© Corey Rich
04. 10. 12. - 12:34
Face off as camera drone follows climbers to 6251 meter high peak
A Swiss sporting goods company has managed to produce spectacular video footage of a claim of the 6,251m Nameless Tower in Pakistan by using a specially made drone camera.
The device needed to be modified with four extremely high-powered rotors to ensure it can stay in the air despite the high altitude – and it also needed to be modified to withstand the extreme cold that threatened to freeze either the rotors or the camera.
The result was up close and personal footage of the climbers climbers David Lama, Peter Ortner and Corey Rich as they made their ascent up the side of the massive rock face.
The fourth member of the exhibition Remo Masina from the Swiss firm Dedicam controlled the radio controlled drone from the base of the rock face underneath the climbers.
He said: "We were really delighted with the footage – we were able to get right up to the rock face to create a totally new type of footage of a clim it was a big challenge to work on this project because it was really difficult to do a field test under conditions approaching those that we actually faced once we were on location. Here is extremely thin and it's extremely cold and something like this at this height had never been achieved before."
The expedition members said they were delighted with the results sponsored to celebrate the 150th anniversary of sporting goods company Mammut which is based at Seo in Switzerland.
And although on location the filming went without problems the expedition itself did run into difficulties – the first drone which was sent by post to arrive in advance for testing was seized by customs officials on the Pakistan border suspicious that it might be used for spying – and they have so far refused to hand it back.
The sporting goods firm is planning for the anniversary to sponsor the climbing of 150 summits around the world which included the Nameless Tower climb.
