With good weather back in the past couple of weeks, we have finally been able to go do proper stuff in the hills, and I have been very busy lately. Beside all the warm rock climbing (including the two biggest granite classics of the range, Rébuffat-Baquet on Aiguille du Midi and Contamine on Pointes Lachenal), the highlights have been twofold. First, it was an honor to accompany superman Jeff Mercier on his attempt to open a new mixed line on the very steep north face of Petit Capucin. Unfortunately, a very blank section shut the attempt down after four pitches of high level drytooling and ice smears runout climbing. Though I was only belaying/following/shooting, it was eye opening to see what strong and bold climbers can get up. The development of drytooling is certainly shaking things up!

A week later, I teamed up with Italian guide Jimmy Sesana for a ski shoot on the classic Vallée Noire, the Italian variation of Vallée Blanche. With fresh snowfall 36h earlier and a cloudy day previously, we hoped for some powder, but temperatures were so high that we mostly skied the most incredibly awful crust almost all the way down. Still, we got first tracks, some really good images and first-class banter, so no complaining on my end!

Enjoy some images from both adventures after the jump.

After over a year of trashing thoroughly testing their products, I am glad to join the newly created Pro Shooter roster of Peak Design. They are best known for the amazing little device called the Capture Camera Clip but also recently came out with slings/tether systems, the Cuff and especially the Leash.

While shooting in the mountains, it is of course crucial to have easy access to my camera, but also to be able to store it in a way that is non-intrusive when I am busy climbing or skiing. Though I still use the ThinkTank Skin bag system (see my review from a few years back), I almost always have the camera on a Capture fixed to my climbing harness, and tethered to a gear loop via a Leash.

While I don't (yet) have a full review of either devices, the launch of the pro team is an opportunity by Peak Design to give some free stuff away. On Wednesday, April 17th (aka today), they are focusing on yours truly and will give one of my prints by the end of the day, along with a full Capture/Cuff/Leash system. For all the important details and instructions on how to enter, see their facebook page, or go straight to the contest page.

Good luck!

Last May, I was hired by British technical clothing manufacturer Montane to shoot two of their athletes, Jon Gupta and Nick Valentine, who happen to be good friends of mine. They were planning their big Snow Leopard expedition to Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan the following summer, and wanted to use the opportunity of having a week in the Alps to do a big alpine route as training, which would provide me with the perfect shoot opportunity.

We set our sights on Dent Blanche, a fairly moderate climb in summer but a bigger undertaking in snowy conditions. Unfortunately, after slogging through most of the long approach with ridiculous packs, we were turned back by bad avalanche conditions on the Ferpècle glacier. Back in Chamonix, we waited out a spell of bad weather before shooting the first part of the classic Midi-Plan ridge. Here too, we skied part of it and climbed the rest, but again, sketchy snow conditions forced us to abort about halfway through.

Still, even though we didn't manage to finish a route, it was two great days of skiing and climbing, and both the client and myself were very happy with the results, which were used thoroughly in the following months in their catalog, workbook, website and tradeshow material. Now that the embargo is over, here are some shots.

Have a look at the gallery after the jump

Teaching mountain photography is something I have been very keen on doing, initially through my books (and between us, there may be another one coming up soon) but increasingly in person. It was only a matter of time before I started to offer workshops, but heavy logistics to ensure safety and alternative solution for bad weather had always stopped me. Well, the day has finally come, and I am very happy to announce that I will be running such a workshop for the second edition of the Alpine ARC'ademy, organized by Arc'teryx in Chamonix in mid-June.

We will start with the last Aiguille du Midi bin, around 4pm on Friday, 14th of June, then head to the Cosmiques Hut to have a short class, before heading back out to shoot another ARC'ademy group bivying on the glacier. With some luck, we'll have a superb sunset on Glacier des Bossons and Mont Blanc. We'll rise early the next day for sunrise, shoot some easy climbing with Arc'teryx athletes before crossing the Vallée Blanche, an easy but spectacular glacier walk. Finally, we'll all come down via the Panoramique cablecar from Helbronner, just in time for a beer in Chamonix. All of course with mountain guides for safety.

