"Guy Alcala" wrote in message
. ..
WaltBJ wrote:

More trivia on flight and oxygen:

snip

As for the Rocky Mountains, when we get flatlanders up here for a
visit and take them for a drive up over Trail Ridge road - peak
altitude about 12,200, they usually doze off because they won't
breathe (pant) enough.

(Almost totally OT) Ah, Trail Ridge road. When my '88 Subaru GL Turbo 4WD
Wagon was almost brand new, I took four people and all our gear for a week
over Trail Ridge (we'd driven from California, but spent a night and half
day in Great Basin Nat. Park, including sleeping at 10,000 feet). The
Subaru only had 115 hp and had a curb weight of about 3,000 lb., and
virtually everyone had a better power/weight ratio and was faster than I
was -- at sea level. So there we were, climbing up the west side on a
hot, muggy summer day (it was in the high '80s or low '90s, I forget
which, when we passed through Granby @ 8,500 feet), and all of a sudden I
found I was just about the most powerful car on the road, as I passed what
were far more powerful cars (at sea level) while driving uphill at ca.
10,000 ft. I could drive as fast as I wanted to (max. 40-50 or so) uphill
on the fairly open two-lane road, with 1-2,000 foot dropoffs on the side
and usually no guardrails on the turns. Coming back over from east to west
was the same.

Hmm, I was across Trail Ridge Road a couple of times last summer (same
trip) but never really noticed a loss of power there or down at Pike's Peak.
Just must not have been putting my foot in it hard enough to notice. That
and mass-air-flow sensors driving the fuel injection helps.

of a load that high, that hot. The highest paved road in California goes
over Tioga Pass (9,941 ft.) in Yosemite, and it handled that fine with two

Nice developed campground up there, Tuolumne Meadows, only 8600'
but sub freezing temperatures of a night about anytime of the year. Good
tent sleeping.
Seems like the airliners come through that gap pretty low of a night.
Oh, watch the speed up there, the only place I've ever seen a National
Park Service radar speed trap, at 0-dark:30 no less.


Just to make some attempt to getting this on topic I'll mention that the
Navy has a mobile home or two parked at the top of Pike's Peak doing
some kind of aeronautical research.