A few days ago we completed the Sangree M. Froelicher Hut print that 10th Mountain Huts commissioned and we blogged about a few days ago. It turned out fantastic, about five feet long and fourteen inches high, with enough detail to see the windows of the hut as the overall presentation draws you in deeper and deeper. Big prints are cool. Hard to produce and tough to display (what wall space?), but truly inspirational. Web display doesn’t do the project justice, but I’ll make a stab at sharing it here.
Try the different views below. Click the panorama text link below the photo and let me know how the pan works for you. I’d like to use a similar system for displaying some of the binding museum shots.
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| Summer panorama of Buckeye Peak and Sangree M. Froelicher Hut. Click image to enlarge. |
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This print wasn’t going to happen on my $175 Epson — so thanks for the success of this project goes to Jeff Maus at Workhorse Productions. Jeff is a master of digital printing and pre-processing. The Sangree pan shown below started as six separate photos, with dense haze. They were stitched together with what Jeff called his “Russian” panorama assembly software, then Photoshopped to fix the haze and open the shadows. File size for printing was just under a gigabyte! The web panorama is interesting as well. It uses a Flash viewer, but creates the pan by making hundreds of small Jpeg images out of the full size image, then assembling them together as you move the pan around. If your connection isn’t light speed, you can see the small images that composite to make the pan. With a fast connection they load fast enough to disappear.
If you need any high-end digital printing done, please contact me and I’ll put you in touch with Jeff.
Another thing about Jeff: he’s who I skied Pyramid Peak with way back in 1989 during my ski the ‘teeners project. We had quite gnarly adventure up there as the snow was WAY less than ideal, but we got down the thing. Wish we’d had snow like folks enjoyed this spring. Someone just asked me if I thought last season’s amazing Colorado snowpack was something you might see just a few times in your lifetime, or could it happen more frequently?
Due to global warming, I’m betting we’ll have another incredible snow year in central Colorado. Sierra snowpack in the Rockies? We’re ready.
As for the Sangree Hut, I had no idea there was so much alpine backcountry skiing terrain in the vicinity. A trip is on tap for next winter.
Lastly, I would be remiss in not thanking 10th Mountain Huts for turning Jeff and I loose on this project! So thanks!
WildSnow.com publisher emeritus and founder Lou (Louis Dawson) has a 50+ years career in climbing, backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. He was the first person in history to ski down all 54 Colorado 14,000-foot peaks, has authored numerous books about about backcountry skiing, and has skied from the summit of Denali in Alaska, North America’s highest mountain.
