Talus Slopes

Trip Report: Savoie, France (Part 1)

2011-12-30T19:38:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago, I posted about my favorite place, Timberline Lodge. While Timberline still holds that title, the Savoie "department" of France puts up a very good fight. I spent Christmas there, in a town called Albertville. The area ridiculously mountainous, and for a mountain-lover, it was a beautiful place to spend Christmas. For example, the view out of the apartment where Ken and I stayed:

On the other side of the apartment, across the street, there was a store that sold pain. Delicious, fresh pain (bread) that smelled great. I learned how to order pastries and coke products at the pain store: "Une tourmillion chocolat coco, et un coca 'cherie', grand," was one thing I ordered. A funny pastry with chocolate and coconut, and a large cherry coke. Our pain shop across the sheet:

We went on a number of day trips, and I will talk about each until I get bored.

Annecy

Annecy is a small town full of canals:

Annecy is also full of nougat.

We walked through the town and had lunch, and I learned to order apricot juice (jus d'abricot). Ken's mom, Jane, bought me a nice hat. Here I am with my travelling companions (sans Ken, taking the photo). Ken's parents, Rick and Jane, are standing next to me, and one of their friends, Jan, is standing next to Jane. I'm sporting my new French hat.

Annecy is on a large lake surrounded by mountains.

The town also has a bunch of these bizarre-looking French trees. The branches look like they have knobbly fists.

We saw these trees all over the region. Something about the way they are trimmed made them look unique.

Mont Blanc

The next day, it was time to visit Mont Blanc, apparently the tallest mountain in the French Alps at nearly 16,000 feet. We took a train up the mountain. I think there were three main summits. Here is a very pointy one, named Dru.

Wikipedia claims that some climbers lugged a statue up to that summit. I cannot verify. Another summit:

If you zoom in by clicking on the image, you can see some extremely pointy areas.

One glacier on Mont Blanc is called the "Mer de Glace," the "sea of ice." Here it is:

Here's another view from up there:

If you zoom in, you can see that someone snowboarded down that slope, after hiking up. Spot the snowboarding track:

After looking around, we boarded the train back down.

Views from the train ride down:

From the train, we could also see the large valley that we drove through on the way to Mont Blanc. At the very far end of the valley, you can barely see the ski slopes that will host a downhill ski championship in the future:

Here's the view from back where we came from, once we were down in the valley again. In the foreground are Ken and a French guy named Jean-Marc, my intrepid skiing guide who led me skiing through the Alps a couple of days later. Mont Blanc is in the background.

Endless French Food

An interesting property of my trip was that, after 24 hours in the country, I ceased to be hungry. Entirely. The next time I felt hungry was on the plane going home. It's not that the food was bad -- the food was, on the whole, delicious -- it's just that everyone kept over-feeding me rich food. We'd eat multi-course meals nearly every day. And after a meal, we'd wait the minimum amount of time that it would take for me to even consider consuming more food, and then we'd eat another huge meal.

Example. A typical meal, which we ate the first, second, and third days of my trip (before my body revolted against the rich food and I tried to detox on simple pasta and salad dishes), would go something like this:

An "amuse-bouche" -- an appetizer. Caution: may contain fois gras, cheese, and various things with cream sauces.
First course. Fish, shellfish, or possibly more fois gras. Fois gras is a very Chrismassy thing in Savoie, as it turns out.
Second course. Lobster, beef, rooster, pidgeon, various other interesting things.
Optional third course! Choose from previous list.
Cheese course. They bring out a huge platter of different types of cheese, and you choose a few you want to eat. Pieces are cut off and put onto your plate. Eat with bread.
Dessert! A tart, or possibly a Christmas log cake (see picture below).
Optional second dessert! Aaaargh!
Extra little dessert snacks, such as Christmas chocolates, or candies or marshmallows.
Coffee.
A small glass of liquor (preferably the one made from local flowers, Génépi), "to help digestion."

All courses are served with bread, cooked the same day.

On Christmas eve, Jean-Marc and Brigitte cooked us dinner. Given that I don't eat sea urchin, smoked fish, fois gras, scallops, or lobster, and given that they served us all of those, I think I did quite well. I ate everything and cleaned my plate.

I was dubious about the whole thing from the time I heard what we would be eating, but once the second course (scallops, in their shell on a bed of rock salt) arrived, my doubts vanished. The dish looked so impeccably beautiful that when I saw it, I knew there would be no way I couldn't like it. Sure enough, it was delicious. It helped, of course, that Jean-Marc was very, very French and thus paired each course with a different wine that complemented the food perfectly.

So, as I said, the food was great on the whole. But after a few days of eating like this, my body couldn't take anymore, so I started ordering simple pasta or salad whenever possible. If people were serving me food, I would try to get people to give me small portions by saying "petit petit," but then they would just nod and say okay, and cut me off a huge piece of tart regardless.

The last night, we had traditional fondue. Delicious. We were warned not to drink much water during the meal, because fondue is filling. We should just have a bit of wine, and then some kirsch afterwards for digestion. I did as told. When in France, do as the French do?

Coming Up Next

That's the first half of my trip. Coming next time: skiing in the Alps! I leave you for now with this sculpture we found in a skiing village. It is... a very long-legged elephant with a pyramid on top? Not quite sure. I guess it's a French thing.

A Slice of Paradise

2011-12-17T00:39:00.000-08:00

I think I've finally chosen my favorite place. Timberline Lodge, OR, where you get ski runs like this entirely to yourself:

Day 1

Allow me to walk you through my family's one-night stay at the Lodge (a Christmas present to me...). We arrived Thursday morning and started skiing through the snow.

We had a great day of skiing through fresh powder, although we all got pretty wet because the snow turned to light rain at times. I spent some time skiing through tree glades, which I may talk about in a future blog post.

Here's a route I took, in an effort to understand the appeal of deep powder on a deeper level:

By the end of the day, the conditions looked like this:

Meanwhile, the view out of our hotel window:

As the sun set, we hung out at the Ram's Head pub. I worked on my laptop, we got dinner, I got a couple glasses of Timberline's own wine, and we played card games. Out of the window, the sun set over Mount Jefferson and a sea of clouds:

After dinner, we went in the outdoor hot tub and swimming pool under a dark, cloudless sky.

Day 2

I slept restlessly. Not because the bed was uncomfortable -- on the contrary, the feathertop mattress and mound of pillows was ridiculously comfortable. Instead, I had resolved to be on the slopes at 9am when the lifts opened, and I kept having dreams in which my alarm didn't wake me up and I slept in until 10. I woke up twice when it was still pitch black, once when the first hint of light was in the outside world, and finally once again at 7:40am, when I decided to just wake up for good.

The view out of my window:

Not many morning views that can beat that. If you looked at the right angle, Mt. Hood was framed by ice:

I got dressed and went out to the main lodge area. I first noticed the view out of the Ram's Head pub. A picture of the Ram's Head has been my desktop photo for the last 2 months, and I've been wishing I was there for a while. Tables in the Ram's Head (my happy place):

I found Mom, and we got some coffee from the following coffee pots (notice the background):

Then, after getting Cole out of bed, we all got breakfast. The selection of waffle toppings caught my eye, so I prepared the ultimate waffle.

Thoroughly stuffed, we hit the slopes, which brings us back to the groomed packed powder.

Unlike the previous day, the weather was dry.

My skiing buddies, Dad and Cole:

Solo shots:

We had a great day skiing. We skied low on the mountain...

...and high on the mountain.

Here's a path near the top of the Magic Mile chairlift I dubbed "Joy's Cutoff." Very smooth skiing.

I learned a new skiing trick this day! Dad taught me how to spin in a circle while skiing, without stopping. Well, I have to slow down, but then I can spin 360 degrees and keep on skiing. With time, I became an ambi-turner and could turn both left and right. Dad's been able to do this for ages, but I'd never gotten it until this second day at Timberline. With a bit of practice, I could string consecutive spins together. I would be skiing down the mountain but spinning continuously in circles until I got dizzy! Since I was feeling silly, I decided to call it the Mayan Infinite Spiral.

We continued skiing until the lifts closed at 4pm. Near the end of the day, the routes were glowing golden. Cole and I were both reminded of the course "Golden Forest" from the classic Nintendo 64 snowboarding game "1080."

The last run of the day featured some very smooth snow for me.

Then we returned to the lodge and went in the hot tub one last time as the sun set. I bought a couple bottles of the Timberline wine, and we departed for Portland as the sun set over Oregon once more.

I just returned from the mountain 6 hours ago, and looking at these photos makes me want to go back already.

Epilogue: First World Problems

I'm going to France for Christmas, and I will be going skiing in the French Alps. Some of my friends have been laughing at me and giving me quite a bit of trouble for grumbling that I won't be able to spend Christmas at Timberline. "Joy, Joy, Joy," they say. "That's not even a first world problem, that's a zeroth world problem. 'Oh no, I can't ski in Oregon, I have to ski in France.' Come on, be reasonable."

I hope this blog post has given you a slight idea of why I grumble. I am sure France is going to be awesome, and I am very excited to ski in the Alps, but... it's hard to top perfection.

This morning (day 2 of the trip described above), I woke Cole up briefly at 7:40am and told him to look out of his window. He looked out at the sunrise reflecting off the mountain, and said, "Wow, that's pretty nice. Okay, fine, you're allowed to complain about France."

Short Photo Post

2011-12-03T00:18:00.000-08:00

As advertised, this is a short post... but I highly recommend you go and look at the photography of Jimmy Chin, my recently-discovered favorite nature photographer.

Check out his photography here.

House Mouse Adventures

2011-11-18T22:24:00.000-08:00

A brief message tonight: there are mice in my house. There is also a hamster in my house, but we want the hamster here. The mice arrived uninvited.

On the second floor, a baby mouse (about the size of my hamster's head) was inadvertently captured when it smelled peanut butter and fell into the sink. My housemate, Yuki, arrived at home and found a small mouse bouncing around. It was too small to gain the elevation required to escape the sink, though. Yuki poured the water out of the empty peanut butter jar and captured the mouse.

That night, I walked up to the second floor to see the little critter. Yuki carefully opened the peanut butter jar, and a very, very small rodent looked up at me pathetically. Its fur was spiky and drenched in a mixture of peanut butter and water. Tiny black eyes stared at me, and then House Mouse gave a mighty leap in an attempt to free itself. Yuki slammed the lid back on.

Known Fact: I like rodents. I decided to rescue the House Mouse from its peanutty conundrum. I carefully transfered it to an old hamster ball.

I placed a breadstick in the hamster ball as a snack. The breadstick probably equalled the mouse in volume.

The House Mouse was very cute. I aaalmost considered keeping it, except it was so small that it would have escaped any cage I put it in.

At length, it came time to transfer House Mouse into a carrying container. The next morning, Yuki was going to release House Mouse into some bushes. I prepared a cozy little home as best I could.

The small home included some oats and a water-soaked paper towel to lick. Ken helped me transfer House Mouse into the new container. House Mouse almost escaped. Finally, before I took the package upstairs, I wrote a letter so that the people living on the 2nd floor would know that something other than oats was in this oats container:

The note read:

Safe travels, small rodent!

(Note: the 3rd floor has caught and released 3 mice now... two larger mice and one tiny one.)

Mount Kilimanjaro

2011-11-04T21:37:00.000-07:00

First, a couple more announcements:

1. I once again blog for beer! This time I am joined in my Iron Blogging by Kevin R. of the Free Dissociation blog. Please check it out and let me know if he starts owing me beer!

2. A couple of people have pointed out that, while the "TAIL-us" pronunciation is more common, the other pronunciation of "TAL-us" is certainly also used. Hurrah! Here is some celebratory talus:

From K-FREE's flickr photostream

Now, onto the topic of the day: Mount Kilimanjaro.

Mount Kilimanjaro is one of the Seven Summits (the set containing the tallest peak on each continent), but it is one of the easier of the Seven Summits to climb. Notably, in a sense you can "just walk up the mountain" without a bunch of technical gear and ice-climbing expertise. Because of this, I had sort of been thinking about Kilimanjaro as just a long hike. Turns out, I was underestimating it.

This and future Kilimanjaro images are from Fabio Bretto's flickr photostream

The first clue that I'd underestimated the mountain came when I looked up just how tall Kilimanjaro actually is: 19,341 feet. That's pretty serious. So, sure, you can "just hike up the mountain" but you'll get HAPE or HACE (high altitude pulmonary edema or cerebral edema) and possibly die.

Wikipedia actually says "All trekkers will suffer considerable discomfort, typically shortness of breath, hypothermia, and headaches." Citation needed, but... that's a pretty strong statement. Lesson 1: Kilimanjaro is tall. Photos taken on summit expeditions remind me of photos taken out of airplane windows:

The way to climb Kilimanjaro is to take a week, possibly more, to acclimatize yourself. In fact, Tanzania's regulations require that ascents take at least 5 days. You spend many nights on the mountainside in little camps.

Apparently this mountain kills a lot of people -- not because of falling ice or white-out blizzards, but because people don't take the time to acclimatize themselves. Again, the take-home message is that the mountain is very very tall!

One phrase you can apparently use to describe Mount Kilimanjaro, which I think is awesome, is "Afromontane sky island." Afromontane means it's a mountain in Africa, and "sky island" refers to the fact that Mount Kilimanjaro rises up from largely-flat surroundings. It has a prominence of 19,308 feet with respect to its surroundings, making it ranked 4th in the world for prominence.

I highly recommend you check out this panoramic image showing Kilimanjaro from a nearby African town called Moshi. Zoom in, and consider how big Kilimanjaro looks compared to its surroundings. Maybe you can start to get an idea for why this is one of the Seven Summits.

