As the Colorado air turns cold and snowy this December, millions of people are preparing to bundle up and enjoy an exciting season — ski and snowboard season, that is. There were a projected 14 million skier visits across Colorado for the 2023-24 season, representing the second highest skier visit total on record for the state, according to Colorado Ski Country USA.
But as people, especially those living outside of Colorado, make their plans to visit the mountain resorts, a pulmonologist in the University of Colorado Department of Medicine is recommending they also prepare for the ascent to the mountain tops to help prevent altitude sickness from hindering their plans.
James Maloney, MD, a professor in the Division of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine, has seen the effects of altitude sickness not only in his work as a pulmonologist at UCHealth and the Denver Veterans Affairs Medical Center, but also in his personal life as a mountain runner.
“I’ve done many of the big mountain runs in the state, and you run up to 14,000 feet above sea level. As a Coloradan doing that, you’re already acclimatized. Yet, a lot of those runs would attract people from out of state, and there were a fair number who would get mountain sickness as they went up Pikes Peak, for instance,” Maloney says. “That certainly sparked my interest in researching the effects of high altitude.”
Maloney has conducted research on the effects of hypoxia (low oxygen levels in the body’s tissues) on different genes, as well as research on an altitude illness called high altitude pulmonary edema. To learn more about altitude sickness, we recently spoke with Maloney about what tourists should know and preventative steps they can take.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.