Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Mountaineer's Route Conditions

Are crampons sufficient, or would you recommend we carry snowshoes as well?

Really appreciate your report Kurt! Too bad about the cold toes. I've been there! Might see you on the route next weekend.

Might be this:

http://www.whitneyportalstore.com/forum/...=true#Post33975


There's also this:

http://www.whitneyportalstore.com/forum/...=true#Post33991

I'm not sure yet. We're going to make a "game time" decision on the morning of the start of our trip.


No worries buddy. Hopefully I'll see you up there!

Richard, those are the posts! Thanks for finding them. The first link you posted is the one with the table in it. As an aside, it's interesting reading through those old threads and remembering the folks who used to participate here quite frequently.

Four days until I leave the Santa Cruz coast and head for the great mountaineer's route. I hope this week end has brought Kurt and clients success and very interested in his postmortem TR. I imagine he produced some very informational avalanche test pits.

We had a great climb up there last weekend. The layer of depth hoar I mentioned earlier is still there however there's currently a melt/freeze layer on the surface that seems to be protecting it for the moment. Of course this could change but last weekend it looked OK. We reached the summit on March 15. Pictures are here.

Just got off from a trip. We reached the summit on Monday. Route conditions have remained excellent. This recent weather may change things. We'll see. Here are a couple pictures. The entire photo gallery is here.

Sunrise on the Mountaineers Route


High on the Mountaineers Route


In the final 400'


Topping out on the final 400'

That looks like fun. Ahem.

Ahem... whatcha doing April 17-20?????????

I'll be in Peru though.

We attempted to summit on Saturday 3/26 but got blown off the mountain by high winds. Plus there was a storm rolling in and we didn’t feel like dealing with even more miserable conditions, which were cold (single digit temperatures), wind (50+ mph), and fresh snow. The snow pack on the mountain still seems very climbable though. I may try again when the conditions are more favorable.

I'm going to be heading up to attempt the MR on Monday the 14th if anybody is interested in joining me. At the moment I am climbing solo. If you're interested in joining me, feel free to email me at millertime130@hotmail.com to discuss details.
Nick

Hi Kurt,
Really enjoy your pictures. They tell quite a story.
I also notice that you are "bracketing" some of your shots. Are you doing this to insure proper exposure, or are you creating HDR images?
John

Hi John,

Thanks for the note. Yeah I bracket a lot. It's a habit I've kept from the "film days". It also saves me time finding the best one later. I have HDR in mind when I snap bracketed images but haven't tried to make them yet. I'd love to do some HDR but I haven't learned how to do that yet. If you have any good tips on how to do HDR I'd be all ears!!

Hi Kurt,
I use a product called Photomatix Pro 5 (http://www.hdrsoft.com/). It is fairly straight forward to use, and offers a range of adjustments for your use.
You are currently bracketing with 5 shots (-1.3, -.7, 0, +.7, +1.3) F stops. I would suggest you widen your exposure compensation to at least (-2, -1, 0, +1, +2) F Stops, if not (-4, -2 0, +2, +4) F stops. It really all depends on the scene. The greater the dynamic range of the scene the wider you bracket will need to be. Shooting as you are (bright snow with dark shadows) you will likely get better results with the (-4, -2, 0, +2, +4) setting. You could also try three shots (-3, 0, +3). I believe you camera will support these settings.

I took the liberty to screen copy a few images from your web site and produced the following images using Photomatix Pro 5.

As you will see the software does a good job of aligning the images from hand shot photos, and can deal with "ghosts" - shots including things (people) that also move. Even with a fairly narrow range of exposures the results are fairly impressive.
Enjoy!

Example #1 is taken from your March 22nd to 25th trip up MR.
“Normal Exposure”:



“HDR” using five exposures from your web site:



Example #2 is taken from your March 13th to 16th trip up MR.
“Normal Exposure”:



“HDR” using five exposures from your web site:

Just my opinion, but I think the "before" photos look more realistic and the doctored ones look too dramatic, or fake.

Hi Burtw,

Yes, the software does allow the user to be "too" aggressive. The saturation could easily be backed down a notch if that look is preferred. It is simply a matter of choice. In the second set of images, the detail available in the darker areas is remarkable (I think). It would be possible to miss the second tent in the "before" picture if one did not look for it.

The human eye has much better dynamic range than the camera sensors. The "after" shots are more similar to what you actually see (although one could argue the colors are exaggerated).

Wow what a difference with HDR! I can see why Burt says it looks a little fake. There's a point in photography where pictures cross over into art. However I'm sure there's lots of adjustments that can be made to suit one's liking.

This is awesome. I'll check out that software. What's the learning curve on this stuff?

Hi Kurt,

Of course this could be made to be terribly complicated, but it can also be used in a straight forward way. If the straight forward is you choice (my recommendation), the the learning curve is really not bad.

Just feed it the bracketed photos, and tell it to "go". Then, you have several options as to how to proceed. the software has many "suggested" settings which you can simply click on and see the results. They range from less dramatic to surrealistic, and many stops in between. Pick one you like, and then start sliding the buttons as you like. Getting great at it will take time (perhaps a lot), but good results are found almost immediately. Totally up to the user.

I believe you can download the software for free in order to check it out (1 month limitation I "think"). It is really not expensive ($99.00). You can also get a discount by entering “TREYRATCLIFF” to save 15%. Go to his site to see good examples of what can be done: http://www.stuckincustoms.com/hdr-photography/.

Also, the HDRsoft web site has a gallery with lots of examples. They have a tutorial, and their Q&A section covers most any questions you might have.

Many other tutorials are available via your search engine of choice.

Give it a try. You'll enjoy the results.

Thanks John for the tips. I'll check that out. I've been wanting to do some HDR for a while now. I changed my bracketing settings to +-1 from the .7 I was using .