Today we wake up at first light of dawn: it’s not very cold, only a few degrees below zero, and the day looks beautiful, no clouds on the horizon; after a quick breakfast we pack our equipment and with our guide Hassan and the three high altitude porters leave to the Miter Peak, from which we’ll try to replicate one of the three historic panoramic photographs taken from the early Italians.
The acquisition of these three overviews from the three slopes around the Concordia circus is a priority of this first expedition of the project “On the Trail of the Glaciers”
Thanks to an especially favorable point of view and to the high quality both of historical images and the new ones we’re going to take, both on film and on large-format, it will be possible to analyze them with great detail and precision in order to investigate on changes of the glaciers occurred in the last 100 years. During the preparation of the expedition, we have studied all the historical images to determine which lenses and which photographic plates were used in order to calculate the original magnification ratio and thus reproduce it in the new images. All this in the hope of being able to use the images not only for quality purposes, as has been done so far, but also for qualitative analysis to perform precise measurements.
We reach the base of the mountain without following a single trace, overcoming several crevasses, and we realize now that the ice equipment we brought with us is completely unnecessary: the slopes that from a distance seemed partly frozen has now revealed only a steep rock plate covered with a layer of subtle stony debris. So we decide to leave behind the equipment and begin the climb. By comparing the old photos with the surrounding landscape soon we are able to reach a small plateau from where we can admire a fantastic view of the circus of Concordia; here, with the certainty of having reached the point that we was looking for, we prepare our equipment and begin the lengthy procedures for photography.
Ciao Fabiano,
mi tengo sempre aggiornato su questa tua fantastica missione al fresco di un climatizzatore, immagino che voi li di “freschetto” ne avete gia abbastanza. So che a giorni si torna nella “tiepida – 38°” Roma. Ci sentiamo al tuo ritorno!