South Park’s rarefied air causes lung oppression and nosebleeds in new arrivals

Evidence

South Park is closed, or nearly so, by snow during an ordinary winter; and just now the great freight wagons are carrying up the last supplies of the season, and taking down women and other temporary inhabitants. A great many people come up here in the summer. The rarefied air produces great oppression on the lungs, accompanied with bleeding. It is said that you can tell a new arrival by seeing him go about holding a blood-stained handkerchief to his mouth. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 413

Categorization

• SHARE: The blood-stained-handkerchief marker for newcomers is a vivid, quirky fact a Colorado or mountain-history buff would savor.
• SEED: Angle on how altitude sickness was read and handled before modern understanding — the ‘new-arrival tells’ of frontier towns.