Rocky Mountain National Park - Part II, Flat Top Mountain

In the early morning of October 26, I was headed back north to Rocky Mountain National Park, just as light broke over the plains of Colorado.

My dad, now driving, had flown out a few days earlier with my mom (who stayed behind in Boulder with B. and enjoyed a more relaxing kind of day). Our plan was to hike up Flat Top Mt., a 12,361 ft (3,768 m) summit nestled in the folds of nearby peaks separated by glacier-carved gorges (trail topo here). By the time we reached the trail head at Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, the skies were an early blue and we had a clear view of both Hallet Peak (center, blocky summit in the photo) and our destination (the slumped summit on the right in the photo) from Bear Lake.

Though the unprotected parking lot was fairly breezy and we could see the clouds whipping over the peaks, we didn't realize just how windy it would get...

The Flat Top Mt. Trail winds its way up 2849 ft in 4.4 miles up to the summit on beautiful trail. Frequent outlooks reveal the steep-walled glacial gorges bounding Long's Peak and Hallet Peak to the south:

While to the north, the long-sloping Tombstone Ridge and the Trail Ridge Rd dominate the skyline:

The views, direct sun and tree-protected hike made the first 3ish miles an enjoyable, warm hike. But after we hit tree line, the force of the wind that we had been catching whiffs of all day hit us full-on and the hike took an adventurous, exhilarating turn.

For the last mile and a half, we continued on the slow, constant climb into a headwind with sustained windspeed of easily 50 mph, with gusts as high as 70 mph. In addition to now walking into a vicious headwind, we encountered more and more snow as we left the trees behind, making for a slow, gruelling last mile. My dad had the additional pleasure of having just arrived from sea level, but he pushed through the wind, snow and thin air:

To better appreciate the conditions, take a look at a video here.

The summit of Flat Top Mt. is indeed flat. So flat that it's not really obvious where the summit is. But the views were great!

After summiting and snapping a few photos, we quickly turned back toward tree line. The hiking (and breathing) was much easier with the wind at our backs and we covered the distance to tree line in what felt like half the time it took to summit. As soon as we descended into the trees, the trail cleared, the wind died down and we had a pleasant 3 mile stroll back to the car.

By the time we collapsed into the seats of our car, we had walked almost 9 miles in about 6 hours. The last mile to the summit easily ranks as one of the most memorable hikes I've done - I've been in high wind and snow on many hikes in the White Mountains, but I've never hiked for so long into direct wind. Definitely an adventure!

Rocky Mountain National Park - Part I, Moraine Park and Fern Lake

A few weeks ago now, B. and I journeyed north from Boulder to camp in Rocky Mountain National Park. We reached Moraine Park campground in the early afternoon and quickly pitched the tent. The view from the site wasn't bad:

After setting up camp we set off to hike up to Fern Lake from a nearby trail head. Early on in the hike, we came across an unusual section of trail in which a deep layer of fine sand covered the ground, likely a remnant of the massive floods that hit Colorado last September.

Though we missed the aspen peak, there were still a few scattered groves of yellow aspens along the trail.

After 3.8 miles, we made it to Fern Lake, an alpine lake sitting in a glacial basin surrounded by steep walls of stone and ice.

After returning to camp, we cooked a tasty dinner (couscous, tomatoes and sausage... mmmmm), burned a few bundles of wood, then fell asleep catching meteors from the Orionid meteor shower and listening to the ominous cries of elk roaming nearby. As B. put it, elk sound eerily similar to  ringwraiths (listen here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20PET6-Hr_c).

The following day, we drove west along the Trail Ridge Rd., which winds its way up to just over 12,000 ft via innumerable switchbacks. Usually, the Trail Ridge Rd is closed by now due to snow and ice, but the Rockies have seen very little precipitation this October and the road was open the whole way across the park. So we drove west, stopping for short hikes and lunch along the way. On the western side of the park, the Trail Ridge Rd. dips down into a valley where the headwaters of the Colorado River hides between pine-covered hills. This far north, the Colorado is a humorously small, trickling brook, and its hard to imagine that it can be the same river that carved out the Grand Canyon.

