Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Of cameras and granite

CaT:

Sorry to hear about your loss, but I just returned from Kearsarge Pass restocking some JMT hikers. They ended up coming off trail because there is an Alaskan weather system moving in.

Not to contradict CheckSix, but it is not a small storm. Although, Kearsarge is over 100 miles south of Yosemite, they are forecasting rain from Thursday through Saturday with the snow level down to 6,000. As we left Onion Valley today the weather was turning progressively worse.

Think of it as an opportunity to go back and do all that hike over again. I hope you get that card back, because I fear that it is not likely. Good luck and be careful should you decide to go.

Interesting views on the Yosemite Cams this morning:

http://www.tranquilityimages.com/cams.shtml

I doubt that the camera is in pieces, though I'm sure its days of being a working camera are over. As far as the weather, unless the camera is likely to get buried or swept away, I wouldn't worry too much about that. Most memory cards can stand a trip through a washing machine and come out in working order, so a little rain isn't going to bother them.

While I'd love to use your offer as an excuse to head to Yosemite, I'm going up later in October so a second trip now isn't feasible; however, if I don't see that you've gotten it back, and weather permitting, it might be an interesting hike and challenge. The HD cables will be down, but it's a great hike anyway.

I agree with Steve C.; I've used digitals since the mid-90's and on vacations or anything where photos are irreplaceable, always back them up on something besides the camera. You can lose the camera. If you use the "multiple memory card" strategy, you can lose the memory card. Memory cards, while it's not too common, can get damaged or corrupted, occasionally even beyond the ability of photo recovery programs. If a laptop is not feasible, there are ~$100 solutions like Photo Safe, which is essentially a portable small hard drive with a card reader. In places like Yosemite Valley for example, you could use one of the internet machines at the lodge to upload the photos (they have card readers) to a storage website. A last resort would be to stop in at a photo processing place every so often and copy the photos to CD. Most always, your photos will arrive home intact and all the "paranoia" will be for nothing, but if something happens, you'll be glad for the precautions. Plus, the peace of mind is worth something.

Steve - I don't have a laptop. That's a future purchase down the road perhaps. If you succumb to the temptation to do the SAR, then absolutely don't do it if the weather makes it the least bit "iffy". No camera or pictures are worth anyone's safety. I'm sure that is well understood by all here.

CheckSix - As icantiwont indicated, the storm is a major one, and from dmatt's postings, it appears as if the camera could be getting snow by week's end. The free park entry on the 29th, weather permitting, could certainly be a plus; but it doesn't sound like the weather will be cooperating then.

icantiwont - I will be on the lookout for any opportunity to make a spontaneous long weekend trip back to Yosemite at the earliest opportunity (weather, cheap airfare, time off, and no schedule conflicts all permitting) to see if I can find it myself, provided it hasn't been found by by someone else by then. Otherwise, it will likely be next year, and I'm unsure how a chip will hold up in frigid cold and, more important, long exposure to moisture. I'm not optimistic. Yes, I can repeat the same hikes again with my soon-to-be new camera; but first summits can only be "firsts" once.

Ken - Wow! What a change from a week ago!! So the snow has begun in earnest! Thanks for the link.

Gary - Actually, my wife, who is a photographer, and who was with me (except on my Whitney summit and this one Yosemite hike) has a 20Gig portable hard drive (don't recall what it's called) onto which she daily uploads her photos. I would have uploaded mine to her machine, but we didn't have the necessary compatible hardware to link my camera to her hard drive (her hardware only worked with her camera). The option of buying such a hard drive for my camera definitely was considered as a future option, even before my camera's demise, because I was beginning to run short of room on the 2Gig chip I had, and I couldn't find a compatible chip to purchase while in Yosemite (they had chips, but not the right kind). Anyway, of all the suggestions here, the portable hard drive backup will probably be at the top of the list for future consideration. As to whether the current camera is in pieces, that probably depends on what it hit (rock or sand) when it finally landed several hundred feet below.

Thanks very much to all who have responded so far. This is truly a wonderful community to be a part of!

