Canaan Valley

We spent the weekend at Canaan Valley, West Virginia with some friends. I have written about some of our past trips before - it's an annual trip for us, sometimes multiple trips in a winter. This year the weather has been a bit unwelcoming for lovers of snow. The temperatures have been mild, and most precipitation has come as rain. This could be related to LaNina conditions being experienced in the equatorial Pacific this year. It's been particularly difficult for us - we drove to and from Michigan for Christmas through snow each way, but found little to no snow on the ground while we were there. No skiing at Christmas this year.

Things did not look much brighter as our planned weekend excursion approached last week. It was mild and wet out in West Virginia, with no snow base as late last last Thursday morning. Then a cold blast of air came through, along with roughly 6-8 inches of white stuff - just enough to cover the trails and create ski-able conditions at White Grass, where years of maintenance have cleared rocks and stick from the trails. We got some fresh powder overnight Friday and Saturday, which meant the conditions were surprisingly good for skiing all around the mountain this weekend. Of course we had a great time hanging out with everyone. Group dynamics have changed a bit over the past few years - though the participating families/couples have varied somewhat, we set a record with 5 kids in the house this time - and with three expecting couples, this same group will have 8 kids next winter!

As for plans for future ski outings, we will be somewhat limited for the next three weeks as Tatiana works towards her comprehensive exams. We do plan to return to Lake Placid for President's weekend.

Here are some photos from the weekend and also from Christmas.

A lousy day for a race

Last Saturday was the WCAC championship in cross country. My team competes in this event every season - and we have won the championship for the past three years. As the event approached last week, the weather forecast continued to worsen. A storm that dumped 16 inches of snow on the Front Range in Colorado was headed our way. On the morning of the race, the temperatures hovered in the upper 30s and a cold rain had been falling all night. The course, covering a mixture of grass and dirt trails, was in awful shape. Two features of the course were particularly problematic this year. The course features a crossing of a ~20 yard wide creek, which is normally ~6 inches deep at the most. Swollen with the rain, the water was turbid, obscuring the bottom, and reached several feet in depth. In addition, a downed tree forced a detour on another section of the course, resulting in a steep descent on what soon turned into a very muddy hill.

As the day continued, conditions worsened, such that by the time the varsity team toed the line, sleet was blowing in on a stiff wind, and the temperature had dropped to below 35. At the end of the race, several of my runners huddled in warm vehicles to recover from the extreme shock their bodies had received. In addition, a runner in the freshman race injured his toe on the creek crossing, and many athletes went home with muddy, soaked clothing.

These were the worst conditions I have seen in 16 years of coaching. Several of my assistant coaches, with an additional 40+ years of experience, agreed with this assessment. I have run in below-zero temperatures with snow on the ground (MIAA championships in college) and in many other instance in the rain and mud. The New Castle County Championships had to be postponed one year after the first couple of races because the course was too dangerous. The Prep Classic in 2009 faced a similar situation. But Saturday, Oct 29th will go down in my memory as the most brutal conditions to date.

Glacier National Park!

Last winter, I saw a notice in a newsletter about a workshop being held for biology teachers in Glacier National Park. I thought it looked like a great opportunity, so I signed up to go, even though it would mean missing 3 days of school.

I had visited Glacier two times before. I was there with my family on a summer trip, when I was 14. Then, in 2001, I drove out to Montana during the summer and spent about a week in the park, including a 5-day backpacking trip.

The group for this trip included roughly 30 teachers and a few spouses. A few were retired, but most were currently teaching biology (and many also environmental science) at high schools. A few were teachers at community colleges. We were led by a retired teacher from Colorado who has been organizing trips to natural places for student and teacher groups for more than 30 years.

We had many great opportunities to learn about Glacier National Park as an educational resource, and about scientific research being done in the park. Sessions were led by enthusiastic park staff as well as USGS employees - who are based in the park and may as well be considered park employees too. The experiences included talks/discussions on the famous grizzly bear study in the park, which involves capturing hair samples for DNA analysis; studies of melting glaciers and other impacts of a changing climate; and fascinating research on wolverines. We also took a guided hike with a fire ecologist specialist who works for the park, and learned about the alpine zone and about regional geology with a park naturalist. We saw mountain goats and elk, but did not manage to catch site of any grizzlies or wolverines. We did see quite a bit of bear scat, including evidence that a black bear had become prey . . . perhaps for a grizzly.

It was a lot of fun to meet other teachers, to see the park from a new perspective, and to discover unexpected "small-world" connections. Many park facilities were closed for the season, and most others would close the day that we left. The weather was cool during the day and quite cold at night (and at Logan Pass, where wind chills were well below freezing), and some of the aspens were turning yellow. Peak fall colors won't hit DC for another 6 weeks, so that was quite a nice treat. I also met a ranger who had worked with my brother, and found out that the workshop leader had met one of my brother's friends when he worked as a seasonal naturalist many years ago. Any my roommate, a teacher from Indiana, vacations in northern Michigan and drives through my hometown of Grant on the way there.