You can find all the details on the workshop page, and I suggest booking soon if you are interested, as there is a very limited number of spots.

Edit: since the original workshop sold out in a couple of hours, we have added another session, immediately after the first one, starting on Saturday 15th at 4pm. Still a few spots available as I write this.

A few weeks ago, the 2013 Patagonian Expedition Race took place in the southern tip of South America and, like last year, I came to Punta Arenas to photograph the event. With one race already under my belt, I had a better idea of what to expect and how to capture good images, but nothing can prepare you to an environment like Chilean Patagonia. As it turned out, 2013 was the toughest race on record, with only two teams completing the grueling 701km course (and a third finishing a shortened course), out of the 11 that started. The highlight of the course happened on the first day, with a crossing of the Southern Patagonian Icecap (Hielo Continental Sur) on the Tyndall glacier. Though it was supposed to be a mellow 11km affair, it took us through severely crevassed terrain and took NorCal, the team I was following, 28km and 7h to cross. Three other teams had to spend the night on the glacier, during a full-on storm!

After returning from the glacier section over two big days, I shot some mountain biking and one of the few kayak sections near Puerto Natales, the gateway to Torres del Paine. Logistically, it became then too complicated to try and follow one of the few teams still in the race, so I spent a few days in Punta Arenas and shot the lead team, Adidas-Terrex Prunesco from the UK, as they crossed the finish line, 8 and a half days after starting! A few hours later, I was on a bus headed to the mythical Cerro Torre and Fitzroy range in Argentina, but that is a story for another day.

See the gallery after the jump

After last year's equally crazy and amazing experience in the Patagonian Expedition Race, including trekking 100km unsupported with the racers, a luxury cruise in the fjords and using the Cordillera Darwin as a backdrop, I am very excited to be back for the 2013 edition.

As I write this, sitting in the race office, things are starting to gear up as we all wait for the briefing on the maps, start making elaborate plans to handle the incredibly complex logistics, all of us painfully aware that most of the plans will go out the window within a few hours of the start, as always. And that as soon as this happens, we'll all be in for what we came to the end of the world looking for: an adventure!

Shooting the race will only be the first part of my trip, however, and as soon as we are all safely back in Punta Arenas and done celebrating, I'll head north across the border, to the mythical Cerro Torre and Fitzroy range above the Argentinian town of El Chalten. And given how good the conditions have been this season, I have some pretty ambitious climbing plans. More on them later.

If you want to follow my shots from the race and my climbing experiences in real time (internet connection allowing), turn to my facebook page.

For the first outing of the year, I teamed up with Morgan Baduel and Karin Payot for a go on the classic Modica-Noury ice gully on the East Face of Mont Blanc du Tacul, next to the even more popular Gabarrou-Albinoni. With the Vallée Blanche in excellent condition very early on this year, we used the ever popular approach by gravity, enjoying beautiful light but high winds on the Midi ridge, then a quick ski down followed by a few minutes of skinning, saw us next to the bergshrund.

Unfortunately, the high winds we had hoped to be sheltered from blew straight in the gully, bringing constant spindrift and defeating any hopes of warmth. The 300m snow gully before reaching the ice proper was full of deep snow and made for slow progress until we reached the first pitches. While the ice was really good on the first surprisingly steep two pitches, we were unfortunately shut down on the third crux rope length, as the near vertical 20m wall offered such thin ice that protection would have been impossible.

Abseiling down in the spindrift, then downclimbing the last section, I nearly fell into a secondary bergshrund when a snow bridge collapsed under me... We only had to ski down the rest of Vallée Blanche, unfortunately in crusty snow and with heavy packs. No summit, many bouts of hot aches, but still a good day out!

See the gallery after the jump

Now that 2013 has officially begun, it's time for a little reflection of the past year, a very eventful one for me. From getting frostbite to discovering Patagonia, bagging beautiful summits, learning to fly, working for big clients and meeting a wonderful young lady.