This is probably a bad time to say this, now that I've spent my blog post discussing the dangers of Mount Kilimanjaro, but there is some non-zero probability I'll attempt to climb this eventually. My friend Yuki and her brother and father are planning to climb this mountain at some point, and I've asked that they keep me in the loop. I'll make sure they (we?) take at least a week to climb. And that no one dies.

I might do a series of blog posts on some of the Seven Summits. I'm particularly interested in the Antarctic summit (Vinson Massif), the European summit (Mount Elbrus), and the North American summit (Denali, or Mt. McKinley). Feel free to request that I focus on certain aspects of the mountains/the climbing experience.

Until next time!

Important Talus Announcements!

2011-10-21T07:09:00.000-07:00

I have some important talus-related announcements this week.

First, the long-overdue announcement about pronunciation. I had always considered myself somewhat of a talus expert, and yet it turns out that I'd been pronouncing the word wrong! You probably have been, too. The word is pronounced "TAIL-us." Seriously. Yes, it's weird. I am still not used to it.

This is earth-shaking news in the world of Talus Slopes. To help us cope with the sense that everything we knew is wrong, here is a photo that reminds us that life will go on, and so will talus. This photo is talus from 1899!

Photo from the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library

Second, once again, I no longer blog for beer! My fellow "iron blogger" has stepped out of the competition after raking up a debt of, I believe, 4 beers. I need to cash in.

Would anyone else like to join into an iron blogger blog-for-beer pact? Just let me know! Remember, threatening me with owing you beers is an excellent way to keep high-quality Talus Slopes content coming to you every week or two!

From Dru!'s flickr photostream

Lastly, you should go check out my brother's blog. Cole and his friend Simon have created a blog about adding tasty foods together in order to make gross foods. It's called "If You Like A..." You suggest disgusting combinations, and they post a video of themselves making and eating said combinations. Here is the first video they posted:

Check it out by clicking here!

Extreme Cold: Wim Hof and Tummo

2011-10-07T21:18:00.000-07:00

This week, I learned about a guy who can withstand extreme cold. Here's a picture of him during what I can only believe must be normal bathtime for him:

(from the Guinness World Records)

This man is Wim Hof, and he gets cold professionally. He holds the world record for being immersed in ice, 1 hour and 44 minutes. He is known as the "Iceman." He likes to go running and hiking wearing only a pair of shorts. He ran a marathon north of the Arctic Circle wearing only shorts.

(from urbanslot's blog)

He also holds the world record for distance swimming beneath ice: 55.5 meters. You can watch the video of him setting the record here:

He tried to climb Mount Everest wearing only shorts, but he failed due to a foot injury of some sort. My favorite quote from Wim Hof is this: "Edmund Hillary's ascent of Mount Everest was a testament to human achievement; my climb of Mount Everest in my shorts will be a monument to the frivolous, decadent nature of modern society."

That's a pretty funny reason to do something.

Wim Hof practices the Tibetan meditation practice of Tummo, which somehow creates body heat. There have apparently been some studies that show people's fingertips getting warmer during this meditation. Something about chakras. But who am I to question it, when the practitioners can do things like this:

(from http://www.yogallimite.com/ via Wikimedia Commons)

(from care2.com)

Wim Hof uses Tummo to adjust his "mental thermostat" and keep himself warm while he climbs mountains barefoot, wearing only shorts. He wins the Talus Slopes hardcore award of the week. Here's to you, Wim Hof.

(from thewondrous.com)

Welcome, Fall Equinox

2011-09-23T20:42:00.000-07:00

I'm still in a Summer mood and I can't shake the feeling. Maybe it's because I didn't take my usual end-of-summer vacation this year. Anyway, this is a problem, because the Fall is upon us, and Fall is the most beautiful season in New England. This blog post is a photographic attempt to force me into a Fall mood. If this doesn't work, I'll just need to take a long hike somewhere with colorful leaves.

(from photonix's flickr photostream)

Today is also, coincidentally, the Fall Equinox. The night and the day are the same length now.

(pumpkins from marthastewart.com)

There is music in the meadows, in the air --

Autumn is here;

Skies are gray, but hearts are mellow,

Leaves are crimson, brown and yellow;

Pines are soughing, birches stir,

And the Gipsy trail is fresh beneath the fir.

There is rhythm in the woods, and in the fields,

Nature yields:

And the harvest voices crying,

Blend with Autumn zephyrs sighing;

Tone and color, frost and fire,

Wings the nocturne Nature plays upon her lyre.

-- William Stanley Braithwaite, "A Lyric of Autumn"

(from Susan Nye's blog)

Here is Norway in the Fall:

(from about.com)

The look of Norway in the Fall is rather different than New England, but it is still beautiful. I miss Norway.

While looking at pictures of Norway, I also came across this one. More wintery than Fall, but man do I want to climb that mountain in the background. I want to climb the icy ridge with crampons on my boots.

(from this Tromsø tourism website)

Back to Fall photos. I like this one because it looks magical:

(from Yamata Orochi's deviant art page)

I think one of the keys to getting into the Fall mood is to embrace the colder temperatures. I am still acclimated for Summer. Once I remember how to love the cold, perhaps then I will be in a Fall mood.

(from esywlkr's flickr photostream)

Happy Fall.

Free Soloing Videos

2011-09-09T17:53:00.000-07:00

Yes, I have already posted about free soloing, the (crazy) extreme sport in which you rock climb without a rope. You can read my past blog post here. For all the people out there who worry about me, please know that I am in no way tempted to pursue this sport. (Well, sometimes people go free soloing on short walls over a body of water. I'd consider that, but that isn't really the same because of the distinct lack of DEATH involved.)

This week, I once again became fascinated about free soloing because of this video. The guy in the video, Alex Honnold, has climbed some world-class routes like half dome and The Nose of El Capitán without ropes. Seriously, watch this video:

Here are some still shots of Alex Honnold free soloing various routes, with some nice music by Emancipator:

I am in awe of this guy's abilities. Seeing him climb is inspirational. I am not tempted to try free soloing in the slightest, but I can sort of appreciate the beauty of the sport. He must have such a sense of freedom when he's up on the rock (at least, when he's not in fear of falling).

Here's a video in which Steph Davis talks about her reasons for free soloing. She talks about the freedom she feels up on the rock, and the sense of being in control. She uses it as a way to work out other things in her life.

Watching that video, I'm just thinking that I can't really imagine climbing a ladder as tall as that cliff without a rope. But Steph Davis is more hardcore than me. She says that free soloing the diamond is "an expression of mastery." Yup.

There are also people who free solo barefoot.

I don't even know, man.

To end our day of extreme vertigo, here is a video from Dad about the world record high dive from a few years ago:

Now there are butterflies in my stomach and I'm done blogging for the day. Bye bye.

Winter Camping Survival Kit

2011-08-26T16:31:00.000-07:00

Today I got a little bit bored 2 hours into a lecture on scanning electron microscopy, so I started putting together a list of things to take on a winter camping trip. I think camping in this landscape would be very relaxing:

(from Randi Hausken's flickr)

(Mt. Washington in the winter, photo from Matthew Pearson's flickr)

Note, I'm joking about camping in that 2nd location: I doubt there would be too much time to relax when camping on an exposed face of Mt. Washington in the winter. But still, winter has its own serenity, and if we could get over the fact that it's so damn cold out there, then we might be able to appreciate winter forests in the same way we appreciate forests in the summer.

I have slept in a snow cave once before. Was it comfortable? Well... no, not at all. The take-home message of snow caving was that I managed to spend a night outdoors at 7000 feet in the winter and was still alive at the end of it. But I didn't purchase a winter sleeping bag for the occasion, and I could have used more sleeping pads.

With more preparation, winter camping in comfort should be doable. People camp on Everest, after all. There's some excellent gear out there. Many companies make lines of red, orange, and yellow mountaineering tents that I have been ogling for a while.

With that in mind, I present a list of gear that might get me through a night in the forests of New Hampshire in February in approximate comfort. Comments encouraged!

Mountaineering tent (3 person, 4 season)
Sleeping bag rated to at least -20 F
Thick sleeping pad (or 2)
Crampons and ice axe, if hiking up things before camping
Big snowshoes, that will support a backpack's weight
Gaiters
Balaclava, wool hat (or huge fur hat from Russia), ski goggles, scarf
Thick long underwear
Tops: underarmor shirt, normal shirt, fleece, ski coat
Bottoms: underarmor pants, normal pants, ski pants
Thick mittens (not gloves): preferably 2-layers, with inner lining gloves (not mittens) for tasks requiring dexterity
Thin socks under thick wool socks
Chap stick
Hearty, protein-rich food. Including a bunch of salami and cheese; salami and cheese are key.
Fuel, for melting snow and making oatmeal and stuff
A big sack of chemical hand and foot warmers
Possibly an 80 L backpack, if this requires a lot of space to pack
Heavy-duty hiking boots? (Might be overkill)

Is there anything I forgot? Before this gets silly, we may assume for this exercise that I have remembered to pack underwear, etc. Anyway, I feel like I would sleep pretty comfortably if I had all that. I want to try it out! Here are some extra precautions I would take:

Don't go alone (obviously)
Sleep with water bottles in the sleeping bag, so they don't freeze overnight
Pack water bottles inside backpack, to try to prevent freezing during the day
Start out by testing this in weather above 20 degrees F, then try it in 10 degrees F, then 0 degrees F... and keep working your way down, to assure continuation of life!

(from Cpt. Obvious's flickr)

Please comment if I've forgotten anything. (Cole, I'm looking at you! Well, no, I am not actually looking at you right now, since I know that will be your first objection. But I would appreciate your input nonetheless!)

And now, for the bonus question: if you wanted to go all crazy with this, could you manage to go winter camping using only gear and clothing you made yourself out of fur, leather, and wool?

A Plan!

2011-08-12T22:10:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, I live in New England but am originally from the Portland, Oregon. I spend a lot of time longing for the tall, snow-capped mountains of the Pacific Northwest, but I'm stuck with these dinky little things instead. Now, after 6 years of living here, I do finally like these dinky little hills for their own sake. They have their own unique beauty, especially in the Fall, and the crunch of leaves under my feet as I walk through a deciduous forest brings back nostalgia for some wonderful hikes I've had on this coast.

That being said, the Appalachians...

(from Ismael Alonso's flickr)

...are not the Cascades.

(from Michael Lehenbauer's flickr)

In order to deal with this discrepancy, I have devised a cunning plan. I shall take a small, well-hiked hill, Mount Monadnock:

(from Doug Kerr's flickr)

And then I will climb it in the winter! And no, not like November or December. It must be climbed in the January/February chills.

(from Tim D. at ecodiversity.com)

It's looking better already!

(from AMC Connecticut)

(from David Albeck)

I'm pretty excited. This is one of the best hiking ideas I've had in a while. Best part: as long as the weather's okay, you can get through this without much equipment. I'll probably bring an ice axe and crampons, but that's mostly just so that I have an excuse to buy an ice axe and crampons. You have to spend your REI dividend somewhere.

I've gotten a friend, Alex Khripin, to say he'd be up for climbing this in the winter. See, Alex, now it's been published on a blog, it's official.

(By the way, go check out his blog at Unwholesome Foods. It is fascinating and occasionally disgusting.)

After Monadnock in the winter, perhaps some winter camping is the next step? Could I camp on a New England mountain in the winter?

(Monadnock photo, from Matthew Gemmell's flickr)

(And winter is coming.)

Really Big Fish

2011-07-29T15:36:00.000-07:00

As someone who doesn't eat a lot of seafood, I'm probably the last person to learn this. I just learned, though, that tunafish can get really big:

(from Alexandre Dulaunoy's flickr)

I knew that sharks were big pointy fish, and there's that huge whale shark that is also a very large fish:

(from Courtney McNealy's flickr)

But those examples of fish are somehow less fishy than tunafish. They look different, like they should be big fish, to the extent that when I once saw a very small shark, it surprised me enough that I wrote another blog post about how small sharks can get. Tuna, on the other hand, are shaped like they should be tiny fish. Apparently there exist fish that look sort of like small fish, except they're large enough that I probably wouldn't win a wrestling match with one, even without them being slimy.

Apparently they can swim 50 mph, and can be 15 feet long and over 1000 pounds.

(from Tuna Hunter, MA)

Kind of cool.

Another notably large fish is the ocean sunfish, which looks weird regardless of angle:

(from the NOAA)

(from Alan Moore's flickr)

Even the baby ones look weird.

(from sailroue59's flickr)

They start as weirdly pointy specks of fish, but can grow to 15 feet long and over 5000 pounds. They are the largest bony fish. (Well, historically, the Leedsichthys of the Jurassic period were bigger, growing up to 33 feet long.)

Anyway, remember what I have learned today. Fish come in many sizes!

(from Daniel Wallace)

(from Glogster)

(from Psychology Today)

(from Jimmie's flickr)

<*(((--< Until next time. <*(((--<

Extreme Sport of the Week: Free Soloing

2011-07-15T22:31:00.000-07:00

Short post this week. I mostly wanted to show you some inspirational photos and stories about rock climbing. In particular, there is this crazy sport called free soloing, which is rock climbing to dangerous heights without a rope. This goes on the list of things I'd never do myself, but please direct your attention to this article I found in the National Geographic:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/05/yosemite-climbing/jenkins-text/1

(from the flickr photostream of Rick Tew's NinjaGym™ Martial Arts)

The above photo is of ropeless rock climbing at Phi Phi in Thailand, where my mom is vacationing right now, actually. But it's not free soloing, because the guy is low enough that he could fall without getting severely hurt or dying.