CaT

CaT:

I'm heading to the Valley in a few weeks, and might, depending on conditions, head up that way as part of a loop of sorts. Like Happy Isles to Glacier Point and down the 4-mile trail. If it clears up a bit between now and then, I could maybe swing over the the base of HD, too. I'll let you know.

Then again, I am car camping with the 'rents, so I might sit around and drink beer all day. Hmmmm...

-L

Laura - Thanks a bunch! Sorry ... what's " 'rents "?
Either way, have a great trip.

CaT

'rents = parental units; i.e. mom and dad / ma and pop / the muth and the worrier (cuz' I'll always be daddy's little girl!)

That's what I do too, but of course then you are always at the risk of your laptop getting stolen or having hard drive failure, which is probably more likely than dropping your camera or having the flash memory card fail.

I suppose the best solution would be to just bring along a bunch of 1 or 2GB flash cards and keep them on you at all times, but that is probably cost prohibitive for most people, including myself. Well, maybe the cost of flash memory will outpace the growth in file size as cameras produce higher and higher megapixel images, and then this will work.

When you have multiple copies in different locations, the odds of everything failing is high enough that at least you wouldn't be kicking yourself later...there's only so much you can do within reason.

But multiple cards really don't solve anything, they just put a different slant on what can happen. That card with your first week's photos on it can get lost; at least you don't lose the second week's, but if you had one large card, you wouldn't have lost it because it would be in the camera. Or the camera could get stolen, and the cards be in the case with it (or not). The car could get stolen with the laptop and camera in it.

Some of those things are just things we can't prevent, but the most likely...camera lost or stolen (not unusual) and lost or failed media cards (not that unusual either) can be thwarted by having a backup of the files elsewhere. Kind of like a spare tire on the car...you may never need it, but it's best not to count on that.

Media is already pretty cheap, so it's better to have enough for all your trip, regardless of whether you go for the large card or multiple smaller ones, and do a redundant backup besides; unloading the media and reusing it, leaving only one copy on a CD or backup drive again puts you more at risk. If I have to erase media cards to reuse them, I'll burn a CD/DVD so there's a copy on the laptop and the CD/DVD before erasing the card.

While vacationing in Colorado this summer, I found a deal at the Grand Junction Wal Mart====Two 1 Gig cards together for $19.99===bought 4 cards total...............steve

There was an adapter that I bought awhile ago that allows me to download from camera cards to my iPod for back-up when traveling. Having had a few cameras lose the battle with granite (and streams and ...), I try to perform these back-ups frequently. I believe that mine was made by Kensington, but iWay also makes one.

SS - Thanks. I don't have an iPod, and don't have plans to buy one.

Passinthru - Normally, I avoid Wal-Mart; but two 1Gig chips (if the right kind) for $20 would be worth the hassle. Thanks for the tip.

CaT

A friend dropped my nalgene from about 2/3 of the way up the cables earlier this year. From the way it was skipping and bouncing I didn't think it was stopping till it hit the bottom of the south face as indicated in your photo, but by some miracle it stopped on a ledge 30' down from the main trail. I 3rd classed down and retrieved it, along with as much garbage as I could carry - a lot of stuff had met a similar fate.

When I reached the nalgene, I could see an even bigger ledge below that is out of sight from the main HD trail and had even more garbage on it, but was beyond my scrambling comfort level. Resolved that next time I'm up that way I'll bring a rope, ascender and a couple garbage bags and rap down to clean up as much as possible.

Moral of the story is that your camera may still be up on HD, and not on the ground below, as difficult as that may seem to believe. If the snow from this current weather melts out, you should consider posting on summitpost, supertopo or rc.com and bribing a snake diker into rapping down to the ledge and taking a look on their way home.

If you don't find any takers and are serious about helping subsidize trip costs from the bay area, that would likely entice me to head up there in ~2 weeks (busy until then) for a combined garbage pickup and camera sar effort both at the base of the cables and the base of the south face.

mattyj - Great suggestions! As I saw the camera topple corner-over-corner at a rapidly increasing velocity by time it disappeared out of sight, I also had a hard time imagining that it could be anywhere but all the way down at ground level. I did a cursory look around immediately south of the saddle at the bottom of the cables, but saw nothing, and presumed at that point that it had gone over the edge into oblivion. I'll post something on the other sites you mentioned. I hadn't even thought about Snake Dyke climbers taking a shot at the area you mentioned, although with the declining autumn weather, I wonder how much longer climbers will be doing that route up the west side at all. That's mostly Yosemite climbing school folks, isn't it? I'm guessing that school only operates in the summer months, but I really don't know that for sure.

