Quoted By:
Westfags,
Nobody's impressed with your dry, casual-friendly, gradually-graded, perfectly-manicured trails. Out here, we call your "trails" fire roads. Our actual mountain trails go straight up slick, icy rocks and poop all over your overrated Instapeaks.
I would be embarrassed if I lived and trained a mile above sea level and still struggled on your laughably easy "14ers" like I saw many Coloradans and Californians do while I came straight from sea level and breezed up them without breaking a sweat. The only real concern is altitude sickness, which didn't affect me coming from the east.
6k elevation gain is nothing on a western trail. Even 10k isn't. You could add thousands of feet to your mountains and it wouldn't make a difference because of how tame your hiking trails are compared to the Adirondacks and New England.