Martian

As I mentioned, the Karakoram is like a hybrid between Mars and the Antarctic. Apparently there are also Martians to be spotted ;-) Pierre Neyret, our guide, took this picture of me when we were at Snow Lake (Solu Towers are in the background). I was fairly severely sunburnt on one side of my face and I took precautions to avoid further exposure. Hence the bizarre outfit.

Pierre took this picture with his Panasonic Lumix LX2. This was the first time he took a digital camera on an expedition. Previous journeys he had faithfully documented with his Nikon SLR. The LX2 seemed to do a great job throughout the whole trip. (A selection of his images can be found on his website; there's some great stuff). And to my surprise the same applied to all the other digital cameras. I was the only film-based shooter. All the others had digicams, ranging from compacts to mid-level DSLRs (incidentally Panasonic was the most popular brand across the group). None of them broke down, despite the harsh conditions (prodigious amounts of dust, 40°C temperature differences, low temperatures, moisture). And with these portable solar panels batteries could be recharged in a matter of hours. Clearly, even non-pro digital cameras can hold themselves up quite well in the most hostile of conditions. That's certainly something I took away from this trip ...