If you can safely do what you were talking about trying to do in ~2 weeks, then yes, I'm serious about subsidizing the costs outlined above, from the Bay area, providing someone else hasn't gotten to it first. Paying someone's gas, food, entry fee and mailing costs would likely amount to less than if I came out there myself to do the same thing, even just for a 3-day weekend. As you can tell, these particular set of pictures have a great deal of meaning for me, and I'm not going to give up on retrieving them just yet. My first Whitney summit has been a long standing goal, and the pictures of all that are on that chip. Many thanks!!

CaT

CaT, I normally avoid Wal Mart also, but was unfamiliar with the stores in town and sent by a friend. The sd cards were made by Kodak, and a fast speed.....what a deal............steve

I climbed it on Oct 6th last year, and had to wait in line for a couple hours at the base of the route. I think there were 6 parties total . . . it's very popular. As for safety, anybody who can competently lead the route should have no problem rappelling down to the ledge and prussiking back up the low-angle slab.

A climber is not likely to find your camera anytime soon. Snake Dike is on the other side of the dome. There is a climbing route in the vicinity of where you dropped your camera but I'm not sure it's even had a second ascent.

Even if you (or someone you hired) scouted around it may be on a ledge or hidden under brush or talus. It's hard to know without spending the time to look.

The snow from this storm will melt off pretty quickly on that south facing terrain.

A couple suggestions. First, since you seem to have a tendency to lose your camera, take a photo with your name, address, and phone number and always keep it on your memory card as photo #1. Write your name on the body of the camera as well.

A much better suggestion has already been made: Tether the camera to your body somehow so that it can't be dropped. You can do this yourself pretty easily for a few bucks or less.

Interesting thread - About 10 years ago, I had a similar experience. This was in the days that camping overnight on the Dome was still legal. I had taken my full backpack to the top, and on descent, a side-pocked opened and I lost my fishing reel...the same fate as your camera...saw it bouncing over the ledge...gone.
Back in LYV, we pondered a "rescue"...using Topos for the best route up. Going all off-trail, we skirted above Liberty Cap...tons of talus and dreaded Manzanita...about 4 hours of a tough grunt to the apron area.
There is a butt-load of trash...about 1500 - 2000 feet below the cables...mostly discarded lunches (Argh!), some jackets, caps, water bottles...broken plastic remains of all sorts of unrecognizable detritus. Alas, after searching for a few hours, we gave up...too many possible places...granite slabs... for anything small and heavy to slide under. FYI, we did take a large trash bag and filled it...could have filled 3 or 4 more easy...lots of trash.
Therefore, if anybody wants to try again, there is a lost Penn SS420 reel up there too...and would like to have it back - but I will not hold my breath.

ep - Thanks for the good "Photo #1" suggestion.

From what I understand, Snake Dikers typically climb Snake Dike, but then walk off the other side down the cables -- right by where the camera fell. Should one of them want a further challenge, mattyj suggested rapelling down to the ledge(s) and taking a look around. I doubt there is much foilage on the ledge(s). Mattyj said he might be willing to do the same (he has also done Snake Dike) some time after the next couple of weeks. I wouldn't expect to find the camera/chip any other way except by taking the time to look around.

There is a lot more snow coming today and tomorrow. See the separate thread I just began posting a Heavy Snow Warning that was just issued (and which is a replacement upgrade of a Winter Storm Watch that had previously been issued for the same area).

CaT

They're predicting about 6" of snow at that elevation. Then the sun is going to come out on Sunday and it's going to be in the 70s all next week. With the southern exposure that snow won't last long.

You're right it is possible that the camera stopped within a couple hundred feet of where someone might be willing to set an anchor and rap down. Good luck with that.