This made the rounds in Yosemite circles a few months back, but it’s such an amazing photo project that it deserves a wider audience. 

The photography wizards Eric Hanson of Blueplanet VR and Greg Downing of HyperAcuity created an extremely high resolution, zoomable image of El Capitan, complete with red lining of routes and a climbing team in action on the Nose. You just need to see this, click the button below, zoom in, and be amazed. 

The technical details of how this photo was created go something like this: a high definition camera took about 2,000 images of El Capitan, and then the images were stitched together to make one single super high res image.

Then, all the climbing routes were drawn on the photo. 

And to top it off, another 2,000 or so photos were taken of two climbers on a one day climb of the Nose route, and these were added to the photo. 

You don’t have to have ambitions of El Capitan to appreciate the technical expertise, creativity, and beauty of this project. 

And, if you do want to climb El Cap, this could be a terrific planning and route finding resource.

(For example, you can see in this photo exactly how far down you need to lower down of the Boot Flake to properly execute the famous King Swing on the Nose :-)