Having recovered from a night celebrating the Packer's victory, we spent today hiking in the desert. The group split into two units, one for a 9 mile hike and another group which hiked the lower trails. As the microbes causing my illness continue to taunt me with their infuriating resiliance, I volunteered for the lower trails. The fact that I havn't worked out in 2 years has absolutely nothing to do with it. At all.
After the teams split up, the lower trail team was faced with the task of fitting 6 people into a car which seats 5. Ruling out cramming people onto the back seat, we came up with the genious solution of putting one of our small people across the laps of the people in the back seat. This person turned out to be Nick. All was well, with a few minor problems. In no particular order:
1) Melissa can't drive
2) Jenny can't navigate
3) The road was full of turns
4) Many of the turns were sharp
5) The top of Nick's head was pushed right up against the door
With the guys in the back seat, we somehow missed BOTH turns to get to our drop-off point. This resulted in unneccessary U-turns and a Y-turn in addition to the twists in the road. This would not be a problem except for the last point, as each sharp twist slammed the top of Nick's head into the door again. After a considerable amount of discomfort for Nick, we arrived at the drop off point. We promptly started on the hike, which was very fun. Not long into the hike, however, the trail took us across a washout. Despite a clear trail on the other side of the washout and a sign marking the trail, we hadn't counted on the effects of letting Jenny lead. After discovering footprints in the sand in the washout, we started following the washout. Figuring that she was investigating something as the trail marking was rather clear, the group followed her. About 150 yards later we hit a fence, the road... and our navigator's surprise that the trail had abruptly ended.
After getting back on the trail, we suffered no more mishaps on the hike. We saw a hawk (possibly Harris, although it was too far to view clearly) which then landed on a telephone pole. It made me flash back to the Desert Museum's explanation that the biggest killer of hawks in the region was electrocution. This hawk avoided that fate, which left us free to enjoy the multitude of birds (and lizard) that we encountered along the hike.
The trip back saw some changing of the seating arrangements. Being the short one, I had the dubious honor of lap duty. With the advantage of positioning myself better than Nick had, I found the trip back rather relaxing as I got to strech out. Zach had the honor of the center seat, and with it supporting my posterior. This wouldn't have been so bad, except for his knee problems. I tried keeping my weight off his leg to limited success - hopefully it won't act up tomorrow.
The rest of the day passed rather quickly as we rejoined the long hikers, swapped stories, and came back to the hotel. Ryan, Eric, Jenny and I decided to skip the sushi trip and picked up a pizza which we split in the La Quinta courtyard. What happened next I can only defend as "it seemed like a good idea at the time."
First, we debated the elevation change of the long hike (settled by Jenny's computer at 2500 feet). After that, we estimated the height of the pizza box (2 inches). Between these figures, we concluded that the group on the long hike changed elevations by a height equal to a stack of 15,000 pizza boxes. Congratulations.
Unfortunately, our nerdliness didn't end there, as we had Ryan pace 12 feet to determine his stride length. Having done that, we used some basic trigonometry to determine that the average incline of the long hike was 9.5%. We then checked our pace-and-pizza-box estimation against trig using the elevation change and trail length (resulting in a 6% grade.) As we only had a 50% error, our estimate turned out to be well within the window of estimation for astrophysics.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Back to the Desert
Today, we headed back out west, past the mountains towards Old Tucson and the Desert Museum, to visit the Saguaro National Park. While there, we watched a 15 minute slideshow presentation that described the significance of the desert environment, and the respect that the native tribes have shown for it throughout their history. Then, we headed out to some of the scenic hiking trails that the park had to offer. Wile DA had some of the group go on the longer 4+ mile trail, I stayed with Melissa, Jen, Don, Dane, and Zach, who stuck with the shorter, more tranquil trails. I really enjoyed being out in the sun with the nice breeze we were getting, but I was hoping to see more desert wildlife than a few ants and a small lizard we saw running around. However, I did have a nice time there, since it was the first time I'd ever visited a National Park, and I'm sure that everyone else had as much fun as well.
Amazing Hike Today
The highlight of today was definately the 5 hour hike we went on. I was dreading my decision on this matter all week because I have never been one to turn down a challange but my doctor specifically told me NOT to walk for extended periods of time (his example was to class and back). Going against my better judgement I decided to accompany Dr. Arion, Coty (AKA Tough Love), Ian (AKA Sir Slips and Almost Dies - Alot), Justin (AKA 9 Year old), and O'Riley (AKA the tavern fool) on the hike.
Quick recap:
1. Ankle feels good, I can do this!
2. 20 foot rock face defeats half of us
3. Lost in a riverbed
4. Found the trail thanks to my incredible observational skills (we missed a set of stairs in the middle of the desert)
5. 2 Hr hike to the summit.
