When I travelled to Africa this past holiday break, I was sure to bring my FitBit Charge HR with me to capture the 7-day slog up Kilimanjaro I had signed up for.
Spoiler alert: I took a lot of steps and climbed a lot of floors.
I took screenshots of the summary page for each of the 7 days of the hike. I did the Machame route, which summits on the 6th day and takes 7 total. Here’s what the damage looked like:
Here’s some totals:
Steps: 186,476
Floors: 2,604
Calories: 23,964 (What!!)
One of the other cool things I noticed was how my resting heart rate responded to the altitude. See the massive and steady week-long spike in my resting heart rate in the graph on the right? You guessed it, it totally correlates with the net gains in altitude over the course of the hike. This just further confirms a lot of the altitude-related symptoms I felt during the hike. I was fortunate in that I didn’t get any severe altitude sickness, but fatigue, lack of stamina, and occasional shortness of breath definitely happened. If I walked from my tent to the mess tent too briskly, I’d be out of breath by the time I got there! This trip taught me that although altitude sickness can certainly be handled by proper diet, hydration, and personal care, it should never be underestimated!
Where have you taken your FitBit? What would you like to see tracked with a FitBit?
