With a pack on his back and a snowboard tucked under his
arm, Olli Mueller trekked slowly up the snow-covered lava field. With each step,
his head throbbed and spun. The sun was setting and Mueller wanted to reach the
crest of the crater in time. He trudged on.
"After every step we had to wait a few seconds and take
a deep breath," Mueller said of himself and his snowboarding girlfriend, Carolin
Schad.
Mueller and Schad had altitude sickness -- a potentially
lethal reaction of the body to lower levels of oxygen in the air at higher
altitudes. It most often occurs at altitudes over 10,000 feet, but can occur as
low as 5,000. Strenuous activity, like hiking, skiing or snowboarding, can
heighten its effects.
People who live at or near sea level -- like most
Hawai'i residents -- and then ascend Mauna Kea on the Big Island, or any other
mountain, are more apt to suffer from altitude sickness than people who either
regularly visit or live at higher altitudes.
Mauna Kea juts nearly 14,000 feet above sea level and
has no skiing facilities -- no lifts, no carved runs. Schad and Mueller hiked up
every slope they skied down.
"We could really feel the lack of oxygen. Sometimes, it
even felt like our brains were thinking slower," Mueller says.
For Mueller and Schad, the altitude sickness symptoms
were moderate and didn't prevent them from snowboarding down crater faces and
cones for two days last winter. Mueller, 25, and Schad, 27, both from Munich,
Germany, are traveling the globe, attempting to hike and snowboard many of the
world's volcanoes.
"We wanted to start with Mauna Kea because it is the
most uncommon mountain for snowboarding," said Mueller, who has snowboarded in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and on the Lofoten Islands in northern
Norway.
With the help of Hawai'i friends, Mueller and Schad
monitored snow conditions on the volcano to time their trip to Hawai'i.