Climbed Pajarito again today after work. This time, I threw in a big 1 gallon glass jug of apple juice, a big blanket, and my down jacket into the pack in addition to what was there already, for a total of 14.3 kg (31.5 pounds). Of course there is all of the snow that fell yesterday, which was about 7" deep up at the ski lodge. And for some reason one of my poles wouldn't lock down, so I had one 120cm pole and one that was about 50cm.
The added weight makes such a difference. I was really huffing it on the upper half of the route. My time to the top was 63 minutes and 15 seconds, for a rate of 381.0 m/hr. I think this pack weight is probably similar to what I'll actually be hauling up Izta and Orizaba.
It snowed about 5" today by the time I went to bed, and it is still coming down. This is already a larger snowfall than anything we got last year. And with it came the requisite traffic fubar on the way home from work. My three mile commute took one hour and twenty minutes, and I left work an hour early in an attempt to avoid the predicted traffic.
I really wanted to go climb the mountain tonight in all the new snow, but the prospect of driving back through all that traffic (which appraently was still gridlocked at 7pm) dissuaded me. Maybe tomorrow.
So between the holiday and my 9-80 schedule, I just had a five-day weekend. The first thing I did on that "weekend", which started on Wednesday, was to climb Pajarito (see previous post). Once I had done that, I started feeling like I had a head cold. By Wednesday night it was a severe head cold and I continued to be sick until Sunday afternoon. I successfully did pretty much nothing for the entire 5 days. Nina came up so that we could cook a thanksgiving feast and I managed to get her sick, so the two of us sat around the house watching movies and drinking tea. This would normally have been very pleasant, but with all of the sneezing and headaches, it was sub-optimal. The food we made for thanksgiving was good, though after about 4 meals of it in a row, we had had enough and started venturing elsewhere.
Anwyay, we did start feeling better on Sunday and managed to leave the house and go on a short hike up in the Valle Grande. The weather was perfect throughout my time off, which made it all the more frustrating to be trapped inside being sick. It was good to finally get out.
Today, my cold having been reduced to an occasional light cough, I determined that I was well enough to resume the Pajarito training climbs. After work, it came as no surprise when I emerged from my (4 stories underground) office to find that the mountain was completely enshrouded in a snow storm. I couldn't even see the mountain itself; just a big grey cloud. And because it's almost December, it gets dark right around when I leave work. But I was determined to get another climb in today, so I went home, geared up, and drove up to the ski lodge. The road near the top was coated in snow and I actually had to turn on the 4WD to keep from sliding around. There was no one up there.
The temperature was not so bad, about -1°C, and the snow was only a centimeter or two deep, so heavy gear was not required. I started up the mountain in the blizzard, in the dark.
Typical of weather in this area, the snowstorm was gone quickly. After about 10 minutes of the climb I was looking at stars and the light of a half moon kept my headlamp in my pocket. I was surprised to find that I was feeling reasonably strong on the slopes, and didn't have to stop at the third chair lift tower for an initial rest like I did the last time. I estimated that my total time spent resting was less than 5 minutes. When I got to the top, I found that I had ascended from the bottom in only 45 minutes and 15 seconds, an ascent rate of 530.4m per hour—well above my rate goal. Somehow, despite my sickness for the last five days, I managed to shave over six minutes from my ascent time. Forty minutes later I was back in my truck and heading home for hot tea and dinner.
Like the first training climb, this one was done with a 7.1kg pack. Next time, I'll be hauling up more.
The idea behind my recent climbing trips has been to just keep myself in shape. Now, with just over a month to go before I leave for Mexico and the highest mountains in my climbing carreer, I have started stepping up the workout. I'm climbing with more weight in my backpack than I require and trying to push myself for faster ascent rates. I'm going to post my training progress here. Hopefully, by the time December 27 rolls around, I'll be able to maintain a 500m/hr ascent rate with a 20kg or so pack.
The only problem is that I'll be in Vienna December 12-22, and Vienna isn't very far away from sea level. So in the last five days before Mexico, I'm going to have to jump-start my altitude acclimation process, presumably by spending every night at the summit of Pajarito Mountain (3,182m / 10,441'). Pajarito Ski Area only takes about 10 minutes to get to from my house, and offers the quickest route to reasonably high altitude in my area.
Anyway, training climb #1: Little Mother ski route (follows the Mother lift), 1km hike w/ 400m (~1,300') of gain, 51 minutes to the summit carrying a 7.1kg pack (including water).
So carrying 7.1kg at a steep (38° average) incline between 2,770m and 3,182m, I can push an average ascent rate of about 470.6 m/hr. I want to push that to 500m/hr, then start adding weight. I might take today off because of Thanksgiving and the fact that I have a cold, but we'll see.
