Night Ice Climbing in the Cogne Valley, Western Alps, Italy

Photograph by Alexandre Buisse

"Climbing by night is an intimidating prospect: Will I find my protection and find the easiest line ... or make a bad decision due to the darkness?" says Canadian climber Jen Olson, seen ascending an icefall in the Cogne Valley of the Gran Paradiso region of the Italian Western Alps. Luckily, the route didn't have any unwelcome surprises. "I find that when I'm on snow or ice at night, the light is good enough to make good decisions. Everything else falls away, it's quiet and clear. Afterward, I tell myself, I should climb at night more often!"
Getting the Shot
“It is much more tricky for climbers to lead challenging ice by headlamp than daylight, so we all had to be careful to keep a big safety margin,” says adventure photographer Alexandre Buisse. The climb was assigned by Sports Illustrated, and Buisse knew the photo he wanted to capture. “I scouted this route a week prior and kept tabs on ice conditions and temperatures in the few days before the shoot,” he recalls.
Set up on a fixed line, Buisse was able to move up and down on pace with the climbers and shoot the various angles he had in mind. “This is the type of image I was really looking to shoot while planning. Everything else was bonus.”
Keeping the lighting simple, Buisse shot above the second pitch, below and to the side of the climbers. “I wanted to keep the lighting relatively simple, as logistics were very complicated, and it was impossible to reposition the flashes once I was up on the wall. For this particular image, I used a single studio strobe ten meters away from the base of the waterfall, equipped with a zoom reflector to focus the beam on the single area where the climber would be. I was careful to balance the power of the flash with the headlamps of the climbers,” says Buisse.
He photographed with a Nikon D4 and a Nikon 16-35mm f/4 lens.