California Redwoods

Its the middle of summer and I headed out to Purisma Creek Redwood Preaerve for a hike this morning. When I got there I thought that I must have teleported to the Pacific Nothwest. It was cold and rainy. Well it is the rainforest I guess so I shouldnt have felt surprised. I did have a rainjacket but I was wearing shorts. About a half mile down the trail I was freezing. I walked a ways back up and then went back down. I wanted to hike but I was pretty cold. I did this a couple if times and then made my mind io to go for it.

It was well worth it. The forest had a spooky feel and there were few people due to the poor weather

What there were many of were banana slugs. The banana slug is the UC Santa Cruz mascot where a coupke of my students are heading next year. There were big banana slugs and small ones. Maybe I just missed the slug reproduction cycle because I have never seen those little ones before

I hikes from the North Entrance to the West Entrance to the East Entrance and then back to the start. It was about 13 miles and just over 3000 ft elevation gain. Now on to packing my bags for my trip to Germany

Summer 2017 has started

As much as I love my job I look forward to summer each year. I am currently in route to two weeks of training with PLTW but I have made the most of every minute on the way. First a couple if days hiking in Mount Charleston (and visiting with my brother and family). Then a quick stop in Zion National Park to hike Observation Point avoiding the crowds to Angels Landing. I met an interesting ranger on the trail who is scanning to trail to make a 3D model. Next I zoomed up to Capitol Reef NP. Unfortunately is was raining when I arrived causing floods (and flash floods) so I wasnt able to begin my adventures until the next day. I hiked up to Navajo Knobs. On the way I had views of Hickman Bridge (a stone bridge formed through erosion). The views were amazing with a variety of colors and shapes. The down side was that it was too hot. I moved on to Gunnison CO where it is much cooler. Today I hiked in Crested Butte which was beautiful. It was a but limited due to large amounts of snow. In fact they seem to call It Snowpocalypse. After hiking 10 miles on lower trails on Crested Butte Mountain, I drove out on Gothic Road. I was surrounded my majestic monoliths covered in snow. I came to Gothic, an old mining town turned into the Rocky Mountain Biology Lab. I stopped and founf out that it has been operating for 90 years. They do lots of interesting research projects. One was about marmots. It turns out that marmots are waking earlier from hibernation and due to that they are on average 1 lb heavier. I got into a long conversation with the guy about their climate change research. I am currently listening to this podcast about the origins of denial of climate change https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-united-states-of-anxiety/id1155194811?mt=2&i=1000385322177
He also told ne about a nearby hike called Judd Fallls. Since I was there I hiked up to it. (It was only 2 miles RT). The best thing about that hike was the plethera of glacier lilies.