Cloud Iridescence

Today's update was going to recap my recent visits to Rocky Mountain National Park and Garden of the Gods, but yesterday I was treated to an exciting celestial display that I've never seen the likes of.

Yesterday afternoon I biked over to Mt. Sanitas, an outcrop of vertically tilted Dakota sandstone beds, for some trail running, bouldering, and photography practice (more on this later). While sitting at the bottom of a boulder, I glanced skyward to see a cloud passing near the sun, lit up with amazing shades of purple and cyan:

I didn't know it at the time, but this phenomenon is known as cloud iridescence (wiki article). When the sun's rays hit a rain or ice droplet in a cloud, the light diffracts, shifting the wavelength (and hence color) of the light that reaches the surface. In most clouds, light rays diffract many times before leaving the cloud which washes out any shift in color. In thin, wispy clouds (such as the cirrus clouds I observed), the light rays interact with only a small number of droplets so that the change color is preserved. The following close up shows the cloud and colors in more detail.

Part of the reason I went out to Sanitas was to play around with my new camera (a birthday present from my parents. Thanks parents!). But I wanted to make sure I photographed the cloud so I actually took the above photos with my iPhone - the new camera is the first I've owned with manual control over shutter speed and aperture and I'm not yet confident in my ability to quickly choose the right settings for a shot. After taking a bunch of photos with the iPhone, I took out my camera and managed to get a decent shot (after many failed attempts):

For those interested in photography, I had to go to push my camera's limits to capture the colors in the cloud, using an exposure and F-stop of 1/2000 s and F/8.0 (the min values for my camera, the Nikon S9700). If I let in any more light, the direct light from the sun washed out most of the color.

A bit later, a second cloud passed by. The interior of the cloud was too thick to iridesce, but the wispy edges show a splash of purple and cyan:

In addition to the amazing, glowing clouds, I took quite a few photos with the new camera. Here's a shot of the bouldering area known as Sanitas Proper:

I had a lot of trouble capturing both the blue skies and the rock in the foreground. Most of my photos either washed out the sky or underexposed the rock:

And finally, I'll leave you with the view south from the trail up Mt. Sanitas. You can see both Red Rocks (the crags on the left-most hill in the foreground) and the 1st Flatiron (the spike in the center of the peaks in the background):

More to come on the aforementioned trips to RMNP and Garden of the Gods...

Hiking Green Mountain

Yesterday I biked over to Chautauqua Park then hiked up Green Mountain beneath clear skies. Here are some photos I took along the way.

Longs Peak, from the Greenman Tr.

Hiking through the meadow of Chautauqua Park along Baseline Tr.

Some fall colors along the trail

Climbing on Der Zerkle Flatiron

Yesterday, my buddy A.S. drove up from Denver to get in some climbing in the Flatirons. From the NCAR trailhead, we hiked up the Mallory Cave Trail to check out the climbs on the flatiron named Der Zerkle. The west face of Der Zerkle has a bunch of fun moderate sport climbs (though we stuck to top rope) and we climbed for a few hours beneath shady pines.

The west face of Der Zerkle in the flatirons of Boulder

After a lunch break, we walked around to the north, where I lead a fun scramble up to the summit of Der Zerkle (West Face Route, 5.0). While climbing, the skies were blue and the sun was shining bright, but as soon as I stepped foot on the summit and clipped the anchors, a vicious wind picked up with 20 mph gusts and an ominously dark cloud front appeared over the ridge. A.S. quickly climbed high enough to take out the protection then I lowered him to the ground before I set up to rappel off myself. But of course, as soon as I was set to rappel, the clouds broke and the wind died down, a testament to how quickly the weather can change in the mountains. Now that the sun was back, I felt more comfortable and took a few minutes to take some photos.