I also feel that I produced some of my best work yet, and it has been difficult to choose just ten images from the year. It should probably also be noted I excluded some of the images shot on assignment and still embargoed by the clients, even though a couple would probably have made the cut! You can also check out my selection for 2011.

Mark Lattanzi at the finish line of the Patagonian Expedition Race, after 8 days of pain and effort.

I don't shoot portraits very often, but this one is pretty special to me. I trekked close to 100km with Mark and the rest of his team, the Dancing Pandas, at the beginning of the 2012 race, and they were the loveliest, most fun people you could possibly spend time in the wilderness with. After leaving them at a checkpoint and taking a (motorised) shortcut to the end, I watched team after team roll in, but still no Dancing Pandas until literally the last moment: out of an 8 days race, they only had 14 minutes to spare when they reached the checkpoint. Mark's face as he learned he wouldn't have to kayak another 30km in bad weather and that the race was over shows what it really takes to finish such an extreme race.

Read about the other shots after the jump

The fall interseason in Chamonix can be a bit depressing: the lifts all close down (save for the Montenvers train), there isn't enough snow to ski, waterfall ice hasn't formed and it's too cold and wet to rock climb. On top of all this, the town is deserted and most stores simply close down. The few options include indoor climbing, drytooling down in Le Fayet or Sallanches and a few ice gullies on Chardonnet or Pélerins. Or, as I discovered, starting the ice climbing season in Mer de Glace crevasses.

During the spring and summer, a lot of the water from the snowmelt gets on the huge glacier and has to find a way down. It mostly stays on the surface, creating small rivers, but occasionally its path is blocked and, warmer than the ice, it burrows and creates underground tunnel systems. Then, in the fall, when the flow stops and before the holes fill up with snow, they can be explored and climbed. They can be quite steep and very deep and narrow, sometimes with false floors, and always offer out of this world atmospheres.

I ended up going twice in the past two weeks. Once with Hulya, where we found a 20m deep, 10m long crevasse with a complex architecture, and a week later with pro skier and North Face athlete Giulia Monego, working out of a simple 30+ meters deep, 1m wide hole!. The old ice was so hard that placing screws was quite an ordeal, so we kept to top-roping in both cases, and I managed to get some good shots from deep down.

With the snow falling as I write, it will probably be over for this year, but I will be sure to come back in 2013 for more crazy blue photography!

See the gallery after the jump

I had been talking with people from the big German outdoor brand Vaude about a shoot since ISPO, last January, and at the end of last September, we finally got the opportunity to work together. They wanted a winter alpine shoot in Chamonix and luck was on our side, as big storms plastered the mountains white in the days before our shoot.

With limited options, we elected to go climb the classic and not too hard SE ridge of Tour Ronde, on the Italian side of the range. It was totally different (and more interesting, I think) than when I climbed it in July, as the deep snow turned it into an interesting snow/mixed route. Doing it with good friends like Hulya and Francis certainly didn't hurt either! The weather, initially very good, turned on us, and additional worries about avalanche conditions and not missing the last bin compelled us to descend the normal route at its junction with the ridge, rather than keep going to the very top. Still, a very successful shoot and some really cool images!

See the full gallery after the jump

In the world of photo briefs, it doesn't get much better than what Mikaela Bandini, Can't Forget Italy's mastermind, told me on the phone sometime in August: "We want you to come to the Trentino region in Italy. We'll have you do the coolest stuff we can imagine, eat the best food we can find, and you will have total freedom to create a video about how awesome paragliding is in the region". Sign me up!

