Ever hear of Murphy’s Law? I’m sure you have. Well, if there’s ever a time it applies, it would be now (though maybe not the literal definition of the law, more like the commonly used one).  We went back up to Yost Lake the Thursday of the second week. We had to get our stream flow measurements, our GLX unit readings and our soil samples, so we were contemplating spending the night up at Yost Lake.

Things started going bad almost immediately. To start us off, when we got to the trailhead, I discovered I was completely out of water in my Camelbak; the water valve had been pinched the whole ride over, and two liters of water spilled in the car. So now I was down to one liter for the 3.5-mile-up-1500-feet hike as well as staying overnight. By and by, we made it through the hike and got ready to conduct our sampling and measurements.

I offer to take the GLX readings and so head out to water sample site one, by the SW rocky shore. I’m going through the bag, and I discover that we have three of our four cartridges for the GLX unit. The one we’re missing? Naturally the water quality cartridge. So now there’s no need to worry about the GLX unit readings. I head over to Will and Reid to help them with the soil samples. Part of taking the soil samples is figuring out the slope of the sample location on the hillside. What naturally happens next? The tape measurer we have to help us calculate slope breaks. To solve that problem, we simply cut the tape measurer at about 13 feet to make sure we had plenty to work with. (Good thinking on our part, because we also needed this for the Stream Flow measure procedure).

While Reid went to work on the soil samples, Will and I then decided to go take the outflow stream flow measurement. There’s only one little problem… because of the drought, the outflow has dried up. Completely. So instead, the outflow seeps underground and continues that way. This is where we met up with Reid again, and we finished the soil samples together, on the East Side of the lake. Together we then went out to the inflow to measure the stream flow. It was a very narrow stream, so we bunched our data points together to try and get an adequate number of readings. The measurement involves putting a pvc pipe with a propeller on it in the water, and record (via electronic device) how many times it rotates in 60 seconds. In our practice session on SNARL’s campus, we were getting a reading of several hundred rotations. For Yost Lake, we got an overwhelming 7 times as the most rotations in any of the spots.

Once we got all our data, we decided to head back down. As a WFR, with critically low water levels, no stove to purify more water and enough time to get off the trail before it was totally dark, I made the call to go back instead of trying to risk dehydration and altitude sickness without water. It makes for a humorous story though.

Until Next Time,

Joe

Currently in the middle of testing for Nitrogen on our Deep Water Sample (and re-doing our Outflow Sample, for consistency’s sake) and the first part of the lab is to “digest” our water sample and that requires a half-hour waiting time to sit and do nothing except watching a liquid bubble (and write blog posts!)

Last week, our Visiting Lecture was regarding Fire Ecology, using the Rim Fire that occurred in the Sierra Nevada in August of 2013. Quite different from the first talk, which was quite technical, this lecture was actually a lot of review (and some new stuff) for me. When I worked at Philmont in the News and Photo office last summer, I had several  news stories regarding fires and fire ecology at Philmont (Rocky Mountains in New Mexico).

The speaker talked a lot about high intensity fires, and one of the things he kept reiterating was that there is rarely a 100% mortality rate in even high intensity fires, and you can usually see the spots where trees (or parts of trees) are dead. His point of course was that fires are naturally occurring and necessary to stimulate forest plant growth. One surprising thing that he shared was that old growth forests are actually less likely to burn than recently burned forests that have started regenerating plant growth. The other surprising thing I remember him saying is that with global warming, there is no correlation (positive or negative) to increased high intensity fires.

The talk was quite a bit shorter, and a good deal more accessible to those community members (and us) who are not professional scientists or researchers. I personally wanted to ask him about Philmont’s Ponil Complex Fire from 2002 and ask why they are still having trouble getting regrowth to happen, whether it might be from human involvement (it actually slows down rather than speeds up natural fire regeneration) or if a fire can actually be so intense as to naturally sterilize large swatches of land.

Until Next Time,

Joe

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to post. We’re kept rather busy here for the most part: school days are filled with class from morning to late afternoon, immediately after which is recovery time (after almost 6 hours of class) and then dinner, and then do reading for the next day. Monday through Friday. But then comes the weekend. And what good would it be to sit around and do nothing while there’s so much to explore in this area that we can’t possibly do all of in three weekends? Consequently, weekends end up being (if possible) even busier.

For our first weekend (May 10-11), I joined the group of people who rock climbed on Saturday. This was a most of the day event, leaving at 10am and returning around 3pm. I actually climbed more than I thought  I was going to. The first climb we started with, was a 5.5 and I practically just walked up that thing. It made me feel good, but in terms of a challenge, it was disappointing. As it turns out however, we were not the only ones who were in the area. There was an AMGA (I believe) instructor certification course going on. They were kind enough to let us use a couple of their unused ropes. Some people went up the 5.6 and when they needed to use that, we went over to the 5.7 course, which is what I set out to do.