The summit of Der Zerkle has some nice views of the surrounding flatirons. To the west you can see The Hand, Shark's Fin and Finger Flatiron. The slab up the Hand has an easy 3-4 pitch climb that I'll hopefully get to climbing soon (East Face, 5.4). The Mallory Cave trail is a popular hike that leads up to a cave between the Finger and the Hand (the cave is about halfway up, can't really see it in the photo below). 

Looking west from the summit of Der Zerkle

And looking north, there are some more neighbouring flatirons:

Looking north from the summit of Der Zerkle in the flatirons of Boulder

After rappelling down, the sun started setting over the ridge and the northwest face of Dinosaur Rock caught the sun beautifully and so I snapped a few more photos before A.S. and I started the hike back to the car after a great (and momentarily exciting) day of climbing!

Dinosaur Rock, lit up by the setting sun

Braving the Sediments

The Flatirons, the massive tilted slabs of sandstone that dominate the Boulder skyline, are a strange sight.

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The 3rd #flatiron, from atop the 1st flatiron in #Boulder

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Growing up in New England, I learned to hike and climb on the granite domes and metamorphic cores that formed during the cyclical collisions of the tectonic plates and then were shaped by most recent ice age. And though I've seen occasional outcrops on field trips, my training (and research) in geology has kept me well away from sedimentary rocks. So being surrounded by (and climbing on!) all this sandstone is a new experience for me.

The Flatirons are a conglomerate sandstone (the Fountain Formation) and are home to some classic multipitch rock climbing routes. In addition to their verticality, the Flatirons are conducive to climbing because the sandstone is particularly hard, making it resistant to erosion by the elements and by climber-hands. Just north of the Flatirons, the sandstone exposed in the Red Rocks outcrop (different from the famous Red Rocks Ampitheater) is an example of the type of sandstone that you don't want to climb. Though no less dramatic, the rock is crumbly and holds can easily break off in your hand.

Looking North to Red Rocks (Boulder)

The sandstone beds that make up Red Rocks initially formed as sediment was deposited in horizontal layers at the bottom of an inland sea that extended over much of the western US (link). But since then, the beds have tilted 90 degrees, resulting in the vertical towers as the softer sections eroded away. While hiking up to the outcrop I found myself wondering which way the rock was tilted - are the rocks to the east or the west younger? At this point I didn't really have a sense for the regional geology, but I happened across a clue to the answer.

Along the main trail to Red Rocks from Settler's Park, there are some smaller outcrops with some nice cross bedding. Based on the truncation of the beds, I'd say the sandstone towards the east is younger and used to be on top before being tilted to the current position.

Cross bedding in the Dakota sandstone at Red Rocks (Boulder).

So far I've only done some easy scrambling up the sandstone surrounding Boulder but hopefully I'll get out and rope up soon!

The view south from atop Red Rocks in Boulder

The Colorado Series

Hi! I'm back!

The past 6 months or so have been quite busy. Most of my time was taken up by the final push to finish off my Ph.D. thesis and so I spent very little time out in the world gathering blog-worthy photos. But now that I've defended (successfully!), I'll be trying to post more regularly!

In the near future, I'll be funemployed in Boulder CO. Last week I flew out with a bit of luggage primarily packed with climbing and hiking gear (the necessities):

Since I've been here I've done a few small hikes and climbs (more posts to follow) and picked up this sweet 80s Motebecane rebuilt by the folks at Community Cycles:

So now that I have wheels and lots of free time I'll be posting more regularly (on the rainy days at least). Stay tuned!

Prickly Friends on South Mountain

South Mountain in Phoenix, Arizona is an interesting place for a naturalist to take a walk. The mountain itself is what's known amongst geologists as a metamorphic core complex - an exposure of deep crust that has been rapidly exposed during extension. And sitting on top of the exposed layers of ductilely deformed lower crust, there is an arid environment that is home to some exciting cacti.

