I lived in Laramie, WY for nearly four years. The altitude is 7200 feet. It is much different than sea level. When I first moved there, it took me about a month to actually get a little comfortable with the altitude. The first week I was there, I felt like I couldn’t get enough sleep. I didn’t feel sick (though, I know some people who had headaches their first week), I was just exhausted. All the time. Even as soon as I woke up in the morning. Not only is Laramie high, but it is really dry, too. That combination is brutal. If you don’t drink water all day long, you can get dehydrated quite easily.
Doing even the easiest exercises is really hard. I walked a lot, and I’d get winded very easily. When my parents would come to visit me, we’d have to walk slowly so they didn’t lose their breath. It is really funny because you feel so out of shape, but that really has nothing to do with it. I had a friend visit me who runs marathons, and even she got winded on an easy hike we took.
Baking and cooking is tricky. At high altitudes, you don’t need as much fat in you cakes and cookies (the fat helps things get fluffy and moist). So you have to cut down on sugar, butter, etc. while increasing the amount of flour you use. Boiling water is hard, too. As you decrease the ambient pressure, you can boil water at lower and lower temperatures. Instead of 100 C (at sea level), water boils at about 85 – 90 C at high elevations. What this means is that pastas, rice and anything else that you cook that has a high water content takes a little longer to cook. Also, coffee tastes different when you use a drip coffee pot.
Oh, and it takes a lot fewer drinks at the bar to feel the effects of the altitude, if you know what I mean. ;-)