A sunset close to the sky   64096
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1 Snow ramp to pass 7385
2 Kazakh climbers
3 (Afghanistan)
4 Last flag of Iranian expedition, 7050
5 Camp 4, 6990 m
6 Pik Dushanbe, 6995

Details

Location: Pik Somoni NW side (7105 m)      by: Pedrotti Alberto
Area: Tajikistan      Date: 15-08-2010
Perhaps it is not considered good mountaineering practice to linger taking photographs over 7000 m at nearly 7 pm. However, I did not want to leave the spot without these unusual pixels.
I had left the top (7495 m) at 5.15 pm, as soon as I realized that the clouds, although rapidly moving, were not going to allow me any summit view within a reasonable time. During the descent, the sky gradually cleared, but the fierce wind did not give up blowing grains of ices towards my face and onto the camera. This is why I did not undertake the task of collecting a serious panoramic series, and the present image stems from shots overlapping by chance.
However, there is some fair chance that while taking them I was the highest person in the world: with the Himalaya under the monsoon, and the Karakoram completely out of the game due to disastrous weather conditions (those which caused large floods in Pakistan), I suspect that the only other reasonable location over 7000 m was the Muztagh Ata. A very busy mountain indeed, but maybe not at that unusually late hour.
On the ridge at 7000 m to Pik Dushanbe, I have marked the six Kazakh climbers who were descending ahead of me. I reached the high camp, at 6990 m, at 8.30. Very suggestive were the last hundreds of meters, with the light of the headlamp mixed to that of the moon. I was traversing under the séracs of the ridge, with the huge threatening dark mass of the Somoni peak emerging behind me, surrounded by a texture of stars, until suddenly the dim lights inside the tents of the camp appeared - the unique lights under the sky in an endless horizon.
To the present panorama participate four shots of the Canon Powershot G9. The right half is covered by a single shot at 34 mm, 1/320, f/8. The left half is covered by two stacked shots, the upper one enclosing also the moon, which a bit later looked as follows: www.panoramio.com/photo/78256045. These were at 34 mm, 1/60, f/8. Since there was poor superposition between the two halves, as a bridge I employed also part of a fourth shot, this one at 34 mm, 1/250, f/8. Perhaps somebody has already guessed that the camera was in aperture priority mode...
Many thanks to Hugin who is capable to put together images with such different exposures!
Many more images in goo.gl/photos/VK9miJ3aEdrvEK9WA

Larger version: goo.gl/UCSIfK
GPS track: www.wikiloc.com/wikiloc/view.do?id=5583652

Comments

Congrats for the summit and thanks for sharing this shot with us. Technically not perfect, but very moody. Stunning and increadible pictures in your web-album, unfortunatly none of them gave a panorama.
2011/02/07 00:17 , Robert Mitschke
Yes, it's really a pleasure to browse through all your pictures! And I hope next time you won't forget to shoot a panorama ;)
2011/02/08 07:42 , Jens Vischer
for me...perfect.....
2011/07/29 15:13 , Joan Metelli
very beautiful!!
2013/05/02 14:10 , Sj Jamali
Thank you for appreciating.
Incidentally: I arrived here following the track marked by a big Iranian expedition - they employed also yellow flags, the last of which (at approx 7060 m GPS) is hidden by the rocks little below me.
2013/05/03 12:40 , Pedrotti Alberto
Very nice!

Best Regards,

Christian
2014/06/14 15:02 , Christian Hönig

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Pedrotti Alberto

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