The view back down Telegraph Pass Trail

Telegraph Pass Trail winds up to the South Mountain ridge through an incredible variety of cacti. The Saguaro cactus is the most prominent, with its iconic arms and massive size. Their impressive stature is all the more impressive when you learn that a Saguaro doesn't grow its first branch until it reaches around 100 years old, and reaches full height of around 40 ft at 200 years.

California Barrel cactus (top left), Saguaro (top right), some small barrel cactus (bottom left) and cholla (bottom right, the fuzzy one)

While walking along the trail, I was fascinated by the variety of needles on the different cacti species. The larger man-sized California Barrel cacti have long, purple needles that sit in spiralling rows. The jumping cholla is covered in tiny spikes that give it its fuzzy appearance and the nickname (teddy bear cholla). The cholla is especially adept at inflicting pain and annoyance thanks to its microscopic barbs that line its needles (check out this awesome SEM image of the needles!). And I also came across a small little barrel cactus (that I haven't ID'd with any certainty) with black fishhook needles, ready to snag the unwary.

Also scattered amongst the cacti lie rocks covered with petroglyphs left behind by the Hohokam People, an early-agrarian culture that flourished in the American South-West between AD 1 to 1400. Many of the petroglyphs depict animals, but there are also many spirals and concentric circles, such as the one pictured below.

A Hohokam Petroglyph

Snowbows, rockfish and bobcats in Yosemite

My recent trip to California prompted me to pull up photos I've taken from previous trips, so here are some from Yosemite! I took all the usual shots of Half Dome and El Cap, but I'm not going to bother showing you those when there are thousands of photographs from much better photographers than myself.

I visited Yosemite in early December of 2012 during an unusually warm stretch. The valley and the majority of trails were still free of snow and I was able to do a few day hikes up to the valley rim. The first day, I hiked up 2600 ft (790 m) to the top of the Yosemite Falls. In December, the torrent of Yosemite Creek slows to a tranquil pace, and the flow into the edge is a shower-like mist rather than roaring waterfall. At the first main landing of the falls, the cool temperatures and reduced flow combined to create the unusual site below:

Snowpile at the base of Upper Yosemite Falls

That is a several meter tall pile of snow! The mist created by the water fall was freezing, precipitating and piling up! And for good measure, there's a rainbow thrown in. Yosemite magic.

Up near the top of the falls, I came across these cool little guys:

centimeter scale dioritic inclusions

The little dark blobs are tens of centimeters long and sitting in classic Yosemite granite. Based on a bit of googling (see figure 15 here), the blobs are dioritic . What's neat about these inclusions is that (1) they're all stretched in the same way (this is called a stretching lineation) and (2) they're globular. The shared direction is a record of past stresses in the rock and the inclusions' morphology indicates that the stretching of these inclusions occured while the rock was still hot and relatively squishy.

On the second day, I hiked up the Mist Trail by Vernal Falls (usually closed by this time of year) up to the back of Half Dome (which was closed) and looped back around and down the John Muir Trail. There were spectacular views of falls and frozen water spray, but the treat of the day occurred within the first few miles, when I caught site of this bobcat hanging out right by the trail:

Lynx Rufus in on the Mist Trail in Yosemite Valley

No, that's no housecat. Based on the white splashes on the inside of its ears the general coloring and little bobtail visible in the blurry photo on the right, I'm fairly sure this is Lynx Rufus (here's a much nicer photo).

San Francisco Foodie Highlights

For the final post recapping my recent trip to California (AGU and Science, Bicycle-Camping), I wanted to briefly mention some of my food ventures. San Francisco has some great restaurants so I always try to explore as much as possible while there. Here are my top three meals (from a restaurant) from this year's trip, in no particular order. 