So in mid-September, along with a bunch of ridiculously talented people (including but not limited to Lukasz Warzecha, Matt Brown, Caspar Diederik, Sergio Cesari and John Gubertini), we toured the very varied region of Trentino, stopping in Madonna di Campiglio, Pinzolo, Canazei, San Martino and Torbole along the Garda lake. Though there were many awesome moments for me, from riding down (and somehow not managing to break my neck) a full suspension mountain bike down the Grosté pass to canyoning in 3ºC water, from seeing the whole region on a helicopter to eating some of the best food I ever had in traditional malgas, the highlight has to remain the four tandem flights I did. Two took place above Pinzolo, with great views of the Brenta Dolomites, and two more in Val di Fassa, with ex-world champion Jimmy Pacher, thermalling above the Sella group and transiting to the Langkofer in a wonderful hour long flight.

I can't wait to go back to Trentino with my own wing, to shoot more and fly more, but in the meantime, enjoy some flying images from the trip! You can also take a quick "behind the scenes" look of me at work on cantforgetitaly's website.

Full gallery after the jump

Apologies for the lack of updates for a while - surprisingly enough for mountain adventure photography, the heart of summer is actually low season, while things pick up with a vengeance come the fall... In between photoshoots and planning a wee expedition to Morocco, here are some updates on a cool trip in late August with Hulya.

It all started with a plan to go shoot some hardcore climbing on the famous Tre Cime in the Dolomites. Hulya and I quickly agreed it didn't make sense to drive the 8 hours from Chamonix and not climb anything, so we planned to get on the most classic line, the Comici-Dimai on Cima Grande. And since we were driving anyway, and it's kind of on the way (what's a 3 hours detour, really?), we thought we'd attempt the Zmutt Ridge on the Matterhorn on the way back. It's a much harder proposition than the two normal routes and is rarely in condition, but we had heard good reports two weeks earlier, so it was worth a shot.

Finally, at the last minute, the Dolomite shoot was cancelled but our spirits were so high that we decided to just make it a Matterhorn trip, and see from there. To make a long story short, we had the usual Zermatt experience: beautiful, overpriced and with awful service in the Hörnli factoryhut. We traversed under the North Face but decided to turn around before reaching the ridge proper, a combination of high winds and terrible ice conditions. Bailing was actually much more involved than going up, especially having to downclimb a bad ice slope with barely any screws. Slipping would have been a really bad idea. Since it was still early, we gave a weak hearted try on the classic Hörnli ridge, but eventually yours truly felt too tired to keep going and we just went back down to Rösti-land.

Somewhat discouraged by our Zermatt experience, we decided to drive a few hours to the Bernese Oberland and what had been described to us as a granite paradise, Salbitschjen. The double crux turned out to be not spending a few days eating blueberries on the approach trail, and managing to leave the insanely tasty breakfast in the local hut. We had intended to get on the crazy West Ridge, a 32 pitches, 1000m, 6b route, but threatening weather made us reconsider and we climbed the shorter and mellower South Ridge with Takala start instead (still 17 pitches, 600m, 5c+) and uncharacteristically only got pouring rain well into the descent.

Images after the jump

As Gaston Rébuffat famously said, it is on the summit of Aiguille Verte that one truly becomes a montagnard. Very prominent on the East end of the Mont Blanc range, next to the smaller but arguably more impressive Drus, the Verte is one of the most beautiful summits anywhere. It also doesn't have any easy route to the top, the two least difficult ones being the Whymper couloir and the Moine Ridge, both long AD+ routes.

Despite a couple of half hearted attempts at the Sans Nom Ridge earlier this summer, I couldn't claim the title yet. Then Hulya came back to Chamonix, and after a change of plans from the original Innominata idea, we settled on the Grands Montets ridge. It is very, very, very long, requiring most parties to bivy halfway through, and is also one of the most complete routes in the Alps, featuring everything from moderate rock climbing to scrambling, mixed climbing, glacier terrain, and even a small ice gully in the middle, for no apparent reason. But most importantly of all, it has a deliciously short approach, as the cablecar drops us right at the start of the route.

