Snow blindness

This painful state comes from the sun burning your eye cornea. It occurs if you don't wear sunglasses at altitude.

When climbing on oxygen, the warm and moist breathing air will escape your oxygen mask upwards and sometimes clog up your goggles, especially upon climbing down.

Your choice will then be to climb "blindfolded" or remove the glasses. You might choose to pull your glasses a bit out from your face, allowing the warm air to pass them. The suns rays will now be able to burn your eyes at the unprotected sides.

If the weather is overcast you might be tempted to remove the glasses altogether. Yet the rays are just as harmful when cloudy, and the following morning you'll be sorry. After 8 years of climbing it finally happened to us. It took only a short time without goggles at our summit descent (shooting film), we noticed nothing, and in the morning we were a mess.

Try to keep the glasses on and bring snow blindness medical drops in case you get blinded after all. The ointment will considerably speed up your recovery.