Free soloing... okay, fine, here's the awesome photo from the National Geographic. I'm not sure if they allow others to use their images. If they give me trouble, I'll take it down. Until then:

(from the National Geographic)

Now take a look at the article that goes along with that photo. Free soloing is stupid, scary, and awe-inspiring.

The article goes on from free soloing to talk about other rock climbing styles that are less stupid. Feeling inspired, I went on to find this video of Lynn Hill and Katie Brown climbing together. Lynn Hill is one of the best climbers in the world, and is mentioned in the National Geographic article. May she inspire you as she inspires me:

Mostly Brookhaven National Laboratory, but also Jetman

2011-07-01T23:39:00.000-07:00

I have too many things I could write about this week. I could write about calligraphy, Brookhaven National Laboratory, rock climbing in Yosemite, flying dudes with jetpacks, Mars, Lapland... What to choose?

Jetman

Let's start with jetpacks, because what I have to say is short and sweet. All I really have to say is that this video is the closest I have seen people become to the goal of actually being birds:

Brookhaven National Laboratory

Okay, that's over with. Now I'll just talk about Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), because that's where I am right now. I'm here as part of my grad school research. For those who care, I'm at the National Synchotron Light Source (NSLS), at "Beamline X21." I do this thing called grazing incidence small angle x-ray scattering (GISAXS). Yes, science is full of acronyms (SIFOA).

The NSLS facility has two electron storage rings. One of them makes x-rays and one makes UV photons. There is technically also a third ring called the "booster ring" that injects electrons into the other rings, and I think the booster ring gives off infrared light. Anyway. Rough floorplan of my world of rings:

I work on the x-ray ring. Electrons fly around in circles in the ring, creating x-rays in the direction of electron propagation. When the electron beam is deflected a bit to continue moving around the ring, some x-rays fly out, basically (see the lines in the above floorplan). Each of these locations has a number; mine is X21. We use the x-rays to look at the surfaces of materials.

A sample section of beamline.

For some of you, that was too much science, and for some of you, it wasn't enough. Moving on.

The x-rays are all very carcinogenic and dangerous, so we have large amounts of lead shielding and piles of lead bricks to contain any potential escaped rays. Furthermore, if you want to let x-rays into the X21 "hutch" to do Science, there is a 5-step ENGAGE THE BEAM process that involves pressing three buttons and turning two keys while the lights in the hutch go off, an ominous red light goes on, and a long warning beep plays. The end result is that we're all very safe and we feel like Science is happening.

Sometimes the beam runs out of electrons. If there's a dip in power or if someone hits one of the Big Red Buttons, the electron beam gets "dumped." (I don't actually know where they get dumped. Over at the big RHIC ring in the northern half of BNL, their beam gets dumped into piles of lead bricks, and I suspect something similar happens at the NSLS.) One of the most popular conversation topics at the NSLS is, therefore, the status of the beam.

You know how all rowers can talk about around each other is catching crabs, the choppiness of the water, and their 2k times? At the NSLS, people are like that with the beam. When I first arrived here, the beam had been down for most of a day for some reason. One of the first conversations I overheard went something like this: "How's your research going?" "Oh, it's alright, but the beam has been in and out. Now that the beam's back up, it is progressing. Long hours tonight, but at least we have the beam!" It's like in Stephen King's Dark Tower series: All things serve the beam. I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere along the ring, some superstitious scientist had set up a little shrine to the beam.

There are also planned beam downtimes. Electrons get injected into the ring, but then over time, the electron current decays. To keep the current high and the Science going strong, the beam is taken down every morning and evening at 7. An announcement goes out over the loudspeakers, the beam gets dumped, and the "booster ring" I mentioned earlier starts injecting fresh new electrons. Once a certain number of electrons have been injected, the beam goes back up and Science resumes.

We tend to plan our dinners around the 7pm beam dump. And since 7pm nears, I'll be back in a bit...

...okay, I'm back. The beam is full of brand new electrons.

Some data I took! You can tell it's real Science because it looks like a rocket ship.

Parallels to Lost (A couple days later, back in Cambridge)

Brookhaven National Laboratory reminds me strangely of the Dharma Initiative from the TV show Lost. It is sort of a science commune. There are large, manicured lawns. There's a cafeteria, fitness center, swimming pool, and lounge, and people can stay in apartments or dormitories on-site.

While I didn't see any Dharma polar bears around, BNL is full of wild animals. No, I don't mean grad students -- they mostly keep to themselves as long as you don't interfere with their primary functions: taking data and eating Cup O' Noodles. What I actually mean is that the BNL campus is full of deer, groundhogs, raccoons, wild turkeys, geese, and fireflies. And also, uh, deer ticks full of lyme disease, but fortunately I avoided those this time around.

(Groundhog from Ben Babcock's flickr)

The animals are quite tame. A buck walked up to about 10 feet away from me and stared at me curiously. A groundhog flopped down on its belly right next to the sidewalk and went to sleep. And when we were entering the BNL campus for the first time, the flock of geese walked halfway across the road and casually sat down and refused to budge, stopping traffic in both directions for a bit. These animals are tame enough that I'm considering bringing them to my thesis defense in a few years. Maybe I could come in riding a buck.

Overall, the trip was fairly enjoyable. My collaborator and I worked 12- to 15-hour days, but we got 7-8 hours of sleep each night and had a good dinner each evening. I got in a few workouts to keep myself alive and awake, and spent some time outside when I could. We also got some good data from what we can tell so far, and we had good luck with the beam.

I'm told BNL trips can get a lot more stressful if you've got a big deadline ahead of you, but this time, we had a good time! At least, as good a time as you can have when you're working 12- to 15-hour days for a week. As proof, I present the balloon we made from leftover krypton at the end of the run:

(Note to all advisors and scientists who may be reading this: this balloon was filled with the extra krypton in the gas line at the end of the run! We did not waste expensive gas of 99.99999% purity to make balloons!)

(Note to non-scientists: krypton gas is inert, don't worry. Kryptonite, of course, is another story.)

Summer Skiing

2011-06-17T20:09:00.000-07:00

Hello, blog readers. I said I would write about a hike in Washington...but I left that coast without downloading the relevant photos, and I cannot currently find the battery charger for my camera, so I have no interesting photos for you. A shame; there was much talus in that set of photographs. Now, either I get to post a boring and pictureless essay about a hike you cannot visualize, or I can post something entirely different. I will post about my intense ski craving!

(from Bobcatnorth's flickr photostream)

These years when I get ski cravings in June are always tough. It is just So Very Long until late November, and these cravings persist. Really, it is a problem.

(from Simon Wex's flickr photostream)

So, my thoughts naturally turn to summer skiing. I hear you can do that in the southern hemisphere. Or in the far, far North. For example, here is Las Leñas, in Argentina:

It comes with its own wintery ski village, and its season is June-October.

(from parq's flickr photostream)

Seems cozy. It would suffice. Or hey, Whistler Blackcomb is open 11am-1:30pm each day. That is basically no time, but on the other hand, just thinking about the words "Whistler Blackcomb" makes me want to go buy plane tickets. Whistler in the summer, people:

(from Megan Mallen's flickr photostream)

Alright, fine, I may have a problem. And maybe I shouldn't buy plane tickets to Whistler for only 2.5 hours of skiing each day. (Round trip airfare to Vancouver is about $500 right now. Yes, I checked.) I will resign myself to feeling uncomfortably nostalgic for skiing from now until late November. In the meantime, I will post this photo of my last ski trip, to Mount Sunapee in New Hampshire:

Feel free to click on it for the larger view, because many-pixel ski photos are great. I will also post this photo of my amazing and wonderful skis:

Mine are the excellent black-and-orange ones in the middle.

Sigh. You know, some of you people out there could convince me to block off a week of my summer for a ski vacation... until then, back to work I guess.

Chauvet Cave

2011-06-03T21:53:00.000-07:00

My camera ran out of batteries and my charger is in another state, so I can't post photos from a hike up Mt. Hamilton this past blogging period. Instead, I will talk about a German guy talking about French caves.

I saw a documentary (in 3-D!) called "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" directed by a guy with a cool voice, Werner Herzog. Some explorers were measuring the windy drafts in some French hills in search of caves -- unexplained drafts could be a sign that there is a cave structure nearby. They came across a Chauvet Cave, which contains the oldest cave paintings ever discovered, some older than 30,000 years old. 30,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic Period, there were still Neanderthals competing with early homo sapiens. Wooly mammoths and huge cave bears roamed the earth, which was in the middle of an ice age. Hunting was done with spears and spear-throwing sticks. And some early Frenchmen were painting on the walls. (What were they painting with? The documentary was unclear about this. I think charcoal, though some of the paintings were red.)

The paintings were then sealed off from the external environment by a landslide. (How did explorers sense drafts from the cave if it was sealed? The documentary was unclear about this. I guess there were very small openings.) In the closed-off environment, mineral deposits started forming stalagmites and stalagtites and thin crusts of calcite on top of things. One cave bear skull became covered in about an inch of mineral stuff over the years, affixing it to the floor. Fossilized cave bear footprints were also found.

Carbon dating showed that the paintings came from two periods about 5,000 years apart. People came across cave paintings that were already what we might consider ancient these days, and they painted right next to them. It's sort of as if you found original art from the first Egyptian dynasty and decided to doodle on it.

The painters used the natural curvature of the cave walls to guide their painting. A frequently-cited example of this technique is the panel of the horses, though you cannot see the curvature much here:

The chamber of the lions was also quite impressive:

Also in the chamber of the lions was a painting on a stalagtite of a naked woman with a bull's head:

(If that's confusing, you're looking at the lower half of a woman, with a bull's head somewhere in her stomach.)

Werner Herzog was also so kind as to bring in a man dressed in ice-age-style reindeer furs to demonstrate a replica of a flute found in the cave. Just looking at Werner and his guest, you might be able to see that this was an entertaining segment of the film:

I was trying to find some history to put 30,000 years ago in perspective, and what I found is that that's about as old as the earliest pottery, and it's about the time that people started living in Japan. I still don't think I have a good sense of how long 30,000 years is. If anyone has a better way of thinking about this, post a comment.

Until then, I'll leave you with this painting of a horse, scratched by a cave bear:

Next time, Mt. Hamilton.

Skydiving without a parachute

2011-05-20T22:37:00.000-07:00

Today I learned about a new stupid thing you can do while falling! You can jump out of a plane without any parachute attached to your body. Then, presumably, someone will come along with a parachute, you'll attach it to yourself, and you'll coast down to safety. It's a sport for those who have skydived so much that the feeling of falling no longer excites them... they also need to feel the very real threat of dying to get their heart rate up. I guess it is also a trust exercise. You'd better count on that friend of yours to bring your chute. Here's an example:

Kind of fascinating, really. Once that gets old, maybe we could start the guy out in a straight jacket? Gotta keep raising the bar.

Now, I'm all for jumping out of planes. Throwing yourself out of a perfectly functional plane is one of the most wonderfully surreal feelings around, and it's a great way to conquer your fear of heights, if you're into that. Once you reach terminal velocity, falling is pretty relaxing. Furthermore, skydiving parachutes have safety measures built in -- most of them will activate your parachute if you're below a certain elevation (I want to say 750 feet?) and haven't deployed your chute yet. In other words, even if you pass out, there's a chance you'll be okay.

The idea of not using a parachute adds a new dimension, though. Maybe some people want to face death. Maybe people love the high they get from overcoming it. Maybe they just want to feel more like James Bond.

And then there's this guy:

He has somehow managed to hide a parachute in his pants. Yeah, I don't really know how that works for him.

Winter: A Retrospective

2011-05-05T22:14:00.000-07:00

Now that Spring is thoroughly upon us, let's look back at the photos of wintery Boston, Pittsburgh, and skiing photos that I never got around to posting.

Boston

(Boston first.) It was so cold that the statues curled themselves into little balls to keep warm:

There were huge snowflakes:

...leading to snow accumulation.

Steam clouds at MIT:

Pittsburgh

In Pittsburgh, things were covered in ice:

There were deathsicles, and a dog named Rusty. Unrelated.

Mount Sunapee Skiing

Ternus and I went skiing up at Mount Sunapee in New Hampshire.

The skiing was cheap, as there was a weekday student discount, and the slopes overlooked a beautiful frozen lake:

I was using my wonderful new skis, so I took them for a trip down the endless mogul field.

I'm still pretty bad at moguls, but I am working on it.

Happy Spring, everyone!

A Return To Talus

2011-04-22T13:38:00.000-07:00

It is official: Iron Blogger is back on! My friend Eli Stickgold started a blog called Nemesis Program, and as it appears neither of us can blog on a regular basis without the threat of buying each other beer, we restarted Iron Blogger. If either of us misses a post, we owe the other a beer. The current plan is to post once every 2 weeks. Eli will, no doubt, be disappointed that I am making this week's Friday deadline.

In honor of the re-start of Talus Slopes, today's post will feature photos of talus slopes themselves! I consider myself somewhat of an expert on the subject. My other Eli friend, Eli Alford-Jones, can back me up.

Talus slopes are generally formed when rocks break off of a cliff face or mountain. The rocks tumble down the slope, coming to rest in a large pile of "talus." A majestic example:

(from mnlamberson's flickr photostream)

Snow-covered talus:

(from Dru!'s flickr photostream)

Off-roadin' through the talus:

(from Chazz Layne's flickr photostream)

Endless talus slopes:

(from Laurel Fan's flickr photostream)

And finally, here is a photo of me, supporting an entire talus slope on my back while climbing Mt. Adams in Washington.