6. Lunch, for us and the chipmunk (he had trailmix)
On our way down things got a bit more eventful. We began by moseying on down the trail, my ankle began to throb. Around a third of the way down: DISASTER STRIKES!! Ian slips, proceeds to do 2 front flips, a back handspring and a barrel roll before he catches himself (with a little help on the dismount from me) narrowly escaping death by cactus. After that we scurried down the mountain quickly led by me the gimp.
All in all it was an incredible experience that was worth the ankle pain! Here are some of the pictures I snapped along the way.
Quick recap:
1. Ankle feels good, I can do this!
2. 20 foot rock face defeats half of us
3. Lost in a riverbed
4. Found the trail thanks to my incredible observational skills (we missed a set of stairs in the middle of the desert)
5. 2 Hr hike to the summit.
6. Lunch, for us and the chipmunk (he had trailmix)
On our way down things got a bit more eventful. We began by moseying on down the trail, my ankle began to throb. Around a third of the way down: DISASTER STRIKES!! Ian slips, proceeds to do 2 front flips, a back handspring and a barrel roll before he catches himself (with a little help on the dismount from me) narrowly escaping death by cactus. After that we scurried down the mountain quickly led by me the gimp.
All in all it was an incredible experience that was worth the ankle pain! Here are some of the pictures I snapped along the way.
Purple rocks with a cactus growing out of them!
Quick Hike... Then nothing significant
Today we went to saguaro national park. Beautiful sights, however the trail was easy.
Nick and I convieved the idea of going to the Biosphere tomorrow, which will prove to provide more amusement and content for my next blog. I can't wait to actually begin crunching data....
Nick and I convieved the idea of going to the Biosphere tomorrow, which will prove to provide more amusement and content for my next blog. I can't wait to actually begin crunching data....
Sunday, 16th of January
Today was the hike up to Mt. Wasson. The group went to the national desert park where you could take numerous different trails and hike all over. Half of us took a shorter, easier path while the other half of us decided to go with DA to hike up to the highest peak in the park. The longer hike group consisted of Justin, DA, Ian, Eric, and myself. We had a little trouble getting there the first time, we took a wrong turn and ran into a cliff, which due ONLY to my physical height was the reason I couldn't climb it. I made a good attempt though and got atleast halfway up. So we turned around and found the right path. Including the wrong turn it took us around 2.5hrs to make it up the mountain and about 2 hrs to make it back down. All in all, it was very active and an exhausting day. Gorgeous however though.
Packers still Number 1
In a rather unsurprising twist of events, we have proven that traveling halfway across the country to visit a faraway place while viewing objects lightyears away still takes a backseat to watching people try to run a ball 100 yards. I don't mean to diminish the rest of the day at all - the day began with errands as Ian, Cody and I went to speedway to pick up lunch materials while DA & Co. ventured forth to Best Buy to pick up an external hard drive. After collecting all the data and then passing it out again, we paid a visit to an art gallery at the University of Arizona and visited an astronomy store by the name of Starizona.
The art gallery was wonderful for the art people in our group. The portraits, while very well done, utterly failed to hold my attention for long as I'm not very fond of people in general. The landscapes, on the other hand, were much more to my taste. In particular, I really enjoyed looking at a photo by the name of Moonrise (Ansel Adams). The picture was beautiful in and of itself, but it also made me wonder whether someone at NASA was a fan of Ansel Adams. Think of the picture Earthrise and compare it to Moonrise. Both contain a brightly lit foreground at the bottom that covers approximately 1/3 of the picture. Up from there is a solid black sky that is broken only by the planet/moon. There is an obvious size difference in the moon vs the earth, but the moon in Moonrise is 3/4 full whereas the earth in Earthrise is approximately 1/2 full. I'm probably reading too much into it, but it seems to me like there is a strong similarity in the layout of the photos.
After the art gallery, we visited Starizona. While the store was rather cool, there wasn't much I was interested in buying. They had a number of telescopes in varying specs and mounts, numerous magazines, books, videos, lenses, and other astronomy equipment. While I didn't buy anything, I did listen in on the conversation with the worker on duty and picked up a few techniques that could help with image processing.
As important as astronomy was, however, it clearly took the backseat as we hurried back to the hotel in order to be able to watch the Packer game. A good chunk of the group went over to the Touchdown Bar & Restraunt to watch the game, but I wasn't among them. Having looked for reliable reviews of the place (which painted the place as ok at best), I instead opted to pick up food elsewhere and then watch the game at the hotel. The plan was perfect - good viewing, reasonable company, not having to deal with the crowds at the bar, and I wouldn't have to put up with alcohol-induced shinanigans. The perfect plan was perfectly destroyed when I discovered that La Quinta has a limited TV service and it didn't include a station that carried the packer game. After many non-alcohol induced curses, I was forced to settle for keeping tabs on the game via an online feed.
