Sunrise Over Everest
One of the silver linings of being ill over the last week -- and under no pressure to sight-see or sample local cuisine or do any of the other travel things I would feel compelled to do were I anywhere but Hong Kong or Toronto -- is that I had some time on my hands to start going through the 2,500-plus exposures I took during my seventeen days of trekking in the Nepalese Himalaya.
(I know I still haven't made much of a dent in the exposures from New Zealand and Australia, but I figure that working on anything right now only helps deplete the backlog. And I miss being in the mountains.)
I took the above shot looking east from the summit of Kala Patthar, at 5,545 metres above sea level. This was the highest point I'd reach during my trek, and the closest vantage point I'd have of Mt. Everest. I pressed the shutter release at 7:04am on April 4th, 2010, just as the sun started rising over the West Ridge of Everest. This was, incidentally, the very last shot I was able to grab from Kala Patthar -- the second of an intended three bracketed exposures. My camera battery outright died in the -10°C cold before the third could be taken.
There's a lot more where this photo came from, but I'm holding off on uploading others until I start writing about my trek up to the Roof of the World. And that's coming a lot sooner than you might think.
For reference, the five peaks shown in the above picture are (starting from the very far left): Lintren (6,713m), Khumbatse (6,639m), Changtse (7,550m), Mt. Everest (8,850m) and Nuptse (7,861m). The summit of Lhotse (8,501m) is barely visible, just under the cloud behind the left edge of Nuptse.
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