No beer for Eli Stickgold this week!

Welcome back to Talus Slopes.

New Music

2011-04-14T14:20:00.000-07:00

Hello again, everyone... it's been a while, but here is a blog post! I've been doing some skiing, hiking, running, etc. since I last posted -- and seeing some quality talus while I'm at it -- but today I'm going to post about some interesting new music that I found.

I will start with some superchromatic music, which is the result of trying to squish more than 12 notes into a scale. The result is something that sounds very alien and wrong. My current favorite example sounds like Bach composed it after taking a few too many funny pills: click here. My favorite part is 2:35-2:50, because of the amazing superchromatic scale followed by something that sounds like messed-up video game music.

Continuing down the path of strange music brings us to Glassbreaks, an album of Philip Glass/hip hop remixes. I know, it sounds crazy, but the pairings were made so impeccably well that I think every song works! Now that I've listened to the album a few times, I can't imagine the hip hop songs without Philip Glass in the background. (For those unfamiliar with Philip Glass, one of his more famous pieces is Metamorphoses II, for comparison.) The Glassworks track that demonstrates the Philip Glass/hip hop synergy best, while avoiding an R-rating, is probably Stand Up Dance.

There are many other good tracks, with varying degrees of obscenity... so proceed with caution. In particular, I think the remix of Lil' Jon (seriously one of the most obscene rappers out there) with Philip Glass's operatic work "Akhnaten" is quite inspired. I did tell you he is a very obscene rapper, though, so again, proceed with caution. If you would like to listen to the remainder of the album, it is here: clicky clicky clicky.

Lastly, William Shatner is releasing a new album this year, and it appears that the track listing includes, among other things, Bohemian Rhapsody. Quoth my dad, "My life is complete."

The next post will have more pretty pictures.

-- Joy

Trip Report: Timberline Lodge

2011-01-15T21:24:00.000-08:00

This year, my family spent Christmas at Timberline Lodge, a historic lodge built around 6,000 feet elevation on Mt. Hood as a WPA project during the Great Depression. It's my favorite ski lodge.

The exterior of the lodge was featured in the movie The Shining. In the winter, it is covered in snow.

A warning: I love skiing, and Timberline Lodge, a bit too much. In case you don't want to look at as many pictures as I do, I have added special headers so you can jump around to the parts of the post that interest you most!

1. New Skis

On this trip, my brother and I got to test out our brand-new skis for the first time! Here they are, in all their glory:

Cole's skis are on the left. They have little blue windows in the tips, so you can see the snow beneath them. We spent a while trying to explain the purpose of the window. My skis are on the right, and I am very much in love with them.

I will talk about them in some other post. <3 <3 <3

2. Christmas Eve Skiing

As far as I'm concerned, this is the perfect Christmas Eve:

The snow was perfect (it always seems to be in December on Mt. Hood) and wonderfully groomed. Here's Cole on the snow, near the Molly's Express lift:

Icicles at the top of the Pucci lift:

3. Christmas Eve Dinner and "Festivities"

We had a delicious, many-course dinner in the Lodge. It featured something called a "mouge bouge" (some appetizer I am definitely spelling wrong), tasty main courses, and a bottle of Timberline's own wine (also good). Christmas is something of a tradition at Timberline. They set up a huge tree:

There were little (stale) gingerbread men hanging from the branches. I tried munching on one a few years ago.

Santa Claus also came down the chimney -- literally -- in front of a cheering crowd of little kids on the main floor and adults on the upstairs bar floor. Both age groups cheered equally loudly at the display. The chimney can be seen on the right side of this photo:

The "festivities" section of this post refers to some actually fun decorating of cookies and stuff, in addition to the thoroughly-creepy "magic show" that no one in my family could actually sit through. The magician, after making an impressive Santa Claus out of balloons, went on to joke about treating little sisters like cats and locking them out of the house. When he got to the sketch that involved pretending to have an unhappy baby locked in a little box, we left.

4. Night Hike

Mom and I went on a fun hike that night. Our hike proceeded across the slopes:

The flash on my new camera captured a speckled photo of Mom:

We walked up towards the top of Jeff Flood Express, where we sat on one of the stopped ski lift chairs for a while. Then we walked back towards the lodge. Mom made a snow angel.

Back near the lodge, we walked into the deep snow. The lodge looked a bit like a haunted ghost house:

We walked past the outdoor pool, which is pretty at night (note the fire/ice coloring):

There is a nice hot tub out back as well. I didn't take pictures because there were a bunch of strangers looking up at me in their swimsuits, but it is a great place to go if you want the surreal experience of hot tubbing in a snow storm. The hot tub is below this orange light...

At the end of the hike, we made a snow slide. It went off into the darkness.

Here is the lodge at night. The lit up room on the top floor is where I stayed with my brother, Cole.

I went back to that room and shed snow everywhere.

5. Christmas Day

On Christmas morning, I woke up to this view out my window:

Deathsicles (scary-looking icicles) were hanging from the hotel.

We started down the slopes right after breakfast. This, my East Coast friends, is why I am spoiled:

Mt. Jefferson was visible in the distance:

Here's Cole and me on the slopes. Cole's at the top of the Magic Mile lift, and I think I'm at the top of Jeff Flood Express.

The lift operators made an excellent snow frog.

6. A note on perfection

(Now we enter the "Miscellany" section of the blog post.)

I found my new happy place. It is this run right here:

I have discovered my love for runs that are steep and full of meticulously-groomed packed powder. I can close my eyes right now and remember that run... it was completely untouched. Aaahhhhh.

7. The Shape

This is the shape! It was a shape made of snow and physics.

8. Family photos

Photos for the facebook profiles, I guess...

Mom:

Dad:

Cole:

Me:

9. The Lodge

In the winter, the lodge is half-buried in snow.

There are carved animals in the stairwell.

10. Desktop photos

If you've gotten this far, you get a prize! Some relaxing new desktop photos!

Thanks for reading. My next post will be shorter -- those with 21st-century attention spans will be accommodated!

Boston Blizzard Photos

2011-01-12T13:32:00.000-08:00

Snowy blogging time!

The Northeast is in the middle of a storm right now. It hit around midnight last night. Pretty much all the snow in these photos was been dropped in the last 15 hours. I ventured into the blizzard for a walk, and here's what I saw!

Near the home, my housemate Karl's car and assorted other things:

The street I live on:

Everyday things covered in snow:

Columbia Street, by the basketball court:

Chunky snow:

The always-delicious Dosa Factory, still open for business in this weather:

Tunnel to Central Square:

A strangely-empty downtown:

Near the Park Street station:

Boston Common:

Not pictured: the suspiciously brown-tinted ice covering the Charles River.

The gym's closed due to weather, so I guess I'll go shovel snow for a half hour. Stay warm!

I No Longer Blog For Beer!

2011-01-06T21:29:00.000-08:00

The reason I didn't post last week is because Iron Blogger has officially come to an end! For Iron Blogger, every week I didn't post, I'd have to pay $5 to the beer pool. Then, eventually the people who blogged less would pay for the beer of people who blogged more. And now it's done.

I'm going to keep posting about talus slopes, expeditions, and the good life! Hopefully they will come every week, but if I start slacking off, feel free to post a comment and give me trouble. The next few posts will be about my super awesome new skis and about my recent skiing trips, one on the West Coast and one on the East Coast. Until then, here are a couple of nice things to look at!

A video of someone kayaking off a 189-foot waterfall (seriously, watch that, it's crazy). (This link courtesy of Ken.)

And, a picture of Denali, the tallest mountain in North America. It would be amazing to climb this thing...maybe I will post about it someday. Look at how big this mountain is:

(from Camille's flickr photostream)

Keep on keepin' on, readers! More to come soon.

A Very Portland Solstice Party

2010-12-21T13:37:00.000-08:00

Hello and Happy Solstice from Portland, Oregon! Here at Chez Perkinson we're combining hilarity and engineering to manufacture a very strange dinner.

Tonight, we're having some friends over for a "raw food" dinner. The raw food movement believes in preserving the live enzymes and health benefits in food by avoiding temperatures above 105 degrees Farenheit. We've got some friends who love natural, organic, raw food...so we're doing this for them. Welcome to Portland!

Dad and I just spent an hour and a half julienning onions, zucchini, red peppers and, most difficultly, Thai baby coconut into "noodles" for some Pad Thai. While doing this, we were drinking freshly-squeezed carrot/apple/ginger juice, each glass containing the juice of a full pound of carrots (the byproduct of shredding 2 pounds of carrots for use in a "Save the Tunas" Salad made entirely of veggies, nuts, and seeds).

Figure 1. Onion "noodles," marinating in Tamari.

We made an unholy number of "noodles" -- a full lasagna tray full of them. Every single "noodle" was "lovingly" (snarkily) handcrafted by me and Dad over the course of about an hour and a half. The onions, zucchini, and red pepper were straightforward, but the Thai baby coconut required some good old MIT engineering! The task was getting "noodles" out of this:

(from Robin's flickr photostream)

So, for those of you who are ever subjected to the unfortunate instruction "julienne baby coconut into 'noodles,'" I present:

How to Open a Baby Coconut

You will need:

A young Thai coconut
A glass, and a health nut you want to be nice to
A hammer and chisel
A power drill with a 3/8" drill bit
A second-story window above some pavement

Instructions:

Cut some of the excess "padding" off the side of the coconut. This padding acts as a shock absorber, and we're going to be throwing it out of the window later on, so it's best to remove the padding.
Wash off the power drill and drill bit.
Drill a hole in the side of the coconut, on one of the sides where you've removed some of the padding. This hole is to relieve the pressure on the inside of the coconut so the inside juice will flow more quickly.
Cover this hole with your thumb while drilling a hole in the top pointy part of the coconut. The pointy part will direct the coconut milk into a nice stream.
Overturn the coconut above a glass and let it drain. You may have to clear out the holes when they get clogged.
When the draining is complete, find the health nut and give them the glass of young Thai coconut water. Now they owe you one!
Wash off the hammer and chisel.
Go back to that first hole you drilled -- it will be easier to break the coconut around there. Place the chisel, then hammer it down until you have a bit of a crack in the coconut.
We didn't have much of a chisel. It was more of a spatula. If you have a good chisel, you can probably just chisel the coconut open at this point. If you don't, or if you want to have more fun, go find a second story window above some concrete.
Position the coconut so the pilot crack is facing downward, raise your arms, and throw the coconut down as hard as you can! A kiai helps. Repeat until a big crack forms; one well-aimed throw should do it.
Tear the coconut in half.
Cut into, um, "noodles."

Great, so now you have some coconut "noodles." Should you like, I could teach you how to make "pad thai" out of this stuff.

Figure 2. A tray of "noodles," with coconut above red pepper above zucchini.

Happy Solstice! And, if you're back on the East Coast, enjoy your White Christmas. :-)

The Nutcracker at the Boston Ballet

2010-12-19T22:09:00.000-08:00

I went to see The Nutcracker on Wednesday night at the Boston Ballet. Verdict: I cannot imagine a better rendition of The Nutcracker. I'm not really a ballet person, and I don't have a yearly tradition of seeing the show, but I figured that if I got decent seats and went to the Boston Ballet, it had to be pretty good. I wasn't disappointed.

The evening began with a face-numbing trek through the 20-degree + wind chill Boston evening, in search of snacks and a water bottle. So cold. Argh. Things got better after that...

Things I liked about the Nutcracker at Boston Ballet:

1. Set changes. I don't think I've ever seen a production with better set changes. There were at least three layers in the original set. The curtain opened on a piece of fabric that depicted some buildings, and the workshop building was backlit so we could see "into" the workshop. Later, that layer rose, showing a Christmas through a thin, transparent sheet. When the transparent layer rose, the scene went into motion.

Later, in the scene where the Nutcracker gets big, the previously-small set items like a chair and a sofa and a Christmas tree got huge -- the tree was pulled upwards until it was twice as big as its original size, and the set pieces were replaced with big versions. The Boston Ballet went all out on this scene.

After the intermission, the curtain opened on that transparent layer again. The scene was a dreamy cloud land, which was created by filling the stage with a couple of feet of fake fog. The fog was held in by the transparent layer, so we could really look at the "clouds" from the side. When the transparent curtain rose and the dancing began, the fog spilled out. It was a very cool effect.

2. Flying things. At the end of the first act, right before the intermission, a huge wooden hot air balloon was lowered onto the stage. Clara and the Nutcracker got in, and it was lifted off the stage! It takes a huge production to pull off something like that. Right after the intermission, the balloon was flying around a bit before it landed again. Also, the guy who gave Clara the Nutcracker was flying through the air at various points in the show...just for good measure.

3. The baby mouse and the gingerbread man. There were some small parts that you don't see much in normal productions (I think). For example, the evil mice also included a "baby mouse," played by a little boy. It was pretty cute. There was also a gingerbread man costume, and some people got into a fight over the gingerbread man, causing one of its arms to be ripped off!

4. Good dancing and costumes. I'm not really a ballet person, so I can't comment on this too much, but everything seemed really smooth. Dancers didn't seem to mess up. Lots of people in the audience clapped at various dance moves, so I guess the ballet regulars liked it too. The costumes were also great -- colorful, sparkly, varied. They were very pretty. Some of the ballerinas were supposed to look like flowers, and their skirts looked very much like flower petals. Well...okay, nearly all the costumes were great. Some of the guys had very form-revealing pants (complete with slight bulges in the front), such that you see their, uh, gluteal musculature in great detail. Maybe this is normal and I'm just not used to the ballet.

