Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Mountaineers Route video download...

Here is the video I made of our climb in late April via the Mountaineers Route. It was a "semi-winter" ascent. Each segment of the video is about 10 minutes long and anywhere from 85 to 95MB in size. The segments consist of footage, still photographs, and some music. This is not an instructional video..rather a home video of a few parts of our ascent. It might give you an idea of the terrain, but isn't meant to be a guide on the route or anything. Originally the video was DVD quality, but for online purposes I ran it through a converter to get it into the .WMV format for viewing with Windows Media Player. I'm giving a shot at having it hosted at this free site since I don't have the bandwidth on my site. Let me know if the links work well and if the video plays for you.

EDIT: The links for the video no longer appear to work. Maybe too much traffic for a free service? Sorry..until I can find a place to host em' we are sorta out of luck..

Part I: http://putstuff.putfile.com/97670/3413562

Part II: http://putstuff.putfile.com/97674/6196163

Part III: http://putstuff.putfile.com/97684/4309785

Thanks to everyone that participated.

Chris

Great vids, I appreciate your effort. Felt like I was there. A little not too very much of the ledges, could've used more of that.

Criticism: Music is hard to choose so no criticism there other than don't use music. And in part I I felt like I was watching Ice Road Truckers.

Very nice work though! Right-click save

Vince

Chris

Thanks for the great vids! Really enjoyed the climb; felt like I was with you. And the music was just fine.

Ted

So much effort, such wimpy cheese.

Next time, treat yourself to some Tillamook Black Label Extra Sharp White Cheddar Cheese. I really groaned when you pulled out that canned stuff.

Thanks for the video.

Thanks for the comments guys..

It isn't meant to be "instructional" by any means. For that I would turn to the professionally done video by James Lee (I bought it..fantastic stuff):

Climbing Whitney In Winter

http://www.customflix.com/Store/ShowEStore.jsp?id=205683

This was just a home movie for me and my friends..thus the "personal" music selection. If I were going for production value I would have put in something more "mystical"..hehe.. I'd also do more tripod mounted..professional shots (like the video above..).

Regards..
Chris

Hehe..I was so tired it was nice to just push the button and have the cheese come out. By the way..as you ascend the differential pressure between the Easy Cheese on the inside and the outside becomes greater and greater. Above 12,000' Easy Cheese practically explodes out of the nozzle..(in case you were wondering..lol..)

Plus..with Easy Cheese I can draw things on my crackers..it is much harder to do that with spreadable cheese..

Hi Chris! I truly enjoyed your video. BTW, I love Linkin Park (have all their stuff on my iPOD which I take up the rock). And you put on my FAV song by Justin Timberlake. Thanks for sharing your emotions with us. I'm so glad you did it!!! The mountain makes me cry too.

I'm glad I got my reality debut! And thanks to your video, I am dying for winter to come so I can put on my crampons again and head up Whitney. I'm thinking another North Face ascent! Maybe next time join me? Oh yeah, that pic of me talking to Mike at Iceberg Lake was when I first started developing my scavaging skills (which were very necessary for me on McKinley). Mike had those Cheetos that were sooo yummy I brought 2 bags of them to McKinley.

Thanks again for taking the time to make it.

Very nice, what type of video editing program did you use?

Yeah..I'm looking forward to fall and winter (particularly out here on the east coast..ugh..the humidity). I seriously doubt I'll be doing anything as sketchy as that North Face...just looking at the photos of you and Rick ascending that slope is enough to convince me to stay on more manageable routes. I've got nothing but respect for you guys and gals that tackle that stuff with so much confidence. I think I remember Rick posting that there were some pretty sketchy sections on that climb where he was getting concerned how thin the snow was and there was ice below. My knees start to shake just reading it..



I hear ya'..I think bringing Hiker Laura (Moosetracks) with you is an essential piece of equipment. I keep seeing her pictures of food she creates on the trail and wonder why I'm still eating crap from Mountain House...

Regards..
Chris

I recorded the video on a JVC MC500 video camera..it's a fantastic little digital video camera that writes to a Microdrive. It also films in widescreen mode (16:9) which is nice for capturing the "space" of outdoors scenery.



In a couple years I'll upgrade to something like a Sony High Def video camera..that would really be nice.

When I get home I plug the camera in, download the video to my hard drive and import it into Adobe Premiere. Premiere is a fantastic program for doing home videos although it does take some time to get used to working with it. I'm still a rookie at it..but I can add titles, set up pans and transitions and some other creative stuff. Once the movie is made I export it to a DVD folder for burning to DVD. The version you viewed was highly compressed using Windows Media Encoder which changes the format from MPG2 (DVD format) to .WMV format. That is good for web downloading though because it took the 2GB movie and dropped it down to about 280MB. Obviously you lose a bit of the size and quality..but it is good enough for web viewing purposes.

Premiere Pro program window:



I enjoy the hobby of putting together films of our hikes. In a case like this one I was really fortunate because so many people took still photographs too..which adds a lot of variety to the still/music sequences. You almost can't take a bad picture in the Mount Whitney area..

Regards..
Chris

Thanks for the videos Chris. I really enjoyed watching your trip. The post production effects kept it lively and you did a good job narrating. Your thoughts were focused even though you were often tired by the hike. After having followed your previous attempts on the board the success of this summit became even more exciting. Good job!

-mark-

I'm not sure if I like being called a 'piece of equipment'! But maybe if I can call you a tool... Just kiddin', Beachie.

Your vid completely pumped me up last week. I leave for the extravaganza this Friday, and I'm going to hit all those places you wanted in the west! Woohoo! I loved the footage and the music. It was a bit comforting that I'm not the ONLY one sucking wind up there! (Mike actually commented on that on Agassiz a few weeks back!)

I'l totally be stealing ideas from you when I put my own slide show together when I get home...

-L

I would love to see these video clips. Any chance of uploading them to YouTube?

BFT