The art gallery was wonderful for the art people in our group. The portraits, while very well done, utterly failed to hold my attention for long as I'm not very fond of people in general. The landscapes, on the other hand, were much more to my taste. In particular, I really enjoyed looking at a photo by the name of Moonrise (Ansel Adams). The picture was beautiful in and of itself, but it also made me wonder whether someone at NASA was a fan of Ansel Adams. Think of the picture Earthrise and compare it to Moonrise. Both contain a brightly lit foreground at the bottom that covers approximately 1/3 of the picture. Up from there is a solid black sky that is broken only by the planet/moon. There is an obvious size difference in the moon vs the earth, but the moon in Moonrise is 3/4 full whereas the earth in Earthrise is approximately 1/2 full. I'm probably reading too much into it, but it seems to me like there is a strong similarity in the layout of the photos.
After the art gallery, we visited Starizona. While the store was rather cool, there wasn't much I was interested in buying. They had a number of telescopes in varying specs and mounts, numerous magazines, books, videos, lenses, and other astronomy equipment. While I didn't buy anything, I did listen in on the conversation with the worker on duty and picked up a few techniques that could help with image processing.
As important as astronomy was, however, it clearly took the backseat as we hurried back to the hotel in order to be able to watch the Packer game. A good chunk of the group went over to the Touchdown Bar & Restraunt to watch the game, but I wasn't among them. Having looked for reliable reviews of the place (which painted the place as ok at best), I instead opted to pick up food elsewhere and then watch the game at the hotel. The plan was perfect - good viewing, reasonable company, not having to deal with the crowds at the bar, and I wouldn't have to put up with alcohol-induced shinanigans. The perfect plan was perfectly destroyed when I discovered that La Quinta has a limited TV service and it didn't include a station that carried the packer game. After many non-alcohol induced curses, I was forced to settle for keeping tabs on the game via an online feed.
Wow, Arizona
Since my last post, we have been keeping busy doing things here we would not normally be able to. We went to the University of Arizona and visited their creative photography center. They had several dozens of high quality photographs of all sorts of people and places. The images were all very sharp and clear as we all are trying to get ours to turn out.
We went to the Starizona store in Tucson; it is an astronomy store and has anything you might want for a telescope. Some people bought books, videos, or photographs of various things from the store. The man running the store was nice and gave us a few tips on how he stacks videos using RegiStax.
While getting everyone the data they need, which takes more time than it sounds, is the most important thing we have done, the most fun was the hike we took today. We split ourselves into 2 groups, one that did not want as long of a hike, and one that wanted a long one. I went with the long hike group. Our hike went to the peak of a mountain about 5,000 feet above sea level; it is the highest one within the park that its in. Bottom line, awesome hike. I really liked how much of the mountains were brick red, and we walked on top of what seemed to be rusted rocks. On the peak, we could see the entire surrounding area, other mountains, cities, the desert museum, a canal, etc. The trees below us looked like patches of grass. However, my favorite part was just being at the tip of the mountain, above everything else; there was no "wouldn't it be cool to be up there," because I was. The hike was about 9 miles (4.5 one way) and a bit tiring, but I want to do another just like it.
Fun Fact: Dane and I did a little math to estimate the average step taken during the long hike (first part) to increase our elevation by 1.3 times the height of a pizza box. It may be slightly off, but its pretty close.
We went to the Starizona store in Tucson; it is an astronomy store and has anything you might want for a telescope. Some people bought books, videos, or photographs of various things from the store. The man running the store was nice and gave us a few tips on how he stacks videos using RegiStax.
While getting everyone the data they need, which takes more time than it sounds, is the most important thing we have done, the most fun was the hike we took today. We split ourselves into 2 groups, one that did not want as long of a hike, and one that wanted a long one. I went with the long hike group. Our hike went to the peak of a mountain about 5,000 feet above sea level; it is the highest one within the park that its in. Bottom line, awesome hike. I really liked how much of the mountains were brick red, and we walked on top of what seemed to be rusted rocks. On the peak, we could see the entire surrounding area, other mountains, cities, the desert museum, a canal, etc. The trees below us looked like patches of grass. However, my favorite part was just being at the tip of the mountain, above everything else; there was no "wouldn't it be cool to be up there," because I was. The hike was about 9 miles (4.5 one way) and a bit tiring, but I want to do another just like it.