Overall: I really recommend seeing The Nutcracker at the Boston Ballet. Even if you don't usually go to the ballet, you'll be able to tell how well done it is. No, they aren't paying me to write this...it's just hard to imagine any improvements they could make.

Bonsai Tree Photos

2010-12-12T22:36:00.000-08:00

A Zen interlude...because it is fun to look at tiny trees. I love some of the detail on these trees, and how realistically old and gnarly they look despite their small size.

(from Mike's flickr photostream)

The above photo, and all subsequent ones that are from Mike's flickr photostream, are from an exhibit in Portland, Oregon!

(from Chris Guise's flickr photostream)

(from Rob Shenk's flickr photostream)

(from cowtools's flickr photostream)

(from Cass Chin's flickr photostream)

The above photo came with the quotation, "The game of bonsai is like a swordfight..." which I think is pretty great.

(from Chris Tank's flickr photostream)

(from Mike's flickr photostream)

(from Johann Dréo's flickr photostream)

(from inajeep's flickr photostream)

(from Flatbush Gardener's flickr photostream)

(from cowtools's flickr photostream)

(from publikaccion's flickr photostream)

(from Flatbush Gardener's flickr photostream)

(from Daniele Prati's flickr photostream)

(from Bart's flickr photostream)

(from the Wikimedia commons, courtesy of Sage Ross)

Happy holidays!

(from Peter Hellberg's flickr photostream)

Many sizes of sharks

2010-12-05T21:19:00.000-08:00

This weekend I'm in Charleston, SC, and I have learned that sharks can be tiny. I was standing on the boardwalk at Folly Beach, and I saw a fisherman catch something, and it was a super tiny shark! The shark I saw was a bit smaller than this:

(from Peter Metzger's flickr photostream)

The fisher threw the shark back, but I was all excited about sharks at that point. I thought that perhaps the Talus Slopes blog could introduce you to the many sizes of shark this week!

The smallest shark is the dwarf lantern shark. It's only 6-8 inches long. You could keep it in your kitchen sink and feed it sardines. I don't have any good lantern shark pictures, but here is a tiny dead shark to look at.

(from bac_clin's flickr photostream)

The biggest shark is, of course, the whale shark:

(from pelican's flickr photostream)

Whale sharks are huge. The heaviest one ever weighed was over 79,000 pounds! I have no idea how they weighed it. The longest one was over 40 feet long! They mostly eat plankton, though (lots and lots of plankton). You might not think it, given what they look like:

(from Olivier Roux's flickr photostream)

(from KAZ2.0's flickr photostream)

I can imagine fitting my entire body into that thing's mouth before it realized I wasn't plankton.

I think it is time to talk about teeth. Sharks are made entirely of teeth. Don't let their smiley faces fool you...

(from Hermanus Backpackers' flickr photostream)

...sharks are made of teeth.

(from Herman Yung's flickr photostream)

Sharks have multiple rows of teeth, as you can sort of see above, and they keep growing more teeth and shedding their old ones throughout their lifetimes. Newly-grown teeth are moved into place on a terrifying "conveyor belt-like structure," apparently. A little shark called a "lemon shark" replaces its teeth every 8-10 days, while the great white replaces its teeth every 100-230 days, depending on age. Apparently, some sharks can shed up to 35,000 teeth in their lifetime!

(from kecko's flickr photostream)

Grr. The shark above is suspended in formaldehyde, for some reason...

Shark teeth are kind of useful because they turn into fossils eventually. There were sharks around 450 million years ago, and these days they're mostly known because of their teeth. Shark teeth have also been weaponized:

(From the Peabody Museum, Salem)

Here are some pictures of people holding sharks. A medium-sized blacktip shark:

(from vgm8383's flickr photostream)

And here's a shark that was dragged onto shore to be measured, and is now being dragged back out to sea:

(from Eliott Gilfix's flickr photostream)

More fun facts about sharks:

Sharks don't have an air bladder for buoyancy. Rather, they have a large liver filled with buoyant oil, and some very lightweight cartilage.
Some sharks keep their eyes open when they sleep, and their eyes will actively follow divers that pass by.

Sizes of sharks:

(from Popoto, Wikimedia Commons)

Some sharks, such as the Port Jackson shark, also have some very neat spiral egg cases:

(From Golden Wattle, Wikimedia Commons)

Thanks for joining me on this trip through the wonderful world of small and large sharks! Ending on a responsible note, I'd like to encourage everyone who reads this blog to avoid eating sharkfin soup. It's very expensive and classy, yes, but it's generally made by cutting the fins off of sharks and then throwing the shark back into the ocean to die. Be humane to our toothy friends!

(from Peter Smithson's flickr photostream)

Half Birthdays Are Awesome.

2010-11-28T20:41:00.000-08:00

Half birthdays are those things you celebrate when you are about 6 years old, and you still think that half years are significant qualifiers to your age. So, when I mention my half birthday these days, people tend to think that I'm a dork. That's okay, though! It turns out that half birthday parties are awesome.

Saturday was my half birthday, and I had ice cream cakes. One of them said "Happy Birthday" in frosting, so I cut off half the letters and ended up with "Hap Birth." On two occasions, groups of people started singing me the birthday song and stopped halfway through. Then, one of my friends gave me half of a six pack of soda, and another friend gave me half of a bottle of scotch! (Ken also got me a full present -- a metronome -- because half a metronome isn't very awesome.)

The Talus Slopes blog heartily endorses half birthday parties. Unleash your inner six-year-old!

(From Kevan Davis's flickr photostream)

Speed Flying

2010-11-21T21:08:00.000-08:00

This is a very special week. I've been planning on posting about this sport called "speed flying" for nearly as long as this blog has existed, but this week I'm finally going to do it. The reason: I have finally seen a video that does justice to the awesomeness of the sport. Here it is. Watch it. Full screen mode recommended.

First Person Speedflying - Video from clipupload.com

(This video, like many videos, is courtesy of Ken's internet browsing skills.)

First, for those of you who don't ski, the first few seconds of the video (before they start flying) give a pretty good feeling of what skiing feels like. And then they're threading their way between rock formations, briefly landing on top of houses, doing flips, and sometimes just coasting above the clouds. I don't think I'd have the guts to come as close to the rocks as these guys, but the rest of it looks like so much fun. I...sort of want to try it.

(from ludo29's flickr photostream)

Before I'd heard of speed flying, I once had a dream in which I skied off a cliff, parachuted down to the ground, and continued skiing. I started thinking about awesome sport combinations, like skydiving + skiing + pistol target practice. Each is fun by itself, so why not combine them? Then I found out about speed flying, and I found out about the biathlon (shooting + skiing) while watching the Winter Olympics. If we could just combine speed flying with the biathlon...well, then we'd probably be in a Bond movie, but my dream would be realized!

(from lee_ciaran's flickr photostream)

On the other hand, speed-flying.com says that nine people died in this sport in 2009. They probably had more testosterone coursing through their bodies than I do, and were probably trying pretty gutsy stuff...but maybe I'll hold off until the sport's a little more developed. Maybe someday in the future, people will create the bunny hill of speed flying.

Really Old Trees

2010-11-14T22:44:00.000-08:00

What do you think the world's oldest tree is? Take a moment to think about it and make your guess. The answer is at the end of this post. When you've made your guess, continue on...

(from Alfred de Brujin's flickr photostream)

I became interested in really old trees when I was looking at pictures of the world's biggest trees, the giant sequoia redwoods. Here are some pictures, and please click to see bigger versions. This is General Sherman, the largest tree by volume in the world, thought to be between 2300 and 2700 years old:

(from the Wikimedia Commons)

Here's the "Grizzly Giant," another huge tree with branches that look like huge trees by themselves:

(from the Wikimedia Commons)

My favorite pictures of the redwoods are the ones that show people standing next to the base:

(from Mark Knowles's flickr photostream)

It looks like people are about to be stomped on by giants.

So, redwoods are pretty big, but they aren't the oldest of trees. If you want to figure out what the oldest trees are, you have to qualify it a bit -- you could be talking about individual clonal trees (those with genetically identical offspring), clonal colonies (clonal trees connected by an underground root system), or non-clonal trees. I'll start with the younger trees and move on towards the older ones.

The oldest non-clonal tree is named "Methuselah," and its estimated germination date is in 2832 BC. It is about 4800 years old. This tree predates the Ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, and was born shortly after the Egyptian civilization unified under its first pharaoh, and it's still thriving in the Methuselah Grove in California. It's a bristlecone pine, and it is in a grove full of very old bristlecone pines that looks like this:

(from Matt High's flickr photostream)

The oldest individual clonal tree is about twice the age of the Methuselah tree at 9550 years old. Its name is "Old Tjikko," and it's a Norway Spruce tree living in Sweden. It was named after a dog. It is thought that this tree sprouted as the ice age was receding from Scandinavia, but due to the harsh conditions, it remained a stunted little tree until the last century, when the warming climate caused it to start growing upwards. You'd think that this amazingly old tree (it predates writing and the wheel) would be large, but...

(image copyright Leif Kullman)

That's it. Crazy, isn't it? That fairly small tree is so old that when it first sprouted, the newest big idea in the world was agriculture.

So, we come now to the world's oldest clonal colony tree. These are the trees that are connected by underground root systems. Individual trees may only reach an age of 130 years or so, but the underground root system lives on. Take a moment to remember your guess from the beginning of this blog post...

The oldest clonal colony tree is a colony of quaking aspen trees in Utah named "Pando" (Latin for "I spread"). Its age is estimated at around 80,000 years, placing its date of birth in the Middle Paleolithic. If this estimate is correct, the birth of this tree would coincide roughly with the emergence of homo sapiens. The height of technology was the stone arrowhead and tools made out of bones. And some of those roots that began their life then are still around, according to scientists. A quaking aspen grove looks like this:

(from C. Devon Sanderson's flickr photostream)

That's all the interesting stuff I have to talk about tonight. Until next time!

Montage of Awesome Things

2010-11-07T21:18:00.000-08:00

I don't know where my camera is, otherwise I might be posting photos from last weekend's hike through the Middlesex Fells. In lieu of hike photos, I'll be posting some awesome things for your perusal!

1. Fun fact that will blow your mind: you know the wake that forms behind boats traveling in deep water? This kind of wake:

(From Neil Willsey's flickr photostream)

It turns out that all wakes formed behind boats in deep water have the same angular measure, 39 degrees, regardless of the speed of the boat! Cool, huh? This angle was first calculated by Lord Kelvin, and the wake shape is thus called Kelvin's Wedge. I'll be studying it for my final applied math project.

2. I want to make a dessert called a cherpumple, the turducken of dessert foods. It's three pies baked into three layers of a cake. Watch the video here, it's quite excellent! Anyone want to help me make one? Maybe my friends over at Unwholesome Foods will help...

3. This is one of my favorite videos of the month. It's courtesy of Ken, who sent it my way (as is the last video, actually). It's a video of people repelling down into an active volcano. Check it out, it's awesome :)

4. This week I learned that the Norwegian word for sorcerer is "trollmann."

5. Here are some assorted pretty pictures to start off your week, and to get you excited for winter. :)

(from MarcoIE's flickr photostream)

(from Asbjørn Floden's flickr photostream)

(from claustral's flickr photostream)

Happy November!

Obligatory New England Trip Report: Apple Picking

2010-10-31T20:19:00.000-07:00

My parents visited me a couple weeks ago, and Mom and I did that New England thing and went apple picking. Here are some pictures!

This is Mom:

And I have this apple on my head for some reason:

One of the issues with apple picking is that each year, you learn the names of all the apples and then you forget them by the next time October comes around. If I write them here, then I can check next year. This time, I learned that "empire" apples were the tasty ones, with "mutsu" apples coming in second. Here I am with a tasty empire tree!

Empire apples are possibly the prettiest apples:

And they grow on trees, looking like big grapes!

There were so many apples that they were just lying everywhere in the paths:

Here's an especially pretty one. It was especially tasty, as well:

That's about it for apple pictures, but here is a cloud.

Cheers from New England!

A Scholarly Interlude

2010-10-17T23:15:00.000-07:00

My life has been largely consumed with graduate school lately. Tonight, I will post some nice images from recent work. Part of being a grad student, perhaps, is recognizing that most people don't care about the details of what you're doing... so I will post these mostly without comment and just invite you to look and enjoy. :-)

Here are two pretty graphs that Dad made for me for a homework problem:

Here are some graphs related to something I made up called the Shatner Equation (named after the man himself, of course):

And here is an image from lab. These are two worm embryos, one in a very early stage and one in a very late stage. The embryo on the right is an embryo just completing it's very first cell division. The remnants of the spindle structure are still visible. The embryo on the left is a fully-formed larva, just about to hatch.

*yawn*

Okay, time to go get some sleep.

Trip Report: Hang Gliding Photos

2010-10-10T20:52:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I went hang gliding and posted about it, but there were no photos! Consequently, the post was perhaps somewhat boring. The reason I didn't have photos last week was for a very retro reason -- my photos were on a physical roll of film! I had to go to the store and drop it off and come back later, and now I have a bunch of little pieces of paper with images on them!

But, since it's 2010, I also got a CD with the pictures. Here is the first one, on the ground before lift-off:

That's me and the tandem guy who kept me from dying! The line in front of the glider is attached to an ultralight plane.

Here's a photo taken shortly after lift-off:

You can see the hang gliding center in the background. The big green thing behind the glider is a hill that's used for practicing. I managed to crash a glider on that very same hill just hours before this picture was taken! And if you look closely, at the top of the hill and over to the left is a little white house. There's a wooden bench up there where you can sit in the semi-shade and see a beautiful view of the October leaves. That might be my new happy place.

