Torres del Paine Patagonia
This magnificent panorama lies across Lago Nordenskjold in the Torres del Paine Nacional Parque on the Chilean side of Patagonia. The lake displays a rich green color from very fine glacial sediment. These are two portions of the Paine Massif, Paine Grande, on the left, and Los Cuernos (the Horns) on the right. It is a quintessential example of rugged, majestic Patagonian beauty.
I could have taken this picture as a single panorama, but it would have lacked detail. Instead, I took 5 separate overlapping photos and used stitching software to put them together. The resolution of the resulting photograph was upscaled using Adobe Super Resolution, ending with a file of 175 megapixels.
Fitzroy at Dawn
A fiery dawn mist swirls around the tip of Mt. Fitzroy (11,71) and its companion summit, Poincenot (9,849), on a bright morning in the Argentinian Patagonia. I took this shot with a 16 megapixel sensor, but the light was very clear and the Olympus 75 mm lens that I used is legendary. It is easy to see why these peaks are a climber's Mecca.
Morning Stars over Alpamayo.
I took this photograph of Alpamayo during a brief interlude between night and day when the fading night and the emerging dawn shared the sky.
Located in the Cordillera Blanca of northern Peru, Alpamayo (19,511) has a pyramid-like summit. A German climbing magazine named it the most beautiful mountain in the world. We were camped below it at 13,828. I got up early, saw stars in the sky above the summit, and took this shot just as the first light hit the east face of the mountain. Moments later the rising sun washed out the stars.
I suspect that this kind of interlude between night and day may not happen at sea level. By the time the sun rises far enough to touch an object at sea level, the sky is too bright to see the stars. The stars may be brighter in the Cordillera Blanca because there is almost no air pollution.
When we got home, I asked the Stanford Astronomical Society, a student club, for help. I sent a member a copy of the photo with the GPS locations of the summit and of our campsite. He identified the upper star as Alpha Carinae, and the lower one closer to the summit as Tau Puppis. Alpha Carinae is the second brightest star in the Southern night sky.
A Quechua Woman Crosses the Valley
A woman in traditional Quechua dress crosses the Jancapampa valley floor. Jancapampa is a peaceful, rural valley at about 11,500 feet in the Cordillera Blanca range. At this altitude farming consists mostly of grazing sheep and growing potatoes. Quechua is the language of Peruvian indigenous people and was the official language of the Incas. Life here continues much as it has for centuries. Except, of course, for mobile phones and satellite TV powered by micro scale hydroelectric.
The Formidable Huandoy
These are the four summits of the formidable Nevados Huandoy. Huandoy Sur (20,211) on the left, has ridges reaching out like arms offering climbers a cold embrace. It is effectively a granite cornice with a thousand meter overhang, leaving its face in perpetual frigid shade. Climbers must sleep hanging in a hammock above a death defying drop. The conditions are truly brutal; yet the face has been climbed several times.
Nevados Huandoy are just across the Llanganuco Valley from Nevado Huscaran Sur (22,205) the highest mountain in Peru.
This image was taken from Portachuelo Llanganuco Pass (15,639) located in the Huascaran National Park. The summits of both Nevado Huscaran and Nevados Huandoy can be seen from the pass. The one and one-half lane gravel road, Carretera de Yungay, to get through the pass is legendary for its hair pin turns and sheer drop-offs.
Turquoise in the Wind
Lake Azul in Glacier National Park in the Argentinian Patagonia gets its bright turquoise color from glacial sediment. It was a 5 mile hike to the lake, and the winds were ferocious, even lifting up water and blowing it across the small lake surface. At one point on the hike we had to lie down on the trail in order to avoid being swept off our feet.