So over the next two days, accompanied by two guided parties of Americans, we climbed this amazing mountain. Things went pretty well, though an unclear guidebook description and iced up rock slabs did give us some difficulties at the end of the first day, climbing the final rock tower, Pointe Ségogne. We settled in an amazingly located bivy spot on Col du Nant Blanc, napped for a few hours then climbed the Calotte to find ourselves, finally montagnards, on the summit just as dawn was poking out.

It's for magic moments like that one that I climb!

See the full gallery after the jump

There is no shortage of inspiring mountains in Chamonix, but if you spend some time here, and especially if you take the Montenvers cog train, one needle stands out among all: Aiguille de la République. The reason is simple. It is very, very pointy. As in, this pointy (on the left, shot from last winter):

Two weeks ago, I tried to climb it with Claire. We had planned to bivy on a big ledge one third of the way up, because the weather forecast was perfect and bivying is fun. But of course, you should never trust a mountain forecast, and we got drenched in a thunder/hail/rain-storm for most of the night, with little shelter. Cold and wet the next morning, and with still unsettled weather, we decided to retreat.

Ten days later, I was back on Envers des Aiguilles, this time with Hulya and Olivier. We hoped to climb the SE ridge of Bec d'Oiseau, but a mediocre forecast and an impassable bergschrund made us reconsider, and back to République we went. The first part, well known, went quickly, but then we discovered the real difficulty of the route: not getting lost. In broken, low angle ground and with precious few visual landmarks, we made several routefinding mistakes before managing to reach the saddle between Grands Charmoz and République. All day, the skies had looked threatening, but we agreed not to bail until it actually started raining... The last few pitches to the summit, though fairly easy on paper, were surprisingly difficult and very exposed, taking us even longer than expected. Finally, at 6:30pm, in a near whiteout, all three of us stood on the much coveted summit, 20cm wide and dropping hundreds of meters on all side. Pointy indeed!

It was time for an orderly retreat. We took bets on how many abseils we would eventually need, but even my high estimate of 17 came short, as the final tally came to a round 20. Most of them happened by night, on mostly unknown and/or sketchy anchors. At midnight exactly, we finally set foot on the glacier. The choice between a 4 to 5 hours walk back down to Chamonix or a 15 minutes one to the nearby hut was easy, a wise decision as concerned hut wardens had even left us some food!

In the end, we all agreed on one thing: it's a beautiful summit, but you have to earn it!

See the image gallery after the break

Sometimes, the best part of mountaineering isn't the climbing itself but the simple joy of being in the mountains. A couple of days ago, Claire, Xavier and I headed for some of the classic routes on the northwest faces of Aiguilles de Chamonix. We ditched our initial plans of heading up Pilier Cordier on Grands Charmoz and instead went on the ridiculously good L'eau rance d'Arabie (F6b, 8 pitches), on the Pilier Rouge de Blaitière. Perfect cracks, perfect rock, some slabs here and there, super fun moves and gorgeous views.

After abseiling the route in the early evening, we settled on a flat spot on the moraine, just below the glacier, and enjoyed an amazing bivy. Since the cablecar was barely an hour away, we had even brought beers! And as soon as we settled in for the night, we were treated to a superb moonrise behind the Aiguilles, at one point perfectly aligned behind the summit of Aiguille du Midi.

The next morning, Claire and Xavier headed back up to the Pilier Rouge to climb the shorter and even more classic Nabot Léon, while I headed down to get some work done, getting in Cham just in time for breakfast...

See the image gallery after the break

With the weather in Chamonix so unsettled in the past few weeks, it has been somewhat challenging to find routes to do in the short weather windows. While climbing on the Aiguilles Rouges yesterday, we lamented how the next day was supposed to be pretty bad, except maybe for a few hours in the morning, and how we wouldn't have time to do anything. Then we looked across the valley at the Grands Montets resort, and noticed that above the 3300m high top station, the snow slope leading to the ultra-classic Petite Aiguille Verte looked pretty good. Almost skiable. Cross that, it was definitely skiable.

