| Summary | None |
| Owner | Matthew Gilbertson |
| Creation Date | 2007-12-06 17:56:25 UTC-0500 |
| Description | 12.2.2007
Participants: Eric and Matthew Gilbertson, Jared Sartee, Dave Wentzlaf Author: Eric Last summer while working for nasa matthew met someone workingon the gigapan project - basically a camera setup that lets any digital camera take gigapixel-resolution pictures. They were letting the beta-prototype of the product be tested by people who could take awesome pictures. We were hoping to take the camera setup to rainier, but it didn't end up happening until last week. Basically the gigapan setup makes any digital camera take a ton of pictures at maximum zoom and pieces them all together into one huge picture. we tested the setup on top of simmons for some shots of the boston skyline, and then we were ready for the truly ultimate picture - sunrise on mt washington. Jared and Dave were equally minded that such a picture would be worth a sleepless night,so we all left boston around midnight saturday night. The success of our trip depended on three factors:there should be minimal wind on the summit (if the camera vibrated in the wind the pictures would be blurry), the temperature shouldn't be too cold (the batteries might freeze because it takes about 5 minutes to take enough pictures to piece together), and the sky would have to be clear to see sunrise. The probability of everything working was probably less than 1%, given that washington is in the clouds about 60% of the time, it's always cold in december, and december has the second highest mean wind speed of any month (44.8mph). On top of these stats, on saturday the summit record winds of 120mph with temps -15F and windchills around -60F. Basically we would need a miracle for our expedition to work. After one unexpected delay at the NH border we got to pinkham at about 3:45am and hit the trail by 4:20. there was probably a foot of snow on the ground, but the super-highway that is the tuckerman ravine trail was solid. At the turnoff to lion's head dave informed us that he was in danger of falling asleep while walking he was so sleep deprived, so we let him return to pinkham and recuperate. At this point we were pretty nervous we wouldn't make it for sunrise, which was at 7:02am. When we got to the lion's head we could see the alpen glow over the wildcats, and at that point agreed that matthew and I would sprint ahead to the summit with jared close behind (we all had walkie talkies in case of an emergency). We were prepared for hurricane-force winds above treeline but for some reason it was completely calm. "Once we get up to the summit there's gotta be more wind," matthew said. The precise sunrise caught us about 10 minutes from the top,and it was pretty spectacular since there was a clearing below a layer of clouds, which made for what's called a sun pillar. We snapped some pics and then raced on to the summit to set up the gigapan. Contrary to all expectations and forecasts there was absolutely no wind at the summit - 0mph gusting to 0mph - and the temperature was actually above zero. We were 3 for 3 - no wind, warm temps, and partially clear. I still don't see how that happened. Matthew took charge of the gigapan and got some awesome panoramas with sunrise colors still visible. We had some fun posing for pics and you might notice my head chopped off in one. After hanging out for and hour and posing in front of the webcam we moved on to boott spur for more pics. Still the wind was calm and the temps steady in the upper single digits. We got more gigapictures from boott spur looking toward tuckerman's, and in one you can actually pick out some ice climbers at maximum zoom. In all we got 9 gigapictures before making it back to pinkham at about 1pm. They're way too big to post on the gallery and not crash the computer, so check out the links in the gigapan album. FYI, one picture took ~14 hours to load on my computer. |