Carrying a Camera Up Aconcagua, Kilimanjaro and Elbrus
By Ning Ma
Kilimanjaro (5,895 m), Elbrus (5,642 m) and Aconcagua (about 6,960 m) are the highest mountains in Africa, Europe and South America. I carried a camera to the top of all three. Aconcagua is the highest mountain anywhere outside Asia.
What altitude does to gear
Most things break up there. Batteries lose their charge in minutes in the cold. Plastic gets brittle. A tripod that's rock-solid at sea level shakes in summit wind. And you, the person operating all of it, are short of oxygen and tired in a way that makes simple decisions slow.
A few habits that help:
- Keep spare batteries in an inside pocket, against your body, and rotate them.
- When you bring a cold camera into a warm tent, leave it sealed in a bag until it warms up. Otherwise moisture condenses inside it.
- Decide your settings before you need them. At altitude you won't think clearly enough to work them out in the moment.
Why I carry a heavy camera anyway
I use a Nikon D850. It's much heavier than a mirrorless camera, and I've tried the lighter ones, including the Sony A7R II, Sony Alpha 1 and several Fujifilms. The D850 still gives me the best dynamic range and color, and in extreme light that matters more than anything.
At nearly 7,000 meters every gram counts, and I carry it anyway. The alternative is reaching a place I may never see again and coming home with a file that can't hold up at 24 × 36 inches.
The lens is a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8. On a mountain the landscape is all around you, and a wide lens is the only way I've found to get that into a frame. The tripod is a Really Right Stuff TVC-24L: carbon fiber, 3.7 pounds, holds 40.
What the photographs are really of
Summit days on all three mountains start in the dark, and you reach the top tired, cold, and often above the clouds. Look through the Aconcagua, Kilimanjaro and Elbrus galleries and you'll find more tents, mules and porters than summit views.
On Aconcagua, mule trains carry supplies up to Plaza de Mulas, the base camp, a village of tents on the valley floor below the mountain. That's where Beasts of Burden and Canvas Village were made. The Halo, at the top of this page, is a lenticular cloud sitting on the summit. Lenticular clouds form when strong wind flows over a peak, and climbers read them as a warning.
The Halo, Mount Aconcagua, Argentina.
Kilimanjaro changes zone every day or two on the way up: rainforest, then moorland with giant groundsels (Prehistoric Path), then an alpine desert on the saddle between Kibo and Mawenzi (Between Peaks). Near the top are the last of the glaciers, which have been shrinking for more than a century (Stairway to Heaven). Porters carry most of what every expedition needs, and they're in more of my Kilimanjaro photographs than any peak.
Stairway to Heaven, Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania.
On Elbrus, the photograph I come back to is Steps Above the World: looking straight down past my own yellow boots and crampons at the Caucasus below.
Steps Above the World, Mount Elbrus, Russia.
Why the people are so small
In most of these pictures, people are specks. That's on purpose. It comes from shan shui hua, Chinese landscape painting, where people are small marks inside huge mountains and water. On a mountain like Aconcagua it's also simply accurate.
Into the Void, Mount Aconcagua, Argentina.