In all her glory..

In all her glory.., originally uploaded by The Wandering Hermit.

nyone who's ever witnessed the sun set or rise over mountains can attest that during these daily occurances the mountains are at their most beautiful.. The constant shifting in the intensity of the light makes these times entrancing as you feverishly wish that you can capture it all on film (though film can never compare to actually being there and cannot truely convey the magnificance totally still its the next best thing)..

Also another reason I click a lot of such shots is that while climbing in the Garhwal and Kumaon Himal it is best to get the major climbing done when the snow is relatively hard and compact after a nights freeze as within an hour of the sun touching the slopes, the snow conditions start to deteriorate almost instantly and by noon its almost slush.

Its this constant freeze and melting which also make rockfall a constant danger as the snow binding these rocks becomes elastic and all of a sudden the rocks break loose when least expected.

These two reasons make climbing here quite a serious proposition and as a result the standard grade of difficulty on climbs like the Sharks Fins (Meru Central seen here) or the South Pillar of Changabang & Bhagirathi's West Buttress , South Face of Purbi Dunagiri (Still unclimbed) are amongst the highest that mountaineers have tackled making them some of the hardest technical Big Wall climbs in the world today.
Out of 30 expeditions only 2 have managed to climb the Shark's Fin and that too not all the way having had to detour from the route to reach the peak.