Fun Fact: Dane and I did a little math to estimate the average step taken during the long hike (first part) to increase our elevation by 1.3 times the height of a pizza box. It may be slightly off, but its pretty close.
Ninth Day: Saguaro National Park
Today we went to Saguaro National Park and split into two groups; one to climb the long, 4.5mi, 5000ft elevation mountain that DA described as 5 times harder than the Summerhaven hike and one to wander around the trails at Signal Hill. I decided that one lung-bursting hike at altitude was enough for this trip and joined the group at Signal Hill. There was some (partly justified) grumbling about us missing the turn to the gravel road heading to the Signal Hill area, but that was not the fault of the navigator. If anyone should be blamed, it should be the park service for not putting up a sign visible from both directions. There were also some complaints (justified) about the seating arrangements in the car, but that's what happens when you stuff 6 people in a 5-person sedan. We did make it to the trailhead without much incident and I, at least, had a wonderful time hiking. We ended up taking part of the longer loop so we wouldn't finish too much earlier than the long hike group, and it was great! Beautiful weather, beautiful scenery, and long enough to be a decent walk without being too tiring. What more could you ask for?
We met up with the long-hike group at the visitor's center and did some shopping at their gift shop before returning to the hotel. A group of people who shall remain unnamed forgot to tell me that they were leaving for Sweet Tomato for dinner, but it ended well since Ryan, Eric, Dane and I got really good pizza from a place down the street. The evening has been spent stacking Saturn videos, but I don't have anything worth sharing yet. I'm headed back to work for a while before heading to bed, so maybe I'll have something to post tomorrow.
The pictures below are from the hike at Saguaro National Park.
Jenny
We met up with the long-hike group at the visitor's center and did some shopping at their gift shop before returning to the hotel. A group of people who shall remain unnamed forgot to tell me that they were leaving for Sweet Tomato for dinner, but it ended well since Ryan, Eric, Dane and I got really good pizza from a place down the street. The evening has been spent stacking Saturn videos, but I don't have anything worth sharing yet. I'm headed back to work for a while before heading to bed, so maybe I'll have something to post tomorrow.
The pictures below are from the hike at Saguaro National Park.
Jenny
Hiking day
To my dismay, I was unable to join the group for the big hike in saguaro national park. Instead I joined Don, Jenny, Zach, Nick, and Dane for a walk through some parts of the Sonoran desert. I don't really have much to say about the desert. After the "hike" and a bit of lunch, I poored out copious amounts of sand and pebbles from my shoes, and drove the group back to the visitor's center where we waited for the other people to return. Don and Zack and I went for dinner. I spent most of the night waiting for my phone to charge while watching a movie with Zack and Nick.
Packers won!!!
To be short and sweet, our day began with a trip to a photography exhibit. We then stopped at a store called starizona that sold a whole slew of astronomy equipment. After that, we hung out at the hotel for a bit before heading to Touchdowns across the street from the hotel for dinner and to watch the football game. Packers won, of course!!!! We then gathered in pool where we met a family of competitive rock climbers.
Day 9: The LONG hike.
The long hike i was strongly discouraged to go on, and as such didn't go. Arion described it as 5 times what the Summerhaven hike was, and I decided I didn't have enough time or water with me to risk it. I was right, from the sounds of it I'd have needed 4 or 5 bottles to keep me hydrated enough, and probably would have taken close to a half an hour to an hour to keep up.
Instead, myself and 5 others piled into the car to walk across the desert. The national park was beautiful, and although I didn't have the glory of being atop the mountain, being on the desert floor gave me an entirly different perspective of the desert. We wandered aimlessly along the trails (map was left in the car by someone who will not be named) for a few hours, before returning back to the car. A quick lunch and a trip to the giftshop later, we are back at La Quinta.
I will be shortly receiving the converted data from Ian. Tonight I'll be registaxing all the data, and hopefully I'll have a few good images. I so far have no idea what the poster will be detailing; I'll be speaking to Arion tonight or tomorrow to really cement what the poster topics will pertain to.
Instead, myself and 5 others piled into the car to walk across the desert. The national park was beautiful, and although I didn't have the glory of being atop the mountain, being on the desert floor gave me an entirly different perspective of the desert. We wandered aimlessly along the trails (map was left in the car by someone who will not be named) for a few hours, before returning back to the car. A quick lunch and a trip to the giftshop later, we are back at La Quinta.
I will be shortly receiving the converted data from Ian. Tonight I'll be registaxing all the data, and hopefully I'll have a few good images. I so far have no idea what the poster will be detailing; I'll be speaking to Arion tonight or tomorrow to really cement what the poster topics will pertain to.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)