So this morning, Hulya and I headed to the top station to do what is probably the easiest and most crowded alpine route in Chamonix, the Petite Aiguille Verte ridge. With our skis on. A 200m snow slope, a good bergschrund, easy mixed ground, a few rock moves over a short wall, two tricky downclimbs and we were on top, barely an hour after stepping out of the cablecar. We could see the whole route, now teeming with people, for many on their very first alpine route!

Before we could descend, we were treated to a very spectacular show, as a big chunk of the north face of the Dru collapsed in a giant cloud of rock and snow. Luckily, I managed to capture a few shots of this sobering spectacle, especially considering I had very seriously considered climbing the very route that got erased, later in the summer!

The descent was quickly negotiated, leading to the most fun part of the day: skiing. In July. The slope was short and the snow barely covered the ice in parts, but with the heat of the day, it was deliciously soft and led to turns so fun that as soon as we got down, skis went back on the packs and we climbed right back up for another run.

A good day in the hills, for sure.

See the image gallery after the break

One of the questions that comes back most often when people learn what I do for a living is: how do you manage not to drop your camera? Up until Saturday, I could (somewhat smugly) answer that I am being very careful and have been lucky so far.

Two days ago, I was shooting Heather Geluk and had just gotten some pretty amazing shots of the climbers with Dent du Géant in the background, when my camera decided to go for a hike on its own (I'll keep the exact details of how the camera came to be dropped confidential for now, as I want to let the involved gear manufacturers investigate the issue first). The D700 and attached Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 II bounced around on the rock and ice slope, until the lens disappeared in a crevasse field. Amazingly, the camera stopped 150m lower and we managed to retrieve what was left of it... Sadly, the memory card was also damaged, though I have hopes of getting a specialized company to retrieve the photos from the morning.

We did finish the shoot, using a small Canon G12 and climbing the super fun Aiguilles d'Entrèves traverse. You can see the whole G12 set on facebook.

Because nothing beats broken camera porn, here is what my once dear D700 now looks like. The screen is completely gone and I cleaned the glass fragments out.

And now, the hunt for a D800 in time for some big shoots next week begins!

Find the full gallery after the jump.

It's a great honor to be featured in this year's Photo Annual issue of Climbing Magazine, with a double page spread (above) of the Arête du Midi, and a short text about my career. It is in the feature called Seven Under Thirty, on - you guessed it - climbing photographers under the age of 30. I am in good company, with Lukasz Warzecha, Dean Fleming, Garett Grove, Ben Herndon, Rich Crowder and Forest Woodward.

You can read the entire article in pdf or better yet, buy the issue!

The last few weeks have been extremely busy for me, as I have taken up yet another hobby and discovered a new way to enjoy the mountains: paragliding. It has been a long time coming, but things are going great, and I just celebrated today my 10th solo flight! Flying photography will probably follow at some point...

In between flights, however, I have also been climbing and skiing, shooting the Snow Leopard boys for British maker Montane (most photos from the shoot are still embargoed, however) on Dent Blanche and the Midi-Plan ridge, and most recently, attempting to ski Mont Blanc via the North Ridge of Dôme du Goûter, the so-called "Royal Route". With friend Hulya, we reached the emergency Vallot hut early in the day, encountering a gorgeous sunrise on the way, but at 4350m and only an hour below the summit, Hulya started exhibiting signs of Acute Mountain Sickness, so we decided to go back and ski down to Chamonix. Not quite a success, but definitely not a failure!

See the gallery after the jump

After many false starts and cancelling partners, it was with great relief that on April 17th, I took the Grands Montets lift with Francis Kelsey and four of his clients, Regina, Felix, Michael and Nick. Over the next five days, we skied the very famous route, weaving its way through valleys and across (many) cols in France and Switzerland. Starting out was a bit of a gamble, as the weather forecast wasn't great, but we got extremely lucky, and with the exception of a foggy second stage, we had almost perfect weather (including not too much sun, which makes skinning up a sweaty nightmare) and brilliant snow most of the way, with an indecent amount of powder.

It was a true adventure, it was fun, it was beautiful. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

See the full gallery