Well, Salty, I did some homework!
I could not find my source for acclimation being just one factor. I thought it was on one of my slides for giving talks, but no. In fact, the texts I looked at tonight by the gods of high altitude medicine (Houston, Hultgren and West) do not even use the word acclimation. It seems to exist somewhere as a "US version" of acclimatization according to Wiki, but that is the first time I have read that. Perhaps it has become synonymous over time.
I did find this, just for clarification:
Accomodation - immediate effect such as increased ventilation. This is the most important factor for the bar-headed goose that wakes up one day in India and without acclimatization flys over the Himalayas to Tibet. It survives by hyperventilating, making its blood more alkalotic, and shifting its oxyhemoglobin curve.
Acclimatization The effect of many adjustments over time (days, weeks, or months) by the organism in response to a change(s) in environment. This means not just breathing harder, but changes on oxygen absorption in the lung membranes, changes in blood ph and aforementioned oxyhemoglobin curve, production of more blood, and intracellular changes where oxygen is downloaded.
There are two subcategories of acclimatization: natural(living there) and acquired (sojourners). Most of us are in the latter group.
For us, climbing Whitney could never be just one variable. Yes the altitude is the same, but weather, state of health, previous exposure, etc, etc, make every day different. Impossible to control just one variable unless one is a lab rat. Even then...
Adaptation- over many many years. It is said that true genetic natural selection takes perhaps 40 generations. It is argued that Andean high altitude dwellers have not been there long enough to be adapted well, although the math looks to me like they could. Physician Carlos Monge (Monges' Disease or Chronic Mountain Sickness) is a good place to read. Tibetans and other high altitude Asians,on the other hand, have lived there for much longer and may indeed be genetically superior in ways that go beyond having natural acclimatization from just living there all of their lives.
Hope this helps.
PS: West's text is the most recent 2007) and discusses Intermittent Hypoxia (IH) for pre-acclimatizing). All their studies were for hours at a time, not the quick 20 min dips in pressure like the pods do. Their conclusion was that it might be helpful, but that a few days acclimatizing in the usual fashion was good and much more pleasant. I will be at the Exped Med Conference in 2 weeks and ask high -altitude expert Peter HAckett about IH.
