On a recent trip to Yosemite, I zoomed up to see what the red spot on the face of El Capitan was. Turned out to be a couple of climbers just waking up for the sunrise. Wikipedia has El Cap at 910 meters tall, and these guys were about two thirds of the way up, so they must have been around 2,000 feet off the valley floor where I was standing.
I later talked to some climbers about spending the night up there and learned that the bivouacs (or ‘bivvies’) need to be hauled up behind the climbers as they ascend. The bivvies are in bags tied to ropes that the climbers pull up a bit as a time. This was the only one I saw that morning, but that night, it was clear that lots of people like to wake up in that situation.
Info: Made with a Nikon D300 DX 12.3MP Digital SLR Camera