Anyway, this stage of the flight was the scariest for me. I was getting used to the idea that I was just hanging in a sling. Sure, there were leg loops in the harness, but it wasn't as snug as I would have expected.

Here's the first picture that was taken after the ultralight plane detached itself from the glider:

We're above New Hampshire here, but across the river in the background is Vermont:

Getting up to this elevation took some skill, so the tandem guy took care of it. Once we were gliding, though, I took the helm. Here I am, learning to fly in circles:

Here's a photo that I only post because you can see the happy bench location that I liked sitting in in the lower left corner:

So...I dunno, here is a selection of my favorite shots. Hang gliding montage!

I'm pretty sure the following shot was taken during the most fun part of the hang gliding trip, when we stalled the glider and let it fall, then sped it up to rise back out of the dive. That was great. :-)

Here's a photo with a good view of the funny bag that the tandem pilot was in:

Near the end, we got a photo with the landing strip in the background:

Hang gliding was peaceful. It's very different from sky diving. Sky diving is crazy and surreal, because you are falling out of the sky straight towards the ground. Hang gliding is more like being a bird, soaring over the landscape. You can even catch thermals, like birds do, and ride the updraft. The tandem instructor once stayed up for 6 hours by catching thermals!

Another interesting difference between hang gliding and sky diving: with sky diving, after trying a tandem, I really wanted to try it without a person attached to me. Probably because I wanted to get the most surreal experience possible by jumping out of a perfectly functional plane of my own free will, without a tandem instructor pushing me. With hang gliding, however, I had no such desire. I was happy to have a tandem instructor deal with the technical difficulties of navigating the glider up to altitude and landing the glider at the end. Both of those parts of the flight looked very difficult. With a tandem glide, I got to skip the stress and just enjoy being a bird!

Trip Report: Hang Gliding

2010-10-03T21:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I woke up at 5am to go hang gliding for the first time. It was early enough that I spent about a minute staring at my beeping alarm clock, not comprehending what it was or how to deal with it (in my half-awake state, I tried to take its Fourier transform to gain more information about the situation...it didn't work). I eventually figured out how to turn it off and stumbled out of bed. A guy named Oliver picked me up, I slept in the back seat of his car for about 2 hours, and when I woke up, I was somewhere along the New Hampshire/Vermont border at Morningside Flight Park.

Beth (of Acadia trip fame) organized the hang gliding trip, and the others who tagged along were myself and some people named Oliver, Mikka, and Yelena. We had a hang gliding lesson on the ground in the morning, and in the afternoon, we got to go on a tandem flight up high.

For now, I'll give some first impressions. I will post some pictures later on, once I have them.

The Lesson

Learning to hang glide from the ground requires wind speed, a bit of a slope to the ground, and running. You pick up the glider, hold it in the proper way facing into the wind, and start moving. As you pick up speed, the glider begins to lift. At this point, you keep running as fast as you can, tugging this thing behind you in hopes that you go fast enough to lift off. I have never felt more like a sled dog in my life!
I got some air on one of the runs! I saw the instructor (running beside me) lag behind as the glider picked up speed, and realized I was in this chaotic journey on my own. I didn't keep my wings level, though, and ended up crashing the glider and skinning my knee...second time in two months. It's like I'm 10 again.
You can get beat up practicing this sport. In addition to the crash, I managed to clip myself three times with an old carabiner with a nasty hinge, resulting in two matching blood blisters and an unlikely bruise on the pad of one finger. Good job, Joy.

The Tandem

You know how birds catch thermals and fly on them? I never thought I was going to feel one for myself, but while hang gliding, you can actually feel thermals of warm air lifting you up. If you want to feel what it's like to soar like a bird, try hang gliding!
You get towed up to soaring altitude by an ultralight plane (weighs about 520 lbs, and is made of textile stretched over an aluminum frame with a backpack-sized fuel tank mounted behind the pilot seat). The hang glider pilot has a lot of responsibility to pay attention and keep control of the glider during towing, because a chaotic hang glider could seriously offbalance the ultralight plane. This is one reason to do a tandem flight -- someone else can pilot through the hard stuff.
Favorite thing about hang gliding #1: When you're soaring up high, you can look straight down and see nothing below you, nothing at all. I love the surreal, so I love this. It is an amazing feeling.
Favorite thing about hang gliding #2: When you're soaring, you can stall. This brings the hang glider to nearly a stop. Of course, this makes the glider start to drop. Then you can pull back on the handles of the glider to make yourself go fast again and regain control. It's like a roller coaster, diving and bringing yourself back up. I find the feeling of falling...interesting, so I like this!

I miiiight prefer sky diving to hang gliding because I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie, but hang gliding is also awesome. The trip was a definite success. A great day of learning how to soar like a bird, followed by a delicious huge pesto pizza nearby. The weather was pure New England Fall, and being able to fly above the colorful trees is a new way to experience it. Plus, now I know what it feels like to catch a thermal. Never thought I'd know!

Trip Report: Acadia National Park, Day 2

2010-09-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to the exciting conclusion of the coverage of my trip to Acadia National Park! Beth reminded me that I had failed to mention that we became boy scouts, so I'll start by explaining how that happened. Then I will talk about the coast and then about the bubble and the lake. And, as promised, the dramatic ending will be a new desktop photo!

Topic 1: We are now boy scouts.

Our campsite had a fire ring. On the first night, we had a bundle of logs and some papers we found sitting around the backseat of Beth's car. We tried to make a fire.

It took us three tries to get a fire burning. On the first try, we used paper and no kindling. The second try, we used paper and a handful of damp twigs. On the third try, we spent about 20 minutes peeling bark off the logs to make kindling, and were finally successful.

Night 1 was kind of pathetic that way. Now, we watch our progression to becoming boy scouts:

On night 2, we actually had some kindling, and we lit the fire on the first try. Then we went to hear a park ranger give a talk, and when we returned, we lit the fire using only the old embers from the previous fire! We figured this pretty much made us boy scouts. I can even tie a figure 8 knot, and a fisherman's.

Topic 2: The Coast

Acadia is known for its coastlines. I think we were too busy exploring, because we don't have many pictures. There are lots of fun rocks to explore.

There are also many coastal birds. Ever since my friend Larissa pointed it out to me, their shape reminds me of footballs waiting to be kicked:

So...that's about it for coastal photos. We had a lot of fun climbing around, though.

Topic 3: The Lake and the Bubble.

Our hike for the second day took us up the "South Bubble," a majestic peak rising to a height of 768 feet above sea level!

Its sister "mountain," spotted across the way, was not doing much better, height-wise:

The reason that so many people hike up South Bubble is to try their strength against a "glacial erratic" (a rock deposited in a funny place by an old glacier). I gave it my best:

I couldn't get the rock to go over the side. Beth and I tried together:

We couldn't get it to go over the side. You may ask, "Why even try?!?!" Well, first, the park ranger the previous night told us to. Second, it's like gambling! It will probably go over the side eventually, so the only question that remains is, how unlucky are you? Turns out, Beth and I are both lucky! It's good to know!

From the summit of South Bubble, we hiked down to a nice lake.

The hike around the lake was really nice.

Almost a bit too nice, actually. Acadia, being a National Park, has parts of it that are somewhat resort-y. Halfway around the lake, we came across and outdoor restaurant on a lawn. We picked up some sodas and used the restrooms before continuing on. In fact, I think I went the entire 3-day camping trip without using anything but a flush toilet. It almost doesn't count...

Here is another view of the beautiful lake we walked around:

From a little further (clockwise) around the lake, the two "bubble" mountains you can see in the distance looked a lot like breasts. You may remember the last breast-shaped rock formation featured on this blog, from this post...

Here's another nice view of the water:

Time for some miscellaneous nature photos. The dregs! These are two trees that wound their way around each other in a confusing way. What exactly happened here? Did someone tie them in a knot as saplings?

Finally, here is a mushroom montage:

The last mushrooms in the montage are...

Topic 4. Your new desktop photos!

Choose one, and click for a large version. I think my preference is for the second one.

Trip Report: Acadia National Park, Day 1

2010-09-19T20:39:00.000-07:00

(A quick note before we begin. I just looked back over last week's post. How can you not think those photos are awesome? I felt kind of guilty about my indulgent mountain photo post, but in retrospect, I think the photos are beautiful. Perhaps I should indulge myself more frequently.)

The week before my classes started, Beth and I went on one final summer trip. We decided that, despite the 6 hour commute it entails, we would go to Acadia National Park. We'd both been meaning to go there for a while.

Acadia is a national park on the Maine coast, and while it is fairly small, it has many trails that span mountaintops, lakes, and shorelines. I'm using "mountaintops" in a different way than I was in last week's blog post, of course -- different by about 12,000 feet -- but I'm starting to like the hills of the East Coast. They have their own charm about them.

As a matter of fact, standing on top of a peak in Acadia, I remember looking over at a neighboring peak and thinking, "Look, a pretty East Coast mountain" instead of "Wow, that is pathetically tiny." This struck me as novel at the time. ...But I actually mean this as a compliment. I'm starting to like the wilderness out here. Really!

On the first full day in Acadia, Beth and I hiked the "Precipice Trail." Why is it called the Precipice Trail? Well, here's a picture of me hiking on the trail...

That is literally the trail. And yes, that is a cliff next to me. My left hand is holding onto the rock for a reason. Fortunately, by the time my parents read this and get worried about the trail, they will have the comfort of knowing that I made it through without ...mishap.

Other areas of the trail had railings:

The proximity of the cliffs wasn't the only strange part of the trail. The trail was, in general, a bit weird. For example, spot the trail in this photo:

Yep, those boulders are the trail. Ok, spot the trail in this photo:

This, too, was part of the trail:

Yeah, that's a very steep trail. Acadia is known for having a couple of trails that you have to climb on iron rungs. Here is Beth's foot and the view back down one section of the "trail:"

Some other steep sections of the trail:

Here's a view back down to the parking lot, giving an idea of the steepness of the grade:

And here's a view of the cliff face "trail" (The Beehive) that we descended:

We came to the top of the Precipice Trail. The summit had these little lakes that seem to exist on the summits of many East Coast peaks.

A bird cheated by flying, and it met us up there.

There were also some interesting markings on the summit. 10 points to the first person to tell me what caused them (or to state, with certainty, that some of them were caused by glaciers dragging rocks along the peak).

We made our way down to a lake.

Here, we captured a new desktop photo for you! So take down that old one from Sedona, click on this for the full version, and enjoy! :-)

ribbit.

We continued through the woods...

...down the Beehive Trail (really, this is only barely a trail)...

...and along a beach of which we have no photos. Then we walked along a road that wound through oaks. We spent about a half hour trying to figure out exactly what type of oak trees they were, using my handy plant-identification guide that I'd bought before the hike. We narrowed it down to two, but now I forget which two they were.

We finished the hike with a view back to the original Precipice Trail, over a pond and some reeds. Something about this view reminds me of Black Butte, in Oregon.

That was all the hiking for day 1, though we did go check out the whale museum in the town. It featured baleen, a huge, whale jaw, and a whale movie narrated by Patrick Stewart.

Next week, I will write about the second day of our Acadia trip, which featured the rocky coastline and a beautiful lake! There will also be another brand-new desktop photo, if that's the sort of thing that motivates you to come back and read more.

See you next week!

Indulgent Mountaineering Photo Post

2010-09-12T20:50:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago, looking for photos of Mt. Rainier, I stumbled across some amazing photos of crevasses, ice formations, wind-swept landscapes, and steep slopes. I know I am more interested in mountaineering than most people reading this, and that I already posted about Mt. Rainier twice, but I'm going to be self-indulgent and post about Mt. Rainier again! Partially because I might climb Mt. Rainier someday, so I am even more interested in these photos than usual.

All photos here are from the area between Camp Muir, which is at 10,080 feet, and the summit of Mt. Rainier at 14,411 feet. Hope you enjoy them.

Due to needing to cite the sources for all the images, I'm going to organize the images by whose flickr account I'm taking them from...first up, cdine! The following images come from cdine's flickr photostream.

Here are some photos of hiking at high elevation. The photos remind me of skiing.

Here is the summit!

And here are some huge crevasses. Very dangerous!

I love the pictures above the clouds. Pretty good, cdine! Now it's simonov's turn. These are from simonov's flickr photostream. Simonov has lots of photos:

Here is a photo of the Ingraham Flats camp from above. Take a look at where the tents are positioned, right above a glacier that is tumbling down the mountain. It's like the tents are about to go down the mountain on a huge glacier slide.

Here is a photo from the top of "Disappointment Cleaver." Great name.

And here are some trails up the steep glaciers above 13,000 feet.

Thanks, simonov. Next up is leodirac! I'm only posting one photo from leodirac's flickr photostream, and here it is:

That's the trail, going right along the side of a crevasse. Very dangerous! That's why there's a fixed line to clip onto.

Next up is a picture from Walter Siegmund via the Wikimedia Commons, of the Emmons Flats camp. The Emmons Flats camp is yet another camp that looks like it's about to fall into a crevasse:

Finally, here are some photos from bigyahu's flickr photostream. This one might be my favorite:

I like this one a lot, but probably just because I love the color blue. I think this photo is from Camp Muir, where I hiked up to a couple weeks ago. In the distance, you can make out Mount Adams. If I look at this photo at full resolution, the loneliness of it is beautiful. I sort of imagine putting my skis on and taking off down the slope.

Camp Muir in the dark:

And finally, here's a photo of the place I ate lunch when I hiked to Camp Muir, but with a completely different character in the blue light:

For comparison, here I am at that location in the daytime:

One last photo from simonov, taken from lower down on the mountain.