Burrito Heaven

La Taqueria sits in the heart of the Mission District and it is the heart of burritodom on Earth. The carnitas was tender and savory, there was some cheese but not too much, there was no rice (which in my opinion does not belong in a burrito), and the tortilla was steamed and soft. The other food is probably great, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to go here and not get a burrito.

Tasty Sushi

I've eaten a fair bit of sushi while in San Francisco, and  Hamano Sushi in Noe Valley is probably the best I've had yet. The rolls were great, the apple-walnut-shrimp appetizer was fantastic and I really enjoyed the soba (buckwheat) tea.

Noodley Goodness

Kim Than lies in the Tenderloin, west of Union Square and serves tasty Asian seafood and noodle dishes. There are quite a lot of things on the menu so it's best to go with a group and share everything - the larger tables have lazy susans to assist. I can't remember the names of anything we got, but it was all fantastic. Some noodles, some soup, some fish, all good.

A few highlights from AGU

It's been almost full month since my last post, but I'm back to it! In the beginning of December I flew out to California for the annual American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting - a week-long gathering of thousands of earth and space scientists in downtown San Francisco. With over 22,000 attendees and a huge range of topics, there's a ton of exciting (and sometimes not so exciting) science on display at AGU. It's impossible to give a full overview of everything I learned, but here are a few research tidbits I found interesting.

Avalanches

Dr. Michaela Teich (WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF) and coauthors  are studying how forests influence avalanche flow in order to improve predictive capabilities of avalanche models. Parameters like tree type, tree height and tree spacing all affect the initial triggering of an avalanche as well as the dynamics during a flow. Dr. Teich has taken an empirical approach to calculate a detrainment coefficient, a measure of how much snow mass is captured by a given forest type. The detrainment coefficient can then be used in simulations of avalanches to better predict flow paths and avalanche risk.
     I find this problem particularly intriguing because of the differences in scales involved - the ability of a forest to slow an avalanche rushing down a mountainside depends on the characteristics of a forest, which is influenced by the structure of individual trees. One of the biggest challenges of theoretical research in the physical sciences is understanding how to fit together processes that occur on different spatial and temporal scales. So while it may not be possible to build an avalanche simulation that includes individual trees, it may be possible to include the affects of individual trees by considering how they contribute to a forest's ability to capture snow. (Citation: Teich et al., 2013 AGU Abstract C41B-0615, Evaluation and operationalization of a novel forest detrainment modeling approach for computational snow avalanche simulation)

Magma Migration

Dr. Wenlu Zhu (University of Maryland) presented an overview of impressive experimental work being done to constrain the permeability of partially molten rocks. When rocks melt in the mantle, they only melt a little bit. That small amount of magma, however, forms an interconnected network that allows the magma to migrate upwards. As magma gets closer to the Earth's surface, the flow localizes into increasingly larger pathways until finally collecting in magma chambers that then erupt. So the permeability in the upper mantle ultimately modulates how fast magma gets to surface and fuel volcanic activity.
      Besides the scientific merit, these experiments are an impressive feat of engineering - Dr. Zhu and her students take rock samples, bring them to high temperature and pressure so that they melt a little bit and then shoot X-rays through them. Because magma has different properties from solid rock, the X-rays can be used to map out the magma network (here's a link to an image showing the magma network). One of the more recent updates that Dr. Zhu showed, was work by graduate student Kevin Miller in which he took the magma network and input it to a fluid dynamics model in order to calculate the effective permeability of the network. (citation: Zhu et al, 2013 AGU Abstract, MR23C-01. Permeability Evolution and the Mechanisms of Porosity Change)

A ride through Marin County

Unlike many of my colleagues, I don't do field work in cool places. So when I go to conferences, I try to make the most of it!  For the past 3 years now, I've been going to San Francisco every Decemeber to attend the American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting (here are a few highlights from this year's science) and I try especially hard to take advantage of being out in California. Adventures from previous trips I've added on after AGU include hiking in the Ventana Wilderness, camping in Yosemite Valley and romping around Mt. Diablo. This year, a good friend of mine convinced me to do a two day bicycle camping trip. We've both done a fair bit of road riding, but neither of us had ever done any overnight touring with camping gear. And it turns out it's not that much harder than just biking!

