Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board A labor of love

Yeah, the paragliders were wild. We just stumbled on them on the harrowing drive up to Horseshoe Meadows. The guy that couldn't get up tried about five times before he finally bagged it. Sometimes you have to listen to the little man in your head that says today is not your day. I feel kind of bad for his buddy though - I'm assuming they were supposed to spend the afternoon sailing around together.

As far as the next movie is concerned - umm, yeah, maybe not so much. If we do decide to do something else, rest assured it will be fully documented. I actually cracked the glass lens cover on the Flip camera about an hour from the finish line when I slammed into some granite coming down the Ledges. Guess I'll have to buy another.

I'm glad you were able to see it. Thanks for the props.

Didn't know there was a correlation. If I had, I would have started this mountaineering thing about 25 years ago. I guess I'll just have to climb on the masters' circuit.

Dave,
If you haven't read about him on this forum (or even if you have), you might be interested in books by or about Dr. Charlie Houston who died within the last couple of months at the age of(about) 93. He was somewhat of a living legend before he passed away, and now I guess he's a legend.

Oddly enough I read Houston's Going Higher: Man, Mountains and Oxygen just before doing Whitney. I've always been interested in high altitude physiology - both as a fan of the mountains and as an anesthesiologist. It was a good, if somewhat dry read. Some of those early mountain climbers got pretty sick without knowing why. Even today, with everything we know about altitude people die of HAPE & HACE due to genetic susceptibility and/or poor preparation.

You might find "Brotherhood of the Rope" or "K2, the Savage Mountain" less dry.

I hope that anyone who wants to see this video is able to. If there are problems viewing or downloading it please let me know. I'm not sure what I can do about it but I'll look into it and try to fix it. I've been able to watch it using Safari, Internet Explorer and Firefox (I made it with iMovie). At the risk of making too much out of this whole movie thing, if anybody wants a copy of the DVD I'd be happy to send it to you.

I really enjoyed your video. It took me back for sure. You might enjoy watching the video I made of my climb up the Mountaineers Route with a bit of snow on it with some of the message board regulars. Like you, I had a pretty awe-inspired feeling heading up that final-400..I couldn't pull my video camera out either..

Anyway - mine is in 3 parts..you can download them here (right click - SAVE AS):

http://www.mudspike.com/Part-1.wmv (178MB)

http://www.mudspike.com/Part-2.wmv (217MB)

http://www.mudspike.com/Part-3.wmv (60MB)

I really enjoyed yours and it gives a great sense of the route! Great job!

Regards..
Chris

Thanks for the props on our video. I really wanted to make sure I did the best job possible of documenting this likely one-time-only event.

Your video is outstanding. It's so cool to see things that are familiar, yet different in a way because it was done on snow. I'm pretty sure there's no way we could have handled that. The clip at the top of Thor is particularly panic-inducing. Just a bit of exposure there. The video of the Chute from Thor is very impressive. It gives a much better sense of the length and steepness. You did a great job capturing video while on the move and you've also got some really good shots of the Ledges. I was definitely smiling when I heard you say that you were too freaked to pull the camera out on the final 400. Nice job getting some long, continuous shots (something I failed to do) and finally, it was very cool to put some faces to the names I've seen on this board. Well done indeed my friend.

Dave

Mongoose, your video was great!

I’ve been working on a video of our anniversary Mt. Whitney hike that we did last summer - My family is having a “film festival” this January – a (friendly) competition of our different video versions of the hike. OMG… is this challenging! I’ve never done anything like a video before, so it’s slow progress.

Your video gave me some good ideas. I wish we would have had more actual video clips, but I’ve got a lot of photos to work with. I really liked the way you used your music – great choices!

Thanks for posting it!

Rosie

Thanks Rosie. I love the idea of a "family film festival." I agree that making a movie is challenging. I put about 45 hours into making a 31 minute video but that's because a) this was the first time I'd done this and b) I'm a complete OCD detail freak. I was literally lengthening/shortening some of the clips by 0.1 seconds, the smallest change allowable with iMovie. I was messing around with the titles, captions, transitions, audio, pan/zoom effect on the stills to the point where I had lost the forest for the trees. I really had no idea if it was any good after a while so I had to walk away from it a few times just to clear my head. I scoured my iTunes library and bought a bunch more music thinking it would be perfect only to find out that it actually sucked so I'm glad to hear you liked the music. Unfortunately having copyrighted music means you can't post it on YouTube (well, you can but they'll either mute it or pull the video altogether). If I could have changed anything it would have been to have more long, continuous video clips. I had 47 minutes of video that was all in 20 second clips so it was kind of challenging to make it into something that flowed well. I could have spent months on this but at some point I had to return to my regular life. The biggest benefit of making the video is that it rekindled exuberant discussion among our family, friends and coworkers about how awesome we are. Good luck with your movie.

Wow.... I'm impressed!!! I assumed you’d been making videos for a while!

I know what you mean about the time investment – I’ve put so much time in already, and I’m still only at the point of choosing/editing photos, adding titles and captions, and coordinating music. I’ve not even started to put it into video form yet. But I have to say…. I’m really enjoying it – I just need to put it away ‘til I get my Nutcracker costume project done, and ready for Christmas.