on the dump i happened to find an elinchrom quadra right next to the channel of my own transmitter (thanks step ;)), so some shots were lit with that – others with one or two of my SB80s.. unfortunately the sky went grey a little too early, so i couldn’t take advantage of the “no-x-sync” shutters for too long..

what began with a beautiful morning in the swiss mountains more and more developed to what was predicted: heavy rainfalls starting right after noon. so besides the problems to cover such event alone (long distances, no way to move on the (only) road while the race is on), it was a real challenge to keep my stuff dry and functional.. of course the remotes soon gave up due to the humidity – so i mainly had to rely on the cam in my hand.
to move, i had an mtb with me, rolling down was the easy part, but getting up that (really steep) road with the heavy weight on the back took a lot of time.. for one major move i was lucky to (literally) get hold of one of the motorbikes securing the track – which wasn’t that easy either though.. holding that guy’s arm with my left (weak) hand, my bike straight with the other, still the heavy backpack on my back, and that all while going steep up with 40km/h or more.. not so funny. and did i mention the heavy rain? not that the water would stay on the ground if one rolls upwards with broad mtb-tires.. :(

see me in action @1:27 8)

as legendary as the race, is the fact that it always rains at this event, heavily – as in floodlike. so it was predicted for this year either, but against all forecasts, after 5 minutes of dripping around noon the day turned to the complete opposite.. still we got our dose of mud after dark, when the after-race party with the fabulous binder-krieglstein on stage took place.

it’s by far not as common a sport in austria as one should think, compared to france or spain it’s actually still quite unknown – but the organizer astc.at does his best to change this.

conditions were extremely varying, though in the beginning looked especially bad – climbing to my first spot i already saw myself being found as “oetzi” with a funny bonnet 8) – but by the time the race was started the sky turned blue and i even got a little sunstroke at my second spot, directly on the glacier..

the rest of the photos (including the one’s of my fellow sportografs) can be found here.

ps: thanks for the bonnet, karin ;)

so i was mainly there to help the team and shoot photos, and as i had a 30d at hand i thought that would be a nice possibility to give it a test-drive – which i did.. i shot a lot of trash which i already put where it belongs, and of course many pics of our team, but the less “personal” ones i put up in this gallery..

[edit: it was there where i met the sportograf-guys first, so i thought i should add this, for historical reasons :)]

firebrigades from the whole district and around fought all day long to get it under control.. though i might have been able to get closer i thought that impressive tower of smoke would look better from a little distance so i went onto a nearby hill to document it, passing by near only on my way home again.. after all even from up there i caught a decent headache from the likely not so healthy gases..

this time we were on a rather small building in the southern part of vienna where they cleaned the tiled facade and windows that can’t be reached from inside.. i just shot from the roof and the safe ground, but next time they might rope me down.. a little bigger scraper then though, the highest of vienna.. if i dare.. 8)