Peter's Watch Data

Sharing some of the data from Peter's Garmin watch, just because I find it so interesting to track.

This first chart is like the ones I shared earlier when Peter arrived at Namche Bazaar. It was obvious then that as soon as he was at altitude, he was getting less oxygen. His oxygen levels would show in the yellow zone. After a few days at the elevation, he recovered and was back in the green zone (90% O2 sats). But since he was above Namche Bazaar it was continuously back in the yellow and orange zones.

After he was evacuated by helicopter to Kathmandu, his oxygen levels were immediately in the green again. It isn't hard to see how just dropping altitude will quickly improve most altitude sickness.

The next piece of data tracks his heartrate as compared to his movement. This one is a good example of what it normally looks like. You can see that his heartrate (the top line) goes up +/- as his activity goes up (the blue "mountains" at the bottom of the graph). The black line along the bottom of the graph shows when he was sleeping. If he moves more, his heart rate increases.

I wanted to see if I could see anything on the day he was evacuated. As it turns out, it was really evident. See how the heart rate drops in the middle of the graph, the darker blue part of the line? Despite movement (hiking at 22,000 ft which should increase his heart rate), his heart rate was below where it had been when he was asleep, sometimes dipping into the 40s! Obviously, he was having a problem.

Going back into earlier days, what is interesting is that I can see that this isn't the first time that this happened. Here's a similar pattern from a few days earlier went they hiked up the Khumbu Icefall to Camp 2. You'll see in the middle of the chart, there's a big jump in heart rate. I knew from tracking their GPS that they'd taken a long break at Camp 1. That's where his heart rate became more normal until he started moving and it dipped again.