Spent the last few days playing handball down in Albuquerque at the 19th annual Dog Bowl tournament. I've only been playing for a little less than 11 months, so I entered the tournament in the "C" class, single and doubles (playing with Dick Beaudoin). There weren't a huge number of players in C, so the brackets were pretty sparse. My first singles game was against Bob Torch, and he beat me pretty handily. I was playing with a hurt elbow and didn't feel like I should have lost, but that's how it goes and I went into the loser's bracket. Today I played the consolation finals for C-singles and beat my opponent easily, 21-4, 21-11, to take third place in C singles. My prize was a new can of handball balls. Dick's first C singles opponent was the guy I beat to take third. His second opponent (in the finals) was Torch, who he had no problem beating. So the C singles top three were Dick, Torch, and me.
In C doubles, there were even fewer entries. Dick and I first played some very old guys (82 and 71) and beat them 21-4, 21-9. That put us into the finals, where we played a couple of great three-wall players from El Paso. We won the first game 21-5 and I thought we had it made, but on the second game I couldn't seem to return the Z serve and we lost 6-21. The tie breaker wasn't looking better when we started out letting them get up 0-8. But then Dick found a weakness in their serve return and I started hitting high arcing shots that they were no good at returning and we came back to win, 11-9.
So Dick and I were the C doubles champions, and our prize was a pair of really nice ceramic wine glasses. It was a fun tournament. I think I played below my level , probably because of tournament jitters, but I learned a lot by watching the A and open devision guys play. Next year I anticipate I'll probably be able to take C singles, and that'll bump me up into the B division.
Here are my two nominations for the most embarrassing abstracts ever. The rules for this competition are that the abstracts have to cover a topic that is at least vaguely science-related, have been accepted by a reputable source, and make you cringe when you read them.
My second nomination is somewhat more unsettling, because it doesn't come from a crackpot, it comes from an established planetary scientist and a personal friend of mine. But friends of mine can't get away with publishing something like this and not getting made fun of by me, so here we go: This is Barb's submission to the First Landing Site Workshop for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory. The point of the abstract is to pitch a particular surface location for the landing site of the MSL. For reasons unknown to me, the abstract is given in the form of alternative lyrics to a popular rap song from 1991. I'm not kidding. The only reference given in the abstract is to Sir Mix-a-Lot. Seriously.
If you think you can beat these two entries for embarrassment factor, send your submission to me in an email and I'll add it to the list.
This video reminds me a lot of the music videos Coldcut used to make for songs like Natural Rhythms and Timber. Apparently this is a follow-on to an early film he made using the same time shifting technique to fashion himself as a beatboxer.
Last week, Bob told me that on his way home from work he saw two planes sitting on top of each other down at the airport. The following day, LANL sent out a lab-wide email indicating that there had been an accident at the airport and that all flight operations were suspended until an investigation had been performed. I went down there today and took some pictures.
The fact that the planes were tied together and that there were roller cards under the tail of the lower plane and the right wing tip of the upper plane suggests that they were rolled away from the accident site, most likely to clear the runway. As I was leaving, I ran into my friend Dan (who I have been flying with before) and he said that the two planes had landed at the same time, one on top of the other. He was there when they extracted the pilots, who both survived.
So I guess somehow both planes got onto final without seeing each other or communicating on the radio. Sounds like someone wasn't flying the pattern... Yowzer.
I saw the amazingly cheap gas at the station near my house last night and thought, "I should fill up before the election ends and they raise prices." Then, I thought that this was silly and they wouldn't actually do that...
The day after I got here I drove over to the Smokies and hiked from Cade's Cove to the the Appalachian Trail, then a ways along the crest to the top of Thunderhead Mountain (5,527').
The AT near the summit of Thunderhead Mtn.
Along the way, I passed over the top of the rather insignificant but considerably more famous (at least locally) Rocky Top. I gather there's a folk song about it; clearly whoever wrote it wasn't concerned with Rocky Top's ~15' of topographic prominence.
Down below, in the cove, the trees were at their peak color. Along the AT, 3,500' higher, the leaves were all gone. Saw a lot of wild turkeys and a deer close up. Several backpackers came down off the crest on my way up, otherwise I had the trail to myself.
I started before sunrise when the park was basically empty, so it was somewhat odd to return to the car around lunchtime and find the entire park overrun with family picnics, RVs, and fall color riders. With the traffic, it took over an hour to get out of Cade's Cove.
The conference has been going well. Oak Ridge has really nice, new facilities and with the fall colors being at their peak, it's really pleasant here.
