Well I thought I had Weak Legs

So I'm still pondering why my leg strength seemed to abandon me on Mt. Shasta.

I'm wondering if it has to do with a combination of altitude not delivering enough oxygen to my muscles, and perhaps the smaller stabilizer muscles needing more strength work.

If it's the previous that's a bummer as I have no intention of moving to a higher elevation.

I've noticed that I still have balance trouble with lunges - they do a lot of them in the Body Pump class and I hate them but realize that I absolutely need to do them. (This site says that they are the king of leg strength builders.)

I found another site here that says that doing a "wall squat" (sitting in a chair position against a wall sans chair) is a good leg strength evaluator. So I decided to try it. It says that 45 seconds for men is excellent (39 for women - don't know why it's less for women as women's legs are strong). I did 1:00 and this is with my feet sliding on the floor some, so I repeated it with a non-slip surface under my feel. Then I did 1:15. This is so not fair - why does all this strength go away above 8000'? Maybe I should just climb with oxygen (absurd at such low elevations).

I'm going on a mountain bike ride Saturday with Wombats (a pretty easy ride, but there is a climb), so I'll see how I do climbing on dirt at low elevations. Got to also figure out how to do assisted lunges in case I lose my balance. Right now I can do them, but don't sink very low.