Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Wotans Throne, 23 June

I took a stroll up the Whitney Trail, hung a right after passing through Trail Camp, and climbed this peak that looks down on TC from the north. Nice views of the 97 switchbacks and Trail Crest, also of the SE face of Mt. Whitney and the S face of Mt. Russell.

On the descent, I met up with the Lawson family at Trailside Meadow, and we stayed together the rest of the way down. Their kids are Kelly, Dylan, and Matt. They have a family custom whereby when a kid turns 11, they do a day climb of Mt. Whitney. Today was Matt's turn. They did the round trip in under 14 hours--not too shabby!

Pictures or slideshow.

Below is a shot of the 97 switchbacks from near the summit of Wotans Throne:

Great pics Bob, thx for posting! Berne M.

Bob, those photos are terrific! Thanks for posting.

Great pictures, and very encouraging: we're thinking of capping off our JMT hike by climbing Wotan's at dawn on the last day (having spent the night at Trail Camp). None of us are really climbers, but it doesn't look bad at all...

Bob,

What is that center low in the snow? Is that the ranger hut or are my eyes deceiving me because of all the beautiful scenery?

+@: If you click on the picture, it takes you to the flickr site and the picture. Above the picture, click on "All sizes". Above the large picture, click on "original". Then scroll down and across to see the part you are looking at.

You can see that Bob stitched two pictures together, and in that location, the stitching software doubled some of the rocks and blurred the picture a bit. What you are looking at is just a big chunk of granite with another perched on top (and doubled in the image).

Having more fun with the original size picture, you can follow the switchbacks from the bottom all the way to the top.

Ah hah! Well, I'll be darned. I knew that!;). Thank you, Steve.

My wife and I have been working in Fresno too long. Gotta get out there!

Nice climb of Wotans Throne, Bob...

I am impressed with the Lawson family's tradition... it reminds me of customs in certain cultures where a young boy goes off on his quest to become a man. Way to go, Lawsons! And great job to Matt!

Thanks for the great shot of the switchbacks. I took the liberty of linking your Flickr posting to a message on the Highpointers Club bulletin board in case any of our Club folks are curious about the infamous 97 switchbacks.

If you start doing a lot of stitching of pans and stuff, send me a message off-list and we can talk about optimizing your camera setup to minimize parallax errors and improve the smoothness of the stitches. For a simple camera in landscape orientation, a flat plate that offsets the camera so the lens is correctly located with respect to the pivot point is all it takes...and a hiking staff with a removeable knob or a length of sash chain with a 1/4-20 eyebolt for a tension monopod will make a big difference and not add much weight to your pack. If you're shooting in portrait orientation, the bracket ends up being an 'L' but can still be made of reasonably lightweight materials.

Since I don't seem to be carrying it up much anymore, I could also lend Bob my 50D with the 10-22mm lens. I'm sure that would get all of the Switchbacks in one photo. We could use DxO Optics Pro to adjust the photo for any abnormalities.

Here's an example of what the camera can do:




This was shot at 30mm (48mm equivalent) earlier this year when there was still a lot of snow coverage. Put it on a tripod and it would be that much sharper.

Alan, you can also point to Wayne's version of Bob's picture. He labeled the switchbacks in that picture, and posted in another thread:

BobR's Photo of the 97 Switchbacks

So, I finally found the specs I was looking for:

APS-C Wide : H - 96.7 : V - 73.7 : D - 107

For the 10-22mm lens, the horizontal field of view is 96.7 degrees, and the vertical field of view is 73.7 degrees.

Now if Wayne can tell us whether these fields of view are sufficient to get all of the Switchbacks in one photo from the top of Wotans Throne, the stitching problem will go away.

Get a 5D and 15mm Fisheye, that would solve the wideness problem. I am going up in a couple of weeks, but my go to (beat up) camera set-up is the 40D and 24-105. I have a 1DsMIII and 14L, but that is far to heavy to hike with.