A day at the foot of Store Skagastølstind, Norways third highest mountain.
Some of you already have seen the time-lapse of Store Skagastølstind in my instagram feed. I was lucky enough to visit Turtagrø hotel a few times during the High Camp festival for three years. And I’ll have to admit, there can’t be any hotel with a better panorama view from the doorstep! The mountains of Hurungane made a great impression.
The history.
The 21 of July in 1876 Slingsby was the first to reach the top with help from Emanuel Mohn and Knut Lykken. This rather cold summer day they followed him up to Mohn’s pass where they waited for Slingsby to climb to the summit. “I shall try!” Slingsby yelled out while he ran towards Storen after a long break. After the descent from the top he said to Mohn: “Do you know, what I felt, when I was on the top? That I was a great fool, and now I feel very thankful». Perhaps he felt he had passed a limit of some kind? Nevertheless, Slingsby climbed Storen as the fifth first ascent during five days.
Today we do off course have better equipment available for such mountaineering and we know that there was a better route to the top. But still it demands good weather and outdoor climbing experience to reach the top. Many choose to benefit of a guided tour as I probably will do if I one day should try to get to the top.
Time-lapse in the making.
Last September I decided to do a weekend project to test my capabilities of making a time-lapse of this mountain. The map had been thoroughly examined and the weather forecast was promising. A heavy rucksack (my slider isn’t exactly in the lightweight class) laying in the trunk. A day off on a Friday and the course was set. After a long drive the hike started at Tindevegen below Ringsnonhaugen. Even though the hike itself was not long with its 2,5-3 km, the backpack and 300 meters of climb made its exchange in sweat and sour legs. With sunset as backdrop the tent was put up and dinner eaten.
After a good night of sleep sunlight coming the time-lapse was started before breakfast. The cameras used was a Nikon D750 with a wide-angle on the slider, and a D700 used together with a 300mm and a 60mm. My best advice if you should do a long span time-lapse like this is that you should always have two cameras running. Even with thorough planning you most certainly will encounter something unexpected. A flat battery or say a random person strolling through your images should not force you to have a glitch in the finished video. With two cameras you can cut between the 2 different angles in processing. And you get an opportunity to correct the problem with the other camera if necessary.
The result you can see in the video below, enjoy 🙂
And yeah, the hike back on Sunday was nearly pure joy. As it often is downhill.
