The Garden Find

Glacier Blanc

One of the first excursions we would undertake from Guillestre was up one of the major valleys in the Écrins. The Valley would lead us up to the base of the highest peak in the massif, Barre des Écrins at 4102m high. Several glaciers flow from this mountain and the idea was to get as close as possible to them. Once more it was a really really hot day, and another day that I wished that I'd done something about the AC in the car. This was a nice trip out for the car though. Being just a hike the car was unloaded and found the climbs a little easier, not to say that it really had any trouble when fully loaded, but it was certainly a bit more playful now.


The car belongs up here that's for sure.

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There was plenty of dramatic landscape to be seen.


This might look like an ordinary river, but its actually just from a glacier higher up. Interestingly (for me anyway) you can see evidence of the glacier in this photo, the rocks are ground smooth around the river. This glacier once made it all the way down this slope and wore the rocks round and smooth, stripping any topsoil too.







Melt water from the glaciers.


Spot the Celica...


Yeah there it is! A long long way down at this point. This was turning into a pretty brutal hike.




We were getting pretty close to the glacier though.


Still though it was getting pretty late in the day and we'd run out of food. What was worse is that we didn't have anything to cook for dinner either, so we decided to return to the car.




Can you spot the car again? It is down there...



We set off home after a pretty epic day. The day and night to follow would be one of the defining experiences of the holiday however.

 

Cosmic Celica

From the very first instance of planning this holiday I'd wanted to do some astrophotography; photographs of the Milky Way and the night sky. I also wanted to involve the Celica too. I'd had in my mind a shot that I could possibly take, of the Celica atop a mountain pass with the Milky Way in the background. Easier said than done really. Some of the cols were reasonably daunting in the daytime, let alone in the pitch black of the night. So far the opportunity had not presented itself. We'd either had a really busy day hiking and couldn't be bothered to stay up into the late night, or weather and location were dubious. However today we decided that we'd go and do it. Firstly though we had an entire day to get through.. no big hikes then.

Instead we drove up to Fort Queyras, a medieval castle first constructed at about 1265. It's up for sale actually, should anyone want to buy it. I would but my budget is perhaps a little short of the asking price.










It was sure nice to be out of the sun.




We basically spent the whole day milling about the fort. Headed back to pack some camera gear and prepare for the trip up the top of a mountain in pitch black. The weather was looking really promising too.
All the camera gear went into the back of the car, and a whole lot of warm clothes too. On the other cols that we had been over it was typically quite cold at the top, due to the altitude, cold even under the sun. Any wind would really add to the chill too. We weren't really sure how things would be once we were up there.



We set off from the campsite and it was bloody dark. No Moon just the stars in the night sky providing the slightest illumination. I was driving with light on of course but beyond my beams the landscape was invisible. Driving up the Combe du Queyras was a clue as to what was ahead of us. We were headed for the Col Agnel. A high pass (2744m / 9002.6ft) that goes into Italy, so at the top we would be standing at the border between two countries.



As soon as we started driving up the Col Agnel it was clear that despite having 130% brightness bulbs, I could certainly do with more! It was a very hairy drive, one which I took nice and slowly. Every crest disappeared into pure nothingness and every hairpin, especially the left turns, were like turning into a void.

Once at the top though the view was indescribable. The Milky Way was so so clear, readily visible. Clouds in the sky were not lit up from light pollution at all, they looked like dark shapes blocking out the stars. you couldn't see your hands in front of your face unless you put them up to the sky. Once your eyes had adapted to the dark things became a little easier. You could only just make out your hands. Amazingly the light from the Milky Way was strong enough to cast a very faint shadow. You really need pristine sky for this to happen. No light pollution and no Moon, just starlight. Incredible!


A single exposure of the car and the Milky way. I used no artificial light in this image, the car is simply lit up by starlight. So there you have it, the celica ontop of a mountain and our home galaxy all in one image.

I did however get serious and start using some dedicated techniques to photographing the night sky, here are my results, the images below show much more detail in the galaxy because of the technique used.

"The Milky Way, photo taken from the top of Col Agnel, Italy / France. At an altitude of 2744m above sea level. Here you can see near the central core of our home galaxy. The orange areas are dense collections of extremely old stars, nearing the end of their lives, as they cool, they turn yellow / red in colour and produce the yellow tones in the image. They are intersected by dark veins of dust and matter. Speckled with occasional nebulae, which can be seen as purple and red areas in the centre of the image. Towards the right edge the younger and hotter blue stars become visible. The dark silhouette on the left is a mountain in the foreground.

Home to our Sun, Earth and all the rest of the solar system. And home to an estimated 100–400 billion stars. That's a lot of stars. The diameter of the galaxy has been estimated at 150,000–180,000 light-years.

You can see the Milky Way unaided in the height of summer in good dark locations. It appears as it's namesake at first glance, a milky luminous streak traversing the sky. In good locations it's possible to see the dark dust lanes and other details."





Same description for this photo, but different lens to get a closer look at the core of the galaxy.

The weather was perfect really. It was cool, but not too cold, there was no wind really. The stillness was surreal. We spent a good number of hours up on the top of the col. A fair amount of time just laying on the tarmac and staring up into space. Not only were there thousands of stars visible but also plenty of meteors whizzing across the sky.

I think we ended up heading back to the campsite at about 3am. Another mildly frightening drive down the unlit mountain road. But a drive that was totally worth it.