Sliding Down Mt. Rainier

2010-09-05T21:46:00.000-07:00

Iiiit's...

MOVIE TIME

Last week I posted about hiking up to Camp Muir on Mt. Rainier. I have some videos that you can watch now, if you're interested.

To begin with, here's what it looks like up at Camp Muir. You can see a tired hiker reaching the camp, some hiking parties further down the glacier, a couple of skiers, and a complete panorama of our lunch spot! Click here!

Now let's look at glissading, the "sport" of sliding down the mountain on your butt. Here's Cole on a really good glissade track.

If there are two people glissading on the same track, the person in back can run into the person and front to impart momentum or form a glissading cluster... click here if that interests you or if you are bored.

Finally, here's a video of a ski mountaineer skiing down the mountain. The bumps he's going over are part of a terrain feature known as "suncupping" that often occurs on glaciers. I like the word "suncupping" almost as much as I like the words "talus slope."

(from Alaskan Dude's flickr photostream)

Trip Report: Camp Muir, Mt. Rainier

2010-08-29T21:20:00.000-07:00

Mt. Rainier

is possibly

the most beautiful

of the Cascade volcanoes.

Cole and I hiked halfway up Mt. Rainier to a place called Camp Muir about a week and a half ago. Today I will attempt and fail to fully describe the mountain's awesomeness!

First Half: Below the Timberline

The hike starts off in the trees, with other mountains as a backdrop. The other mountains are placed almost like foothills south of Mt. Rainier, but they have glaciers on them and look like mountains in their own right.

You can't tell in the photo above, but all that greenery below the trees is full of wildflowers:

There are little alpine streams everywhere. (This one is for Yuki, who is in love with little streams!)

I had seen many photos of Mt. Rainier that have the mountain rising above a grassy meadow full of wildflowers and a little stream, and I had always assumed that professional photographers had to go out of their way to find that one perfect shot. But no, that perfect shot exists everywhere. Here's my version, though you can't quite make out all the wildflowers that exist in the foreground:

Just look at the shape of that mountain. Beautiful.

An added bonus is the existence of marmots! They were in snacking mode when we encountered them. Marmots hibernate in the winter, so they need to eat as many lupins as marmotly possible during the summer months. We saw four marmots, and all looked kind of chubby. A couple of them were completely unconcerned about our approach, not looking up at us even though we were about 5 feet away on the trail. Here is a fearless marmot chomping the head off of a lupin:

cutecutecute

A couple other Cascade volcanoes could be seen through the smog from Seattle. Here is Mount St. Helens, of 1980 eruption fame:

And here is Mount Adams, which Cole and I climbed last summer:

Second Half: On the Glaciers

Eventually, the greenery gave way to glaciers. Most of the rest of the hike looked like this:

Glacier hiking is a wonderful thing. You get into a zone. In the zone, you keep putting one foot in front of another as you climb a long white staircase. The scenery changes slowly as you ascend, but you spend most of the time looking down at the next place to place your foot. You lose track of time, get lost in your thoughts, and listen to a catchy song loop in your head. From time to time, you look up the glacier and back down where you came from, and you realize that you've made significant progress.

Times like these may call for overly-epic water breaks.

I love glacier hiking. Reaching your destination after a few hours in the glacier-hiking zone is a rewarding experience, one which increases respect for or closeness with the mountain. Or something. Perhaps what I'm trying to say is this. Anyway, it is part of why I like climbing.

As we hiked onward, we got excellent views of crevasses:

There was also a waterfall coming from one of the glaciers:

Our hike took us onto some talus fields, where a few small plants grew.

Some hardy glacier bees could be seen nearby:

Here is a view of one of the talus slopes that we climbed up after a couple hours of glacier hiking:

Destination: Camp Muir

At last, after four hours of hiking (we left around 10, arrived at the camp around 2), we arrived at Camp Muir. It's pronounced Myoor. Camp Muir is the base camp for most climbers attempting to summit Mt. Rainier. For reference, the trailhead at Paradise Lodge is at 5,400 feet, the summit is at 14,411 feet, and Camp Muir is at 10,080 feet.

Camp Muir has a few small buildings for rangers and guided tour supplies, and some outhouses. There is a small shelter with bunk beds for the climbers who arrive early enough to claim them.

Camp Muir is also the furthest you can hike before the going gets technical. Beyond the camp, climbers need to rope up, because crevasses start to appear. Here is a photo taken from our lunch spot of the crevasses that start immediately following Camp Muir:

Climbers had set up camp on the glacier immediately beyond Camp Muir:

Beyond the campers, we could see the trail heading onward towards the summit!

Within 15 minutes of sitting down for lunch, we heard a deep rumble behind us. We looked around to see a cloud of dust rising from a cliff face -- an avalanche! In the photo above, you can see a pile of rocks on top of the glacier, at the bottom of the cliff, slightly to the left of middle. That pile of rocks had just formed in the avalanche.

Cole and I found a place to eat lunch and relax, while contemplating how hardcore Mt. Rainier is. It is full of crevasses, it is the largest of the Cascades by a comfortable margin, and it has avalanches right next to us. Rumor has it that if you go further up, you have to cross some of the crevasses on horizontal ladders. Mt. Rainier isn't messing around.

So here I am, chilling at Camp Muir on my lunch break.

Lunch consisted of hamburgers. I made my hamburger into the shape of a cairn, the rock piles used to mark hiking trails!

Here, Cole and I pose with Mt. Adams in the distance. Last year, we stood on the summit of Mt. Adams and got a photo with Mt. Rainier in the background. :-)

The Descent

The descent is a fun part of mountaineering. You spend most of the time being one with the inherent slipperiness of the terrain, either by "skiing" down on your hiking boots, or by glissading (sliding down on your butt).

Cole and I found an excellent glissade at one point. It was super deep. We joked that it was the sort of glissade mountaineers dream about. The sort of glissade that you'll still be talking about over beers a decade from now. The double rainbow starting to look like a TRIPLE RAINBOW of glissading, if you will.

Here is Cole on the super glissade:

Some other amazing glissade trails awaited us further on:

Here is a random photo of the descent. I like it because it's relaxed. If I looked like this while walking away from a huge explosion, I would probably be in a James Bond movie. Click for the full resolution; it's better that way.

When we got off the glaciers again, we took a wrong turn, and came across this photogenic location:

If you look veeeery closely (and perhaps zoom in on the above image), you can see a bridge we drove across on the way to Camp Muir down in the valley on the far right of the above image. I had to slow nearly to a stop on that bridge to admire the view.

We got back on the right trail and made it back to the trailhead. The descent took us about 3 hours. Cole finished it shoeless, because his mountaineering boots were getting too small and giving him blisters. Still, it was an amazing trip. We took 8 hours total, including a little over an hour at Camp Muir and a little detour down a wrong trail. It makes for an excellent day hike.

In the future, Cole and I might attempt to summit Mt. Rainier. The area above Camp Muir looks pretty amazing in photos, full of dramatic glaciers, crevasses, and rock formations. It's a bit too technical for my current climbing level, though, so my next goal is Mt. Hood. Here's a sneak peak of what awaits above Camp Muir...

(photo from troymason's flickr photostream)

(photos from leodirac's flicker photostream)

Finishing Up These Arizona Posts

2010-08-22T23:59:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I finished up writing about Arizona...but didn't have the final set of photos from the camera. Now I have gone across the country just to download these photos, and I am now prepared to show them to you!

I will show you photos of the Devil's Bridge hike, and then Arizona Miscellany, and then I'll really be out of Arizona photos.

Devil's Bridge

When we hiked to Devil's Bridge, we noticed many colorful place names nearby:

We got lost, and took a special route through the backcountry. Here's Mom on our special invented trail:

And here's the view down to the real trail below:

Here is Devil's Bridge from below. Devil's Bridge is a natural rock bridge.

If you're feeling lucky, you walk across it! What are the chances the rock will give away just for you? Here I am, feeling lucky:

Dad felt lucky too:

If you look at my most recent post on Arizona, you can get links to youtube videos of people doing stupid dances and cartwheels on Devil's Bridge.

Arizona Miscellany

Flora is spiky:

The final red rock desktops from Sedona that you will receive from me!

Fun game: spot the spiders!

Here's an example of a hand hold that I thought rock climbing gyms just made up. Apparently these finger-holds do exist!

That wraps it up for Arizona! Next week, it's glacier hiking.

Extreme Sport of the Week: Extreme Caving

2010-08-10T22:05:00.000-07:00

Last week's post was long. This one will be much shorter but it will be awesome. There is only one picture, but stay with me here...

I've been doing some reading into extreme caving. The really intense caving involves staying underground, often in pitch black to conserve light, for sometimes up to a month at a time. It involves advanced rappelling equipment to get beyond sheer vertical drops. Sometimes the passageway becomes flooded, and an advanced piece of scuba gear called a "rebreather" is required to stay underwater long enough to continue. Sometimes there are flash floods. Sometimes waterfalls, deafening as jet engines in the enclosed spaces of caverns, will plunge into huge underground lakes. The temperatures are frequently low, and sometimes freezing. An added difficulty to the sport is that rescue is nearly impossible in deep caves. You can't just have a helicopter fly in and take people out.

Unfortunately, due to the darkness of the environment and the harshness of conditions, good photography of hardcore caves is much harder to come by than, say, hardcore mountaineering photography. Do yourself a favor and do a google image search for Krubera (the deepest known cave, at over 7,000 feet of depth), or maybe try looking through this gallery for an idea of the dirtiness, claustrophobia, and verticality of the sport: http://www.kuleuven.be/spekul/expeditions/spain/pages/image000.html.

Of the very few good extreme caving photographs that I could find in the creative commons, take a look at this one:

(from WBUR's flickr photostream)

Claustrophobia, anyone? How cool is that?

There are a few things that I find particularly awesome about this sport. You may or may not agree with me, but here they are:

Claustrophobia. I think it is very cool how people continue to squeeze themselves down into tiny spaces, thousands of feet below the surface, without chance of rescue if they mess up, completely disoriented due to the lack of light, with the possibility of getting irreversibly lost down there. People go caving, conquer this fear, or at least learn to live with it, and press on.
Colossal Cave Adventure. You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. Cave explorers don't have a map, and can't see further than their headlamps will illuminate the passageway ahead. Who knows how many caverns are up ahead, how many rivers, how many small passageways branch off like the roots of a tree cutting thousands of feet into the Earth. The entire process is pure exploration and discovery.
Journey to the Center of the Earth. Have you googled for those images of Krubera yet? If you have, and if you've seen the 1959 film version of "Journey to the Center of the Earth," you'll note the obvious similarity. How could you hike down into a huge cave and not feel like you were in the movie? (Yeah, yeah. Don't answer that. There are lots of ways, but still!)
As always, I am fascinated by humans performing unnatural feats. The environment in some of the caves looks completely alien, full of mineral deposits and strange terrain.

The article that got me started learning about caves is this interview, which is packed with interesting facts about extreme caving: To the Supercave.

The article also mentions a book about the quest to find the deepest cave. You can read the first few chapters online, here: http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Descent-Quest-Discover-Deepest/dp/1400067677. After reading the first few chapters, I have added that book to the end of my reading queue. It sounds like it will be every bit as interesting as "Into Thin Air" was, but perhaps even more so given how little people seem to know about caving.

If you've made it through this post despite the lack of pictures, I congratulate you... and hopefully you think this is half as cool as I do! :-)

Trip Report: Other Adventures in the Red Rocks

2010-08-07T22:15:00.000-07:00

In addition to the recent posts on hiking in the Grand Canyon and hiking through Oak Creek Canyon in Sedona, I went hiking in a few other places while visiting Arizona. Here, I will summarize the final four destinations, in the following order:

The House (some nice views)
The Vortex, and the Other Hill (ooo, mystical)
Cathedral Rock (huge, beautiful rock formation, and danger with lightning)
Devil's Bridge (walk over it... if you feel lucky)

Skip ahead to whatever interests you.

The House

We stayed with my grandparents at their rented house in Sedona. Here are some of the views we woke up to in the morning:

Here are some of the views at night:

Here's me and my parents, with the view from the porch:

And the house itself:

It was a beautiful place to stay, situated right next to one of Sedona's mystical vortices!

The Vortex, and the Other Hill

Sedona has "vortices," or areas of unexplained mystical energy. Sedona's a bit new-agey that way. People like to hike out to the vortices, sit down and meditate, stack little piles of red rocks, play their drums or flute, etc.

(Many people in Sedona say "vortexes." Apparently, both pluralizations are acceptable, so I'll go with the one that sounds better to me. After being raised by a math prof and hearing about vertices my whole life, words like "vortexes" just make me wince. I like cacti and matrices and Elvi.)

As it turns out, our beautiful home was right next to one of the four vortices! At all times, people could be seen on the vortex. Here's an example of a typical vortex sunset crowd looked like, from the porch of our house:

Ants on a hill.

My grandparents reported seeing many strange people up there, including a man dressed in a bright white cowboy uniform. Meanwhile, the hill right next to the vortex was consistently deserted! Poor, unloved hill. We decided to take a hike over to the unloved hill, and then to the vortex itself.

