[pct-l] Puffy eyes, climbing report

[vichansonperu at yahoo.com (Vic Hanson)]

Last week, a couple of friends and I climbed up Coropuna, it is 21,079 feet high. We spent 1 night at 16,000', the next 2 nights at 18,200' and were back down to 8,800' the following afternoon. When we got back, a friend said my eyes were all puffy, actually the skin between the inside of the eyes and nose, mostly a bit above the centerline of the eye. Have any of you experianced this? I don't know if it was from the altidude or from the sun. We were climbing/descending in snow for about 7 hours. I had cheap wrap around sunglasses on that *said* they had UV protection but here that means nothing. It went away after about a day and a half. Also my distance vision was a bit fuzzy for a number of days but is back to normal now. Any ideas? It has never happened before but I have never been that high before or in the snow (got sunburned on the bottom of my nose!) without goggles. What is commonly used on the PCT in the Sierras? Just regular sunglasses?
 
If you are interested in reading the trip report and seeing some pictures, they are on my blog, address below.
 
Thanks,
 
Vic



Check out my blog for photos and stories of my adventures in Peru: 
http://spaces.msn.com/members/vichanson/


		
---------------------------------
 Yahoo! FareChase - Search multiple travel sites in one click.