Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board High rez gigapan photo of the 97 switchbacks

For your enjoyment.

The week of Aug 29 was my annual Whitney trip. The highlight of this year’s trip was to climb Wotan's Throne.

While up there I tried to take a Gigapan of the east side of the Whitney ridge that took in from the switchbacks north to Whitney and beyond. Due to numerous technical glitches THAT shot was a complete failure. ( see Looking across Ahwahnee Meadow at Half Dome for an example of a successful Gigapan, this one of Half Dome in Yosemite Valley )

Afterwards I sat down, enjoyed the view, and took a bunch of hand held shots and panoramas.

One of the more successful of these panos was this one of the 97 switchbacks.

Click on the image to go to the Gigapan site hosting the image.
Once there, you can double-click on the image to zoom in and mouse drag to pan around to look around.

Enjoy!

Wow, amazing! Thanks for sharing.

Cool, Joel. I counted 30 hikers in the picture.

goes a lot faster on my screen than on foot!

Very cool Joel, thanks! I haven't been up there (yet), but that puts it all into perspective...I'll be increasing my training hikes asap! lol

This is so cool. Good job!

Excellent! Thanks

Beautiful camera work. The clarity is pretty amazing. Thanks for sharing.

AMAZING!

I didn't get it at first......until I zoomed in, and zoomed in, and zoomed in some more.

I counted 33 hikers.......where's Waldo?

Thanks for sharing this! You shot this the day after I hiked Whitney for my first time. I have been re-living it over and over, wishing I had taken 10x the pics I did. I can't believe the clarity in your pictures, and I feel like I'm on those infernal switchbacks all over again.

Difficult to take as many photos as you want when you're kinda busy just getting there.

It took me 3 years/attempts to finally get to the summit in large part because of all the pictures I was taking along the way. ( although turning back and getting hailed on between Keeler's Needle and Trail Crest Junction one year didn't help )

I keep counting the switchbacks and coming up short. I'm finding somewhere between 87 and 91 depending on your definition of a switchback. I think some of them must not be visible behind the curve of the mountain slope.

Gotta be one of the coolest, information-rich photos I've ever seen. Thanks for taking the time and for sharing.

Jim