoms are very similar to HACE -- altered mental status, vomiting, eventually convulsions and death. Comes from drinking too much water and no food or electrolytes: hyponatremia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyponatremia
Extremely rare, but I've seen two cases in the last 5 years. Both almost died and I thought one was HACE.
A good book to have to familiarize yourselves with this stuff is Wilkerson's "Medicine For Mountaineering."
Happy and healthy trails!!
g.