Image: Chhiring Sherpa provides the lighting for a photograph of Swiss mountaineer Ueli Steck. Photo by Grayson Schaffer, used with permission of Outside.
Hint: It involves a lot of sherpas.
Grayson Schaffer, an editor for Outside magazine, is currently embedded at Base Camp on Mt. Everest, covering several teams attempting to climb the mountain’s West Ridge—which Outside describes as “a route nearly as many climbers have died on as have summitted.” He’s sending back stories and photos from the tallest mountain in the world. But that presents a problem. The kind of photography that’s used in a glossy magazine is not the kind of photography that is easy to produce with a team of one in a bare-bones climbing camp.
In a recent post, Schaffer explains the tools he’s using to get his shots and shows us how he’s wrangled random sherpas, climbers, and camp staff into assisting him. It’s a neat bit of media behind-the-scenes.
The key piece of gear that makes it all possible is the new Pro-B3 1200w/s AirS battery pack. It’s the lithium-powered update to the older 7B power pack, and it delivers consistent flashes even in subzero temperatures at 17,500 feet. We’ve got two of these with a set of spare battery inserts but have yet to run down in a day’s shooting. To charge these beasts, we’ve been using a basic GoalZero solar setup, which, thanks to the Pro-B3’s built-in trickle-charging capability, can top off a charge in a sunny afternoon.
Read Schaffer’s post on taking photos on Mt. Everest
Follow Schaffer’s daily reporting on the West Ridge ascent
Image: A yak inspects Grayson Schaffer’s camera gear boxes. Photo by Grayson Schaffer. Used with permission of Outside.