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On 7/12/2008 4:44 PM, Paul Fretheim's hamster got loose on the keyboard and typed ...:I didn't check into it, but the toilet there had been damaged by lighting strikes, and I have slept in a tent there through one of the most, if not the most, intense thunderstorm I have ever experienced, so I was guessing it was because of danger of lighting that they want people back away from the rim. People do fall to their deaths there from time to time.
How long did it take to get there from the last bit of asphalt?I have had it take 4 hours, but the road was in very good shape just now and it only took 2-1/2 hours.
Amazingly you'd (and me too) normally whine about a 2.5 hour dirt-road drive but this time it was "*Woo-hoo!*"
Did you overnight there or is that prohibited?I did overnight at the rim. They used to allow camping right there for two parties, but now only allow camping at the campground 100 meters or so back from the end of the road at the rim. Did someone sleepwalk over the edge or are they just being cautious?
What output size are you getting shooting that many images with the D200?
I slept in the back of my 4Runner right there at the rim at the little campsite where I have camped in the past. I have found the Rangers at Grand Canyon pretty reasonable when it comes to allowing me to bivouac at the rim for photographic work. I didn't set up a camp of any kind. There was no one else around until about 9:00 a.m. the next morning when a few people in 4-wds started to arrive. I didn't pass any vehicles on the way in and just saw a couple of ranchers on the way out, one with a big tanker filling watering tanks for his cattle and one working on a fence.
The north rim is certainly lonely country. Really lonely country.
Andy and I were comparing their plans to the Russians on the Russian team that climbed the West Face of K2 last summer. Their strategy was to climb 30 meters a day "no matter what," then bivouac in tents suspended from the mountain regardless of terrain. We laughed that that was a lot crazier than what Andy's team planned. The Russians, as you may know, succeeded however, and though 12 of the 16 members of the team had to be hospitalized at the end, nearly everyone got to the summit and no one died.
http://inyopro.com/toroweap_campsite.html
I stitched that on my small notebook on site, and I haven't worried about getting it exactly right. Did you stitch it there to make sure you had what you wanted or ??
Yes, that is why.
It was pretty hot out there. The other visitors that day seemed to stay one step of rock back from where I was laying to get those shots, and I understood I had to be very careful not to stumble out there, but it wasn't bad. It's a long ways to the bottom and you don't want to be doing any BASE jumps without a rig on ... that would be bad. Trust me on that one.
If you study the canyon you can see that the rocks immediately below the rim, what looks like the bottom below the camera, is just the first ledge and that it is several times farther to the slopes just above the river. So a BASE jump would be tricky.
A member of a friend of mine's expedition to the Karakoram fell 500 meters on Broad Peak earlier this week. He got hurt too. I'm surprised that he lived. Seriously surprised.
They had to evacuate him back to the U.S. by helicopter and jet plane. . . Back in Park City the doctors determined that he sprained an ankle, bruised his arm, and cracked a couple of ribs. He's a fool if he didn't go straight to Las Vegas and bet the farm. I mean he was on a roll and you don't want to waste that.
But it was enough to end his hopes of summiting Broad Peak and K2. He lived. He should be very happy. He will have the chance again on some other expedition besides I'm sure Andy got great footage of it. =8^)
He came to rest in a snowbank at the edge of a sheer 1000 meter drop, so he was pretty lucky. No s**t. (don't want to upset the list moderator)
They are on expedition to be the first to descend Broad Peak and also K2 on skis. I jump out of planes but that's just plain nuts.
Yes.
The first on either peak, not first on both. They only had two skiers on the expedition and Dan, the guy who fell, was one of them. My friend, Andy Selters, is along as the team's climbing photographer and videographer. Andy was a member of the 2nd team to ever summit the Great Trango Tower about 25 years ago.
That was the one you shot by moonlight list year, right?
The limiting factor was the 1 meter length of the remote shutter control.
http://k2tallmountain.comWhat did you mount the camera on to get it out over the rim?I used my Feisol 4 section carbon fiber tripod with the ball head at 90 degrees with my Manfrotto pano head on top of that. How tall is it (i.e., how far could you stick it out over the edge)?
I went there specifically to shoot that shot. My schedule got rushed because I had to fix a display at Furnace Creek in Death Valley. I actually wanted to wait until the summer monsoonal rains began so the river would be running red in the shot. The rains started only a couple of days later. It even rained /here/ yesterday. I might go back, as I like the river to have it's pre Glen Canyon Dam look in my shots if possible. That single from Toroweap I attached was shot after the thunderstorm I mentioned above.
I would have had less work stitching if I had used a bubble level, but I was experimenting and just eyeballed it. Did that shot occur to you after you were there or did you go there intending to shoot that (and other) shot?
There are so many fires that we don't really know where the smoke is originating, but it is blowing over the Sierras so thick that we can't see the mountains at times. It's better this morning after the rain, but it's still smoky. My neighbor is OK, but he has a lot of health problems that the smoke aggravates. He and his wife just have a vacation home here in Independence, and they are going back to the coast today.
I used a standard cable release to shoot each exposure, then brought the camera back and set the rotation for the next shot. There was a colored band in the rock that was useful for lining things up so I was rotating on the node. Those shots would not have been very easily stitched without the powerful features of PTGui. Thanks Joost!
Joost is a God.
How hot was it?Well into the 40 C range or over 104 F. I am guessing it was about 115 F or about 45 C. Uncomfortably warm until well after sunset. Las Vegas was nearing 50 C when I came through on the way home.
Wow.
That was hot enough to seem life threatening. Exactly.
I drove back through Death Valley after dark. Good planning.
I was glad to get back up here in the Sierra. It's been very hot here lately though too,
It's been really hot this past week. Thankfully it started to cool off a bit towards the end of the week.
and our air is smoky to the point that my neighbor had to check into the emergency room the other day because he was having trouble breathing.
Was he OK in the end (I hope so)? Are there fires in your area? I thought they were all on the west side of the Sierras.
Skin on rock. Once I was hiking in Death Valley on a day when it was "only" 112 F with a young Russian woman who was very bull headed. I advised her to move slowly because of the heat, but she went bolting off through the rocks in the desert below the canyon we planned to scramble up. She made it about 100 meters and collapsed from a sunstroke. I rushed up to her and picked her up right away and threw her over my shoulder and carried her back to the jeep, but in just those few seconds before I got to her her face got a big red burn across it where her skin lay on a rock. Just first degree, fortunately, and she didn't sustain any permanent damage. The burns on my arm aren't very bad, but they were a surprise.
I had to support the tripod with my left arm when I had it extended over the rim because the rock slopes down and I had to lift it so it was about level. I should have tried a rock for support or something, because the boulders were so hot that I got 2nd degree burns on my arm where it was pressed down on the rock of the rim. I knew it hurt, but I didn't realize it was that hot until I noticed the burns later.
*Yowzers! *Was your arm directly on the rock or were you wearing a long-sleeved shirt (not that it would've given you much protection)?
Good questions. Thanks.You leave the highway at Colorado City/Hildale the rather strange towns where the Jeffs' cult of polygamist Mormons have their headquarters. You can read about it in Jon Krakaur's "Under the Banner of Heaven."
Anyway, here is a link to a spherical I shot there earlier this week:
http://inyopro.com/toroweap.html
I used Nikon D200 with Sigma 15-30 at 15 mm. I shot one row up, one row of 12 down and four shots straight down and one up. It was about 11 a.m. when I took the pictures.
Paul Fretheim
Inyo Pro
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