Acclimatisation and turn-back criteria

How the profile is built

On a trek we gain 400 to 600 metres a day, and we take a rest day for acclimatisation after every 1,000 metres of cumulative gain — earlier if the guide wants one. Where a route cannot be walked inside that profile, we add days rather than compress it, which is why some of our itineraries are longer than the same route sold elsewhere.

Climbing high and sleeping low is built in deliberately. On the Baltoro, base camp is reached and left on the same long day so you sleep lower than you stood.

Buffer days

Every itinerary carries buffer days, and they are not padding. They absorb a weather day, a missed flight into Skardu or a slow acclimatisation without collapsing everything downstream. If the buffer is not used you finish early; it is never resold as sightseeing.

What we watch

Pulse and oxygen saturation twice daily for anyone the guide is watching or anyone who asks, plus headache, appetite, sleep and coordination. The numbers catch a trend; the guides catch the rest. Both are recorded.

Turn-back criteria

Set before the trip and written into the briefing, not negotiated on the hill. A guest goes down when any of the following is true:

• Symptoms of high-altitude pulmonary or cerebral oedema, immediately and without discussion
• Acute mountain sickness that has not improved after a rest day at the same altitude
• Oxygen saturation that the guide judges too low for the next stage, read alongside how you actually look and move rather than as a number on its own
• The guide judges that the guest cannot safely complete the next stage, whether or not the guest agrees

A summit day also carries a clock. The turn-back time is set the night before, in front of you, and it is held whether or not the top is in sight.

What turning back costs you

Nothing beyond what you have already paid, and no argument. A guide who has to weigh a refund request against a medical call is a guide making the wrong decision.

Fewer than one guest in twenty turns back for health on our trips, which is a figure we watch rather than advertise. A whole group turning round is a different matter and it is usually the ground, not the people: roughly one group in five turns back at Gondogoro La because the pass is not in condition. We plan for that and you are not charged twice to try again.