Naturally, me, by nature of being me, did not simply go up the logical and straightforward path. I ended up veering off to the right, and inadvertently ended up climbing a 5.10 climb. I had no idea at the time. And it was a tall climb too, going up over 100, by Rebecca Lyons’ estimation. But that was the challenge that I was looking for. Interestingly enough though, it never seemed to me (in the moment) anything that was too tough. Sure, there were times I considered yelling “Take” to come back down, but every time I thought that, I looked at the rock, and could see the necessary placements for my feet (or perhaps where my hands needed to reach to) and knew that I just needed to make it happen. That was the only choice.

Both climbs I didn’t want to be distracted my North Face jacket getting in the way, so I took it off. I was already in shorts anyway, and it was quite gusty (and cold) that day. Hence, I got dubbed with “ice water in my veins.” I was asked if I was from Maine, and I said, nope, just Chicago. J

After the exciting day of climbing however, and watching others push their boundaries with fear (of heights) a little further, we drove back to SNARL and some of us got ready to visit a local hot spring. We soaked for an hour, had a conversation with two interesting men, and felt greatly replenished on the drive back.

On Sunday, most groups went up to their lakes, so Will, Reid and I decided to go on a short hike down Hot Creek. It’s about an hour long hike, and greatly resembles Yellowstone with scalding hot pools here and there.  It was quite beautiful and a bit warm (quite different from when we first arrived at SNARL). Afterwards we went into town for a hearty lunch (difficult to find, almost everywhere likes to close early and on weekends) and then made our way back to our weekly meeting (and the conclusion of our weekend).

Until Next Time,

Joe

Yesterday, we had our first lab in the field. Our team broke up into groups (4 groups of 3, more or less), to go conduct the research that we have been learning about so far this week. The data we have covered so far includes the Air Temp, Water Temp, Wind speed, Wind direction, Barometric Pressure, Relative Humidity, Water Conductivity, Water pH, Dissolved Oxygen (D.O.) in the water and Stream Flow. We managed to get almost all of that except the Stream Flow (mostly because we only have one set of equipment so we all need to take turns).

Yost Lake is relatively excluded and is hidden behind a rather rigorous hike. The hike is not extreme, it’s about 3 miles and 1,000 feet up, but be prepared for an hour of intense uphill. The second half  (probably about the last third) is way more relaxed, and almost flat all the way to the lake. Yost Lake is stunningly beautiful, as are most of the High Sierras. It’s got a rocky shore to the south, and marsh plants to the East, North, and part of the West. Along the west shore however is a pleasant path between towering pines that gets you right to the rock shore.

4 of us went up to the lake, Will, Reid, Erin (our T.A.) and myself. I enjoyed the time spent immensely, and look forward to going back next week, most likely to spend the night. It’s still quite cold up there, and there is plenty of snow to find as well. It made hiking difficult at times, but we all made it up to the top with smiles. The photo linked with this post is of Yost Lake from the path along the western side.

Until Next Time,

Joe

This is my first post in regards to my May Term. A year ago, I was in Europe, backpacking for a month. Now, I am in the Eastern Sierras doing chemistry research, living with 10 other incredibly bright Proudian Honors Students.

This first post is about the lecture we listened to last night. It was very technical so I don’t have too much to say, but it was interesting. The speaker was from the Airborne Snow Observatory based in California. His presentation was (as far as I could tell) regarding the methodology of how they research snowfall in southern California, primarily determining the quantity of snowfall to help with runoff models (to study how watersheds are effected). Beyond that, it mostly flew over my head.

Every Tuesday night, SNARL (Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory) hosts a guest speaker for part of their Visiting Lecture Series during the spring season.

Until Next Time,

Joe

Taking place towards the end of March, the VWS featured one of Redlands’ own, which puts into question the fairness of “visiting” in VWS. The reason this event was so interesting was because I took Poetry Workshop II with Ralph this semester, so I got to listen to my professor speak at a professional, community open event.

A lot of what he talked about he had brought up in our first class of the semester. He holds an inspiring reverence for art in all its forms. One of his “famous” quotes is that he has 10,000 gods that he worships. Each one is an artist or inspiring person of some sort. He has painters, writers, film makers, etc. in his collection of gods, among others. Interestingly some of the poems that he writes are homages to those artists.

The other thing that he likes to talk about is how powerful language is. One of the things he would tell us in class constantly is that we should let the language do all the work in our poems, rather than us trying to do the work, because language is so much more powerful than we can hope to be. Language has been around long before us, he says, and it will be around a lot longer than us, he also says. In other words, it will outlive him, in his own words.

Just by listening to him speak, you get a strong sense of how seriously he takes his work. His art.

Until Next Time,

Joe