Here is a picture of Dad on the top of the unloved hill:

The views from the unloved hill were just as nice as those from the vortex. We could see some nice red rock formations:

The valley below:

And "Bell Rock," which Dad and I both agreed looked more like a giant breast than a bell:

I think we all liked the unloved hill more than the vortex hill. More solitude. I made my own mystical rock pile on the unloved hill:

From there, we moved on to the vortex. There were two couples sitting on top of the vortex when we visited. Both were silent, lost in contemplation or absorbing the energy. I wanted to take a picture of me and Dad meditating at the vortex, but when looking around for Mom, who had the camera, we found that she had set off for a three mile hike. No pictures for us. Perhaps the vortex didn't want pictures of it taken... Perhaps it sensed our cynicism and repelled us... mysterious.

Cathedral Rock

It turns out that Cathedral Rock, one of our hiking destinations, is also a "vortex." I get the feeling that people have confused the terms "pretty place" and "vortex," but the hike was nice.

We set out amid distant rolls of thunder. Here are my parents, posing with Cathedral Rock and ominous clouds in the background:

Here's the rock again, this time in desktop photo format for your convenience! :)

As we continued upward, the thunder seemed to be approaching. We repeatedly wondered whether the correct response was to climb to the top of the highest thing we could find, but we decided to push ahead anyway.

Along the climb, we encountered flora such as my favorite thistle:

Mom's favorite dead tree:

And many prickly pears. (Don't pick a prickly pear by the paw, when you pick a pear, try to use the claw!)

If you're into prickly pear, here's a prickly photo for your desktop!

The thunder continued to worsen, and we saw rain clouds consuming rock formations in the distance:

Still, none of us were more than vaguely worried, so we continued up the path, which began to get steeper:

We eventually came to the first great overlook, I mean, vortex!

From here, we ascended further to the second and final great viewpoint. Looking down into the valley, we could see the river where our trail began:

Here, Mom points to a small pile of mystical vortex rocks in a dangerous location near a drop-off. Someone may have risked their lives to bring you that pile of rocks.

Also at the top was a crack in the rock that very much wanted to be climbed... just look at it...

Time for a RED ROCK MONTAGE!

Montage end. (If you liked that, check out my Arizona screensaver!)

Last up, and most dangerously, is...

Devil's Bridge

I want to avoid writing too much about this, because my photos of the location are on Mom's camera, which is back in Oregon. I'll be there in a little over a week, at which point I can write about this hike in more detail. It was a hike combining hilarity (we took a completely wrong route to the bridge, and the names of surrounding landmarks sounded like they came out of The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra) and terror.

I will note, briefly, the "terror" section of the hike. Devil's Bridge is a landmark for people who feel lucky. It is a natural bridge of rock that could go tumbling down at any moment. Kids love to run across it while saying, "Look, Mom, it's totally safe" and giving their parents heart attacks.

(from katstan's flickr photostream)

We spent this section of the trip in a state of worry that we'd see someone die. Close your eyes and concentrate for a moment. Try to get yourself into that mindset. And then, watch these videos I found on youtube: cartwheel and dance!

Really, between this and the tourists trying to take Grand Canyon photos as close to the rim as possible, I'm surprised we didn't see any close calls. Wait a couple weeks and you'll be able to see photos of me and Dad tempting fate...

Closing Note

Writing this post has made me nostalgic. It's been two weeks since I was in Sedona, and I wish I were there again. The company and the scenery were excellent. It's been a little over a year since I last fell in love with a location (the last time being Mt. Adams, WA), but these sorts of trips remind me why I love hiking and the outdoors. Everywhere you turn in Sedona, it's unbelievably beautiful. In Sedona-speak, must be the vortices!

Trip Report: Hiking in the Grand Canyon

2010-08-01T21:44:00.000-07:00

A week ago, I returned from my Arizona trip. I was busy that weekend, so I wrote about jerky (I tried the ostrich today; it was pretty good). Now, I'm spending a relaxing evening at home and can write about the most epic part of the Arizona trip: the Grand Canyon.

On the first day, Mom, Dad, and I went for a walk along the rim. We observed the canyon's bigness ("Is your canyon grand enough for you, Mr. Bond?"). Here are Mom and Dad posing at one of the many places you could fall to your deaths, trying to imitate the cute little heart sign that some of the Japanese tourists were making:

Here are some tourists posing at another place to fall into the canyon:

It's fun to run your finger along the picture, like you're pushing the tourists over the ledge, while making a video game sound effect. Or maybe that's just me.

Anyway, the Grand Canyon is really big. I had trouble grasping the real size of it from the rim, though. The canyon barely looks real from the rim. It looks like you're viewing a huge panoramic photograph, but it's hard to comprehend distances. I wanted to walk down into the canyon in order to get a better idea of the size of the place.

Thus, a plan was formed to hike into the sweltering July canyon, from the rim down to a viewpoint we could see far below. You can see the trail going out to the viewpoint here:

The hike down to the point and back to the rim (a combination of Bright Angel and Plateau Point trails) was rumored to be a little over 12 miles round trip, with a little over 3000 feet of elevation gain. A great hike in normal weather, but the Grand Canyon gets hot in July. It hangs around the mid-80s at the rim, but as you descend, it gets hotter. (The warmer temperatures in the canyon are likely due to elevation change and shelter to wind, but I'm just guessing.) Down at the viewpoint, the weather gets into the mid- to high-90s, and at the bottom of the canyon by the banks of the Colorado River, it regularly gets to 105 and even 110.

The plan, then, was to get down to the viewpoint as early as possible, and try to get back to the rim before noon. Given that the estimated hike length was 8-12 hours, we started out early, hitting the trailhead at 4:50am. The sun rises at 5:21...so yeah, here's the trailhead:

Ahh, the beauty of the canyon.

Having no flashlights, we couldn't have left any earlier, so we felt good about our starting time. We set a hard turnaround time of 7am so we wouldn't be stuck in the canyon in the heat, giving us just over 2 hours to reach the viewpoint. This seemed a bit ambitious, given the estimated 8-12 hour hike time, and that 7am turnaround time was always on our minds. The weather was already in the 70s when we started out. Moving at a quick pace, we passed numerous hiking parties with headlamps. When they asked what the hurry was, we gave them a quick answer ("Trying to reach the point before 7!") without pausing to chat.

It started to get light.

Did I mention we were in a hurry? I paused to take a picture of a deer, and Mom and Dad just continued on at their quick pace. By the time I put the camera away, I had to jog down past a couple of bends in the trail before I caught up with them.

Here are my parents on the trail, which has a lot of steps carved into it:

The path ahead:

Soon, the sun started to chase us into the canyon:

As the slope leveled out, we approached a river. The river led to increased vegetation in an area called "Indian Garden." You can start seeing the vegetation here:

Unfortunately, we have no pictures of Indian Garden in all its cactus-filled glory, because at this point we looked at our watches (25 minutes until 7am!) and the "3.1 miles to plateau" signpost, and we actually started jogging towards the destination. 82 degrees now, said the thermometer at Indian Garden.

When I paused to apply sunscreen, Dad pressed on towards the point, and I had to jog for a good 5 minutes before catching up to him. Yes, it was fun going jogging through in the Grand Canyon after passing so many signs on the way down that warned of heat stroke, dehydration, and the importance of taking frequent rest breaks. :-)

The next photo I got from the camera was our triumphant group shortly after 7am, at Plateau Point!

Behold, the beautiful talus back the way we came!

We found the Colorado River, which carves its way down the middle of the canyon!

We also noticed the trail that leads down to Phantom Ranch, the famous ranch down by the river where people stay overnight. You can see it here:

We took a final look at the beautiful Grand Canyon from the inside...

...and then, having spent a whole 10 minutes there, we turned around again and started our return hike, racing the heat!

A bit later, looking back towards the point, you could again see some of the vegetation around the Indian Garden area:

The return trip featured:

Scenery!

Wildlife!

Aww, that squirrel has light dots on its fur.

Let's talk about squirrels.

Grand Canyon squirrels are extremely aggressive. I've had a wild ground squirrel climb onto my shoulder to get peanuts before, and those guys are scaredy-cats by Grand Canyon standards. Grand Canyon squirrels charge tourists, making screaming noises if other squirrels get in their way, and don't think twice about getting close enough to get kicked. If you upended a bag of peanuts on your head, you'd get swarmed.

Enough about squirrels.

Mom, Dad, and I were hiking upwards at different speeds, and eventually got separated. Mom was pretty fatigued, and it turned out that she only drank about 1 liter of water during the ascent because she didn't feel thirsty and didn't realize how little she was drinking. For comparison, I drank 3. She was probably on the verge of getting heat stroke. Passerby would ask her if she was okay, and if she had water, and she would say that yes, she had water. Of course, they never asked if she had been drinking it...

Even with all of this, Mom arrived at the trailhead again at 11:20am, making the round trip in 6.5 hours. I took about 6 hours, and Dad took about 5.5 hours. Dad's prize was getting to shower in the hotel room before we had to check out, but Mom and I didn't arrive at the top early enough. Still, the estimated hike time given on signs was 8-12 hours, so we did pretty well.

Near the top, I got some other hikers to take my picture. The guy photographing me was pretty funny. He took one picture, portrait-style, and said, "Your boyfriend will like that one. Hold on, let me take one for mom." Then he turned the camera to landscape orientation to take another one. I'm still trying to figure out what was up with that, but it was pretty funny. He also gave me a peppermint candy, which tasted excellent and got me through the last 10 minutes of the hike.

So, this picture is for Ken:

And this one is for Mom!

Hello from the Grand Canyon! :-)

Also, do you remember two weeks ago when I made you a desktop background? Go back and check the blog. Well, now I made you a screensaver of cactus and rock pictures I took! Here it is, just for you:

http://web.mit.edu/joyp/Public/ArizonaScreensaver.zip

Buck Thornton's World of Jerky

2010-07-25T21:36:00.000-07:00

I got back from Sedona, AZ yesterday night. Next week I'll write a longer post about all the various hikes I went on while there, but as I don't have much time this weekend, today you will get to read about Buck Thornton's World of Jerky!

As you can see, Buck Thornton wasn't messing around. I had a maple duck flavored jerky while in Sedona, but I still have elk, buffalo, venison, wild boar, kangaroo, honey ham, ostrich, and alligator jerky to try. I wonder what I will discover in the world of jerky??

I have divided the jerky into roughly three categories. There's the normal jerky:

The John Locke jerky:

And the weird jerky:

What part of Buck Thornton's world should I explore first? Personally, I'm most curious about the kangaroo. I wonder if the alligator tastes fishy.

The moral of the story is that there's a whole wide world of jerky out there, waiting for you to discover it! Go forth! I will report back with my findings.

Trip Report: Oak Creek Canyon, Arizona

2010-07-18T23:17:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, I arrived with my parents in Sedona, AZ. We're here visiting family, Grandpa and Lorraine. The scenery here is almost unbelievably phenomenal. I know those words sound like overstatements, but... just look at the photos. :)

From the deck of the house, we have panoramic views of red rock formations. Our house is also right next to one of the four mystical "energy vortices" of Sedona (Sedona attracts new-age spiritual types), and people can be seen at the vortex from dawn to dusk. I may take some photos of the view from the house and post them later.

It's been getting up past 100 degrees in the afternoon, so this morning, to beat the heat, we left at 7am for a hike through Oak Creek Canyon. We took West Fork Trail, which follows the creek into a deep canyon of red rocks. Just to get an idea of the scenery, here are some photos from earlier today:

Seriously, all of Sedona has rock formations like this. Hence my earlier phrase, "unbelievably phenomenal." Here's the most-photographed part of the West Fork Trail:

We found part of the creek with a natural water slide:

We took a break to enjoy the scenery next to the water slide. Here are Grandpa and Dad:

Here are Mom and Grandma Lorraine:

And me, on a rock.

After the break, we continued deeper into the canyon. We passed some greenery:

But mostly we were looking up at the rocks:

We also passed some piles of little rocks. While there always seem to be rock piles along rocky hikes, in Sedona there's a chance that the piles are made by people who feel a special spiritual energy in the area. In the past, I've seen circles of rocks here, forming new-age shrines.

Another interesting feature of the hike was a little room we found built into one of the cliffs near the trailhead. The skeleton of an old, three-room house was nearby, so it's possible this room was once used for storage.

Overall, the hike was beautiful. I occasionally got a strange impression, though... a strange impression that I was in a screensaver. So I took a photo, and I now present a Sedona desktop background for you! Click to get full resolution and enjoy. :)

Tomorrow we're heading out early again, this time to Cathedral Rock and Bell Rock, which are isolated formations as opposed to canyons. We may also see some Native American ruins. More to come!

Photos of the outdoor climb

2010-07-11T22:11:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago, I posted about my experience rock climbing. I finally got some photos from one of the guys I went climbing with, so I thought I'd share them here. Photos of the climb are courtesy of Michael Collins.

Here are a couple pictures of me climbing the easy 5.4 or 5.5 climb.

And a bit further in the climb:

The thing on my back is my chalk bag! It keeps me from slipping off the rock due to sweaty hands.

This is the chimney that I was talking about climbing. It was rated a 5.7. I love to climb chimneys:

The manly leg in the photos is, of course, not mine. The cool thing about the chimney climb is that you could brace yourself on the back wall from time to time, giving you something to push off of as a counterbalance.

Finally, here is a photo of me climbing my Great Nemesis of the day, the difficult 5.8:

You can see me as the tiny little person at the top of the wall. (Proof I got up there!) This photo does a good job of illustrating one of the things I love about rock climbing. That wall does not look like a natural thing for humans to be climbing -- humans are not supposed to climb up walls like geckos! It's really cool to do something that is just not quite normal for bipedal mammals.

The rope on the left of that photo was the rope for the chimney climb.

Finally, here is a photo of Angela, our trip leader, trying to work past a tough move with a crazy undercling:

This is where we climbed. Pretty. :)