Time-Lapse: Everest

By Phil Plait

SLATE

Posted Sunday, June 30, 2013, at 8:00 AM

View from a height.
Photo by Mike Saikaly, from the video.

I’ve been poking around the web lately looking at one time-lapse video after another, and I swear, the list of amazing work grows as fast as I can watch them. As I mentioned before, it’s getting to the point where the viewpoint taken by the photographer needs to be unique—we’re not wowed by just stars rising and setting anymore. The location, the angles, the lighting, the subject, the music: It all plays in to the experience.

Given all that, you must watch this: “Everest”. Yes, as in Mt. Everest. This is extraordinary.

Breath-taking! [Haha!] I live at an elevation of 1700 meters, and I’ve been up as high as 3700, where the air is thin enough (about 2/3 pressure as at sea level) that just moving around for some people is difficult. Photographer Elia Saikaly went up to 8000 meters to shoot that video, staying awake into the night while other, more sane climbers, were sleeping. At that height, air pressure is a mere one-third what it is at sea level, and climbers, not surprisingly, call it the “death zone”.

Read Saikaly’s account of his travels to scale Everest. It’s harrowing, and amazing, and wonderful. Climbing such mountains is incredibly dangerous, and some people undertake it foolishly. But the ones who prepare, study, practice, and understand what they are doing: I salute them. The spirit it takes to explore is an astonishing thing, and I’m glad so many possess it.