The journey began at the Berkeley BART station, where we lugged our bikes loaded with camping gear down the stairs. We hopped off at the downtown Embarcadero stop and mounted our bicycles beneath blue skies and sunshine on the streets of San Francisco. The plan was to bike through downtown San Francisco, over the Golden Gate Bridge into Sausalito, then 22 miles north to China Camp State Park (see the ride overview below).

Overview of the ride from Sausalito to China Camp State Park

As we rode through downtown, it was obvious we were headed in the right direction because of the increasing number of tourists on rented bikes. There was one big hill on the way, and while blowing and huffing up it I was momentarily confused when a smiling, flip-flop wearing family leisurely pedaled past me without breaking a sweat. I felt much better about it when I noticed the cleverly disguised motors on their bikes.

The ride over the Golden Gate bridge was phenomenal. It was a rare clear day and we could see across the entire bay from the hills of Berkeley to the East and the mountains of Marin County to the North. It could be a tough stretch in typical windy and cloud-socked San Francisco weather, but it's a real joy with clear skies and sunshine.

From Sausalito, we made our way north on a mix of bike paths, busy roads and at one point a bridge wide enough for a single pedestrian. The network of paved bike paths through Marin County is impressive and if construction continues at the rate the current paths were built, it might be possible to do the same ride solely on bicycle paths in ten years from now. Even if that were possible, though, I would still make a detour to Paradise Drive on the Tiburon Peninsula. After a half-mile long and about a 150 ft high climb, Paradise Drive wraps along the coast going mostly down hill for the next 4 miles into Larkspur. The pavement is perfect and the views of the bay are great.

Once in Larkspur, the ride quality drops quite a bit. There are still some bike paths, but they're next to loud, busy roads and go by strip malls and decaying industrial centers. As far as urban riding goes, it's not bad (hey, at least there ARE some bike paths), but it's maybe not what you envision when you're biking to a campground. Maybe the only photo-worthy site is the amazing CalPark bicycle tunnel. Just make sure that when you make it out the other side you (1) pull ALL the way over to look at the map and (2) don't be checking your phone while biking behind someone who pulls over. Even crashes at 2 mph can give you ouches... not saying that happened... yeah... anyway...

The final push into China Camp State park is a mostly uphill 3.5 miles along N. San Pedro Rd. out of Santa Venitia. By the time we reached the park, the sun was long gone. As we coasted down the final hill, the moon was cresting over the horizon, lighting up the coastal marshes with an ethereal glow and I forgot that I had just biked 20 urban miles. We set up camp, threw on all our layers and sat down to eat a tasty meal of beans and corn masa tortillas.

Fully loaded bikes at China Camp State Park

The next day, we packed up the tent and other gear, loaded up the bikes (photo above) and then did a little exploring in the tidal marshes of China Camp State Park. The park holds a surprising number of micro-ecosystems. The wetlands sit on the waterfront and reach inward, wrapping around hills covered in open groves of oaks. Farther inward, the oaks continue but the sparse ground cover makes it seem as if they're inviting you in. Sadly, we did not catch a glimpse the absurdly cute Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse (wiki, photo for evidence of cuteness), an endangered rodent that is endemic to the salt marshes of the Bay Area.

After walking a short quarter mile loop, we hopped back on the bikes and headed south through the rest of the park - by far the the best stretch of riding on the trip. The road spit us out back in San Rafael, and 8 miles later, we arrived at the Larkspur ferry just minutes before it shipped out for San Francisco. The ferry ride was a more representative taste of San Francisco weather; cold, wet and windy with the Golden Gate Bridge poking through fog and a teasing hint of sunshine in the distance. 

Alactraz with the Golden Gate Bridge barely visible through the fog