Scopes and Binos - Eyeskey 80mm spotting scope and Celestron Skymaster 70mm Binoculars

Planning our vertical adventure.....

One of the things that really excites me about new routing is picking out the line. Standing at the bottom trying to imagine all the moves, figuring out which features to follow.

Of course, on single pitch routes, this can mostly be done with the naked eye, but on a multipitch or a big wall there is a real limit to how much useful information you can get without a lens. Added to that is the difficulty of discussing the finer points with your teammates. Again on smaller routes a laser pen or even a pointing finger and good description can be enough, but sometimes it it really helpful to be able to focus on something and then show that exact view to your buddies.

Trying to find useful information on how much magnification you need to plan a big ascent is really pretty difficult though, so I thought I would share my findings on my last expedition.

Celestron Optical tubes -
amazing but not practical for expedtions

Obviously, I wanted to get the biggest lens I could afford. But what was also important was that it would not be too fragile or cumbersome, which ruled out most of the home astronomy style options such as the Celestron Optical Tube which offers amazing planetary views but has no dust seal and would have needed to be carried near enough as a single load. I also wanted to have the option of 'digiscoping' - using an ordinary camera attached to the scope. I was hoping this would help to draw up a rough topo from the comfort of base camp.

Eyeskey 80mm Spotting Scope

In the end I settled on two options. The Eyeskey 20-60 x 80 Zoom Spotting Scope  and a pair of Celestron Skymaster 20 x 70 Binoculars. Both are rubberised, waterproof and pretty tough so can take being shoved into a pack, and they were the largest lenses I could find like that.

While both can be tripod mounted, the scope really has to be and we only took one tripod, so the binoculars got used handheld most of the time. The scope came with a kit to adapt to a DSLR, but we did not end up taking one so I used the included mobile phone adapter and it was still fine for what we needed.

Celestron Skymaster Binoculars

I bit of maths - we were about 1km from the wall for the main figuring-out and the wall was somewhere between 1 and 1.2km high. Add maybe 500m to this for the altitude gain between the river and the wall. This works out that when viewing a pitch near the top of the wall we were around 1.8 - 2km from the rock. At this distance, with the scope we could see a 50m pitch full frame, with the binoculars it was closer to two pitches.

Viewing the wall from the river

Viewing Cerro Capicua's 1200m east face

3 pitches from the top, roughly 50m of rock shown.
Picture taken from position above with a phone on the included mount,
eye piece view was about 10-20% larger without the phone mount

For comparison, viewing the top pitches on El Capitan from El Cap meadow would be a distance of around 1300m, so the results would be something like 1.3 times better. Of course this is all approximate!

On granite, because the features are so prominent, this amount of magnification was definitely enough and gave us plenty of information to work with. To be honest, if it was much more I don't think we would have been able to get the image steady enough to view without a much heavier tripod (we had a manfrotto compact).

Up on the wall, the binoculars proved more useful, as aiming the scope at a steep enough angle was near impossible and the magnification was almost too much.

Checking our route with the binoculars from the first big ledge

In terms of the functionality, I really can't fault either of them. Both delivered well in terms of seeing what we needed to see and survived being hiked in and hauled admirably. A small gripe with the binoculars was that the rubber lens caps had no way to secure them, so would have been very easy to lose. We made a bodge with some tape and string but it was far from ideal. A built in flap like the one on the Eyeskey would have worked much better for our needs I think.

Overall, two great pieces of kit which will both be accompanying me on many more adventures. The increased vision they provided gave us much more confidence with our project, allowed us to discuss each pitch more easily from the ground and helped us chart our progress up on the wall.

Eyeskey 20-60x80mm Zoom Spotting Scope 

5 out of 5 - excellent quality, built to last and cheaper than most.

Celestron Skymaster 20x70mm Binoculars

4 out of 5 - great image and build but lost marks due to poor design on the lens caps