I could go on, but I will stop there because anyone who has made it this far is probably not interested in any more details! Here are the rest of my pictures.

Running in 50 states

I was talking to a friend from church yesterday, and he mentioned that he keeps track of how many states he has gone running in. Being the sort of person who likes to make lists, that got my attention. I decided to count how many states I have run in, and came up with 34. Not too bad! My brother Mike has a goal of backpacking in every state, so I have been keeping track of the states I backpack in as well - the count there is 21 (half of them on the A.T.).

I decided to also count how many states I have hiked and camped in. The result: hiking 43, camping 47. I have visited 49 states (missing Hawaii), so the only two have I visited but not camped in are Missouri and Rhode Island.

I have also been keeping track of the state high points I have visited for a while now. I have been to the high point in 18 states, and in another 8 states I have seen the high point (Mt. Rainier and Denali, for example).

National Parks update

For about 10 years now, I have been keeping track of my visitation statistics for National Parks and related sites - Monuments, Historic Parks, Recreation Areas, etc. The National Park Service manages over 390 sites now, and a few new ones are added to the system periodically. The latest addition came as part of a large public lands bill in spring 2009, adding various historic sites including a battlefield in Monroe, MI.

This summer, on our epic California-and-back trip, we visited 34 NPS sites, 6 of which were National Parks: Grand Canyon, Zion, Channel Islands, Redwood, Joshua Tree, and Death Valley. I have now visited 310 out of the 391 sites on the official list. These range from little-known historic sites such as the small historic house in rural MD owned by Thomas Stone, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, to large iconic parks like Yellowstone and Yosemite. Many sites my visits lasted only a few hours, but I have spent more than a week backpacking through some of the larger parks. Most of the sites I have yet to visit are in the extreme southwest, or in remote areas beyond the contiguous 48 states. Highest on my list of parks to visit would probably be Katmai in Alaska.

Calista has her own National Parks passport book, and each time we would enter a new park she and I would stamp the book together.

2011 PCT Trip: Seiad Valley to Green Spring Summit

This summer I hiked from Seiad Valley to Green Springs Summit on the PCT. As he had done last summer, my brother Mike joined me for the trip. We hiked northbound, although in this section that meant we were mostly going east. The PCT winds its way westward from the Sierras to travel through the Trinity Alps and Marble and Klamath Mountains. In this stretch, it returns east to the Cascades, which are longitudinally (is that a word?) in line with the Sierras. This hike was beautiful and wild, in spite of the fact that it covered little in the way of official wilderness and many stretches of trail ran parallel to dirt forest roads. I have now hiked approximately 477 miles on the PCT - 18% of the total trail.

Here is a link to my trip report.

Summer trip

We returned about a week ago from our epic, 6 week summer trip. This was the second year in a row that we were able to explore the country for a long stretch in the summer - what a blessing!

This year the primary motivation for heading to California was so that Tatiana could do some research - paint analysis, specifically - at the Getty Institute in LA. But since we had the time, we camped all the way out and back, and I backpacked for 5 days with Mike too.

The route this time was along the I-40 corridor - we had travelled along I-70 and 80 last year, so this was a chance to see some new things. We mostly focused on National Parks and other NPS sites (historic sites and monuments, mostly) in New Mexico and Arizona. We visited 35 NPS sites, including 6 national parks. I have been keeping track, and this brings my total NPS sites visited up to 310 - about 79% of the total. The sites I have not been to are primarily in the extreme southwest, the northwest, and outside the contiguous 48 states.

Calista has a national parks passport, and has been collecting stamps. She also earned numerous junior ranger badges in the various parks.

The backpacking trip was a highlight. We started at Seiad Valley, along the Klamath River, hiking north on the Pacific Crest Trail. We had started south from the same spot last year. This time we only had 5 days, but we covered roughly 80 miles, finished at Green Springs Summit, east of Ashland, Oregon. We encountered large piles of snow above 7000 feet along some of the ridges, making the hike quite a challenge. But there were few other hikers around and the views were outstanding, making it a memorable hike.

Other highlights included a weekend trip to Santa Cruz Island, part of Channel Islands National Park. We camped overnight and hiked along a bluff overlooking the ocean - the photo at the top of the post is from Santa Cruz. Staying at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, exploring Zion National Park, and seeing two ancient volcanoes (Sunset Crater and Capulin) were also high points.

The other images in this post are of me and Calista at the top of Mt. Magazine - the highest point in Arkansas - and of Calista getting sworn in for her junior ranger badge at Fort Union National Historic Site.

Here is a link to my summer trip report, which has more details about what we did each day and where we camped. There are also links to lots of photos!!