Looks like there's a few on the icefall. Follow the line of garbage, then up and across the fall. The only hard part is dealing with the inverted mouse movement on the interface. Why would they do that???
This photo really makes me appreciate the fractal geometry and self-similarity of natural formations. When looking at part of the image w/o any objects of known size for reference I lost all sense of proportion. Tiny "pebbles" were actually boulders, etc.
So this is a little off-topic, but I read an article the other week that i haven't been able to shake about the number of people that have died on Everest and whose bodies have never been retrieved (warning, morbid and slightly graphic):<p><a href="http://sometimes-interesting.com/2011/06/29/over-200-dead-bodies-on-mount-everest/" rel="nofollow">http://sometimes-interesting.com/2011/06/29/over-200-dead-bo...</a><p>Just a reminder that those little dots are people who are taking a very real risk by attempting to reach the summit. I'm not sure if I'm envious of their drive, or if I think they are absolutely crazy.
Here is a Gizmodo article on the photo for those wanting the back story: <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5969706/a-stunning-two-billion-pixel-photo-is-the-safest-way-to-explore-mount-everest" rel="nofollow">http://gizmodo.com/5969706/a-stunning-two-billion-pixel-phot...</a>
Wow, I was thinking to myself: "Jeez, look at all that trash those climbers have left on the mountain!"<p>Then I zoomed in some more, and realized the "trash" was actually tents.
When you follow <a href="http://www.alanarnette.com/downloads/everestsouthroutemap.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.alanarnette.com/downloads/everestsouthroutemap.jp...</a> this picture you can see the route. I had a hard time seeing any of the climbers until I knew where to look.<p>Point C3 is the last place you can actually see humans (& tents), C4 is already more of a guess.
I was able to follow the line of people / tents about halfway up using this as a guide:<p><a href="http://www.abc-of-mountaineering.com/images/content-images/article-327.gif" rel="nofollow">http://www.abc-of-mountaineering.com/images/content-images/a...</a><p>Then lost them. Amazing photo!
I saw the /gigapans/ in the URL and googled for it, thinking it must be a super intelligent panoramic "image sticher"+"image viewer" written in flash - but found this: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigapan" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigapan</a>
The founder of the company I work for (Lot18) actually climbed Everest - so after sending him the link to this, he dropped by and explained everything we were looking at - and outlining the paths and various dangers associated with the climb. It's quite an amazing story - and I found some slides related to his climb from 2009: <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/snooth/everest-2003-north-face-rescue" rel="nofollow">http://www.slideshare.net/snooth/everest-2003-north-face-res...</a>
This is the work of David Bresears<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Breashears" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Breashears</a><p><i>The result of a project by David Breashears, who has already climbed the highest mountain in the world five times. He used old images of Everest and its glaciers and combined them with new ones.<p>The photo is part of a broader project called GlacierWorks by the mountaineer Breashears, who made the much-acclaimed IMAX documentary “Everest.”</i>
Just spent like 25 minutes looking it over with my colleague at work. There is so much going on here, it's awesome. I was also very blown away by how big the camp at the bottom of the valley was. Most of those must be semi-permanent structures that the guides maintain. I couldn't imagine that is transient traffic. I think I remember seeing something on departures (or something) about a big festival that happens in this valley. Maybe that has some context here as well, but I have no idea. Great link!
Wow this is captivating, but panning with the mouse on a desktop is so frustrating, the image movement is opposite what I expect! (browsing on a desktop, Windows/Chrome)
There might be a couple of climbers on the left ridge of Everest, which I just read is the easier climb. If you look near the base of the ridge on the left, there is a strip of snow that starts going up the mountain. Follow the ridge up you will come across a little cloud puff rising up on the other side. Just beyond that point, you will see two super-tiny parallel specks that sort of look like they are leaning into the mountain.
I only found the climbers after looking at this Everest route map:<p><a href="http://www.greatoutdoors.com/everest-2010/routes-maps" rel="nofollow">http://www.greatoutdoors.com/everest-2010/routes-maps</a><p>Look for camp 3. You have to zoom all the way in, and look at where the rough snow meets the smooth snow. You'll see some super tiny yellow dots, those are the tents. The tiny black specks just to the left are climbers.<p>The sense of scale in the Himalayas is almost unfathomable.....
I'm amazed not by the mountain - but by the size of the camp in the valley. I knew a lot of people climbed Mt Everest, but that't practically a small city.
Nice photograph and interface. How was the photograph actually composed?<p>Found them... Spoiler: <a href="http://imgur.com/zpyOg" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/zpyOg</a>
The GlacierWorks team (in cooperation with URC Ventures) also made a photo-realistic 3D model of the Himalayas using images that were captured using a helicopter.<p>The preview video looks promising: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEs3euTgj8s" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEs3euTgj8s</a><p>Background info: <a href="http://urcventures.com/whats-new/" rel="nofollow">http://urcventures.com/whats-new/</a>
Great picture! We are also a company based in Nepal where this picture is taken from. Our company name is after another peak - Manaslu, which is a 8th highest peak in the world. We do Ruby on Rails web development. <a href="http://www.manaslutech.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.manaslutech.com</a>
Others will be able to fill in more detail as I'm just going off memory here, but I <i>think</i> this is taken from the Nepalese side.<p>The ice field just above Base Camp (which, wow, look at all those tents) is the Khumbu Icefall, which climbers must scale to en route to the South Col.
Is this done with Autopano (<a href="http://www.kolor.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.kolor.com/</a> <a href="http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/brown/autostitch/autostitch.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/brown/autostitch/autostitch.html</a>)?
This is simply breathtaking. I'm sure the app behind this is assembling tiles together, but does there exist a full-resolution image of this in a single piece?<p>I've tried to use my network inspector to figure out how to access the individual tiles, but no luck.
I really like the user experience and I am impressed by how fluid it runs on my computer. Much more fluid than Google maps.
You should add a collaborative tagging interface, where users can choose to point out certain parts.
Amazing. I was fortunate to travel out to Alaska a couple of years ago and do some glacier climbing and hiking. It was amazing, but pales in comparison to the vast, immense power of this photo. Awesome.
For more photos of the mountain and others, the photographers' site: <a href="http://www.glacierworks.org/the-glaciers/" rel="nofollow">http://www.glacierworks.org/the-glaciers/</a>