Wow! Then its really something, isnt it? Three officers, three countries, one is personal name... yet all have same handles.

And there was me thinking he spelt Shrek wrong.... :D

?John, Mountain skills don't require high altitude to learn. When you deploy to higher altitudes, your body will still require time to acclimate, no matter where you trained (CO vs. VT). What is important is that you learn the climbing/rope/rappelling/ice/survival skills necessary. The suck factor is all relative and I don't see sending a conventional unit to an altitude where oxygen is required.? I mentioned that I didn?t doubt the 3/172 Inf skills. I know you don?t need to be at 15,000ft to learn climbing and rappelling, sorry if I didn?t make that more clear. I come from Connecticut so I know the rough terrian of Vermont. My main point was the acclimatization issue. As you say the body will acclimatize over time. However, I?m inclined to believe that a unit permanently based and training and conditioning at a higher altitude would have an advantage over a unit that was just moved up for a few weeks acclimatization period. If you are going to have a mountain unit and you already have base in the mountains -why not base it at a higher altitude?

John Expousure at these high altitudes causes the human body to deterorate.Your better having troops with the skills and healthy then troops already aclimated and weaker.

I'm not talking about permanently basing troops on top of K2. I?m talking about Ft Carson, where many regular US Army units have been based before.

10th mountain in the past thats how they got their name.But know i dont know?

FT Carson, CO has a mech bde, SF group, armored cav regiment and an infatry brigade stationed there right now. FT Carson is at 5873 feet above sea level. That said, the US Army does not have a large number of specialized mountain troops. As I have said 10 Mountain Division kept that name for lineage and honors purposes. The troops there don't get much mountain training at 689 feet above sea level.....on pretty flat ground.

HIGH ALTITUDE In discussing altitude change and its effect on the body mountaineers generally define altitude according to the scale of high (8,000 - 12,000 feet), very high (12,000 - 18,000 feet), and extremely high (18,000+ feet), (Hubble, 1995). A common misperception of the change in external environment with increased altitude is that there is decreased oxygen. This is not correct as the concentration of oxygen at sea level is about 21% and stays relatively unchanged until over 50,000 feet (Johnson, 1988). What is really happening is that the atmospheric pressure is decreasing and subsequently the amount of oxygen available in a single breath of air is significantly less. At sea level the barometric pressure averages 760 mmHg while at 12,000 feet it is only 483 mmHg. This decrease in total atmospheric pressure means that there are 40% fewer oxygen molecules per breath at this altitude compared to sea level (Princeton, 1995).

For short term training at altitude, the various benefits associated with it can be offset by other fundamental drawbacks such as :- poor facilities, strange diet, different surroundings and homesickness. Benefits must be weighed against these limitations, plus those created by time change and problems in travelling to the training venue. On return from altitude training performances at sea level appear to peak between the 19th and 21st day and then again between 36 days and 48 days performance improves. Data collected from a variety of elite endurance athletes from a variety of sports have shown that training at altitudes between 1.8km and 3km promotes improvement in endurance based activities made at sea level. At these altitudes it can take an athlete up to three weeks to acclimatise. High altitude may result in a drop of your VO2max. The magnitude of this decline is approx. 5 to 7% per 1000 metres (Aviat Space Environ Med 69:793-801, 1998). To overcome this effect a "live high train low" model was developed where athletes slept at an altitude of 2500 metres but trained at sea level. (Med Sci Sport Exerc 23:S25,1991).

The 1st Ranger Bn. last received the Valorous Unit Award for actions of Rangers on Takur Ghar Mountain, Afghanistan, during Operation Anaconda. On the third day of the operation, a three-week long sweep against Al Qaida and Taliban forces in the Shah-I-Kot Valley, 1st Platoon of Company A was dispatched as a quick-reaction force. The Ranger QRF scaled the 10,000-foot mountain in knee-deep snow to recover American troops stranded there following a compromised reconnaissance mission. Three Rangers from 1st Battalion died on Takur Ghar.