Climb Report: Mt St Helens

Who in their right mind would possibly want to drive to a mountain in the middle of nowhere, far too early in the morning, expend tons of effort to climb the thing, possibly not even to reach the summit, then climb back down. Wouldn't the effort be far better spent on something like solving world hunger? or walking to the store? I would think so. Given this pretty obvious situation, I drove to Mt. St. Helens at 3 am last week, miserably trudged to the top, took a bunch of pictures, trudged back down, and failed to do the necessary shopping.

We started at 3 AM so the snow would be good for a bid to the summit, so we wouldn't need to climb in the heat of the day, and to maximize our chances of being attacked by an axe murderer hiding in the woods.
When we got there, we were greeted by a police officer waiting for a search and rescue team. Someone got separated from their group the previous night on the descent. I immediately offered to keep an eye out for the person, along with any possible axe murderer.

Eventually the sun came out and the woods transformed into a peaceful paradise with no more axe murderers lurking at each bend (or pickup drivers waiting for me to get on a bicycle). The birds were chirping, the snow glistened, and the birds made noises that sounded obnoxiously close to whistles. Given that someone was lost out there and may use a whistle to call for help, this distressed us a bit. The lesson from that is: if I'm ever on a rescue team looking for you, make an extra effort to have your whistle not sound like a bird. And maybe shoo all the birds that sound like whistles away. If you don't have a whistle, maybe you could catch a bird and train it to sound a little less like a bird.


If you're considering climbing the mountain last week, you probably are interested in what the snow conditions were. I can assure you that there was snow. There was a lot of it. It was white, and it was kind of cold. There were also bugs in the snow. After touring the Oregon Zoo, I can assure you that they actually do naturally live there.

Crampons paid off for a brief, icy section of the climb around the tree-line. In the morning the snow was hard, brittle, and made great steps -- as planned, but as we ascended there were obvious signs of slides down the ravines on both sides, and the snow was breaking off in chunks a bit too easily for my comfort. There was also some crazy guy with an axe-like thing.

Given the grade near the summit, my concern about the snow, and my strong preference to not die, I second guessed my bid for the summit, but along came a stranger that assured me he had climbed the mountain dozens of times and never heard of an avalanche death. With this blind encouragement I set-off for the top. As the day heated up the snow became stickier and actually slid less (but was nowhere near conducive for good steps). There was also no apparent sign of layering within the snow.

Now some people might say how being on the top of a mountain is a spiritual experience. They may talk about how it gives you a new perspective of the landscape you live in. How you can leave your narrow world-view for a brief instant and see where you fit in from a broader perspective. You can see how the geology and ecology we often ignore has played such a key role in where our cities developed, where we work, where we sleep, how we move and play. I, on the other hand, would like to say how I stood at the summit and looked manly and tough, but that is not true. I took some pictures.

On the way down we encountered hordes of people hiking up in tennis shoes with no gear, not even hiking poles. It makes me wonder what these people would do if anything went wrong (not to mention how they can possibly ascend and descend like that), but I've already seen the answer to that. They pull out their cell phone, call 911, and expect to be teleported off the mountain in 10 minutes. That's not how it works. It may take over 8 hours before anyone even reaches them, let alone gets them off the mountain.

All in all, it was worth it. Special thanks to my climbing partner, who somehow resisted the urge to shove me off the mountain, and made the trip that much more enjoyable and possible.

Gosh, that paper "Neuronal Population Codes and the Perception of Object Distance in Weakly Electric Fish" really makes me want to eat a Snickers

For those of you that don't keep up on frivolous news sites or Mars Candy's press releases, you may not have yet heard that Portland was ranked last in terms of America's most manly cities. Of course, their metrics are arbitrary and culturally biased, and the study is downright sexist. But whether you love the study or loathe it, it is successful: it gives Mars and their candy publicity.

Despite that, the ethics of the study are not the issues at hand here. The real issue is corporate sponsorship of science. Although it is common for corporations to sponsor studies that directly relate to their products or services, sponsorship strictly for publicity is generally reserved for sports. We are breaking new ground here and the imagination is the limit. Not only could there be endless new sources of funding, but also endless new opportunities for managing a public image. Soon commercials may end in "Skittles. Official Sponsor of the 2015 Large Hadron Collider experiments." The NSF's McMurdo Antarctic base may be renamed to the "Hagen Daz Station." Even newly discovered particle pairs could be named "Kit" and "Kat." We are truly at an amazing time right now, and it is progressing fast. Corporations are already gaining the same legal rights and treatments as individual citizens--if not preferential treatment--so why not name something after a corporation you would otherwise name after a person? (Well, for one, legality has limited bearing on what is a good or bad idea. For two, Americans have been duped by corporations and their fronts with dubious economic, ethical and religious arguments into giving money from the poor to the rich; this may continue that shift. And so much more...) What could be after science? Maybe art? Maybe literature? Who knows.

P.S. If there are any candy companies that want to sponsor very public research on the corporate sponsorship of science as a means of generating publicity, please contact me ASAP.

AAAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHH!!!!

A couple weeks ago:


Today:


Just barely lost the sprints both times, and of course I'm plagued by the thoughts of what I should have done differently. To Alex's credit, he raced extremely well. Next time...

Wait, What!?

He hung up the phone and turned to me. His grin twinkled like the stars' warmth in the cool, clear, night sky above. "She said the dance party has been moved to the men's restroom"

Dancing, but only so well

I generally see my road bike as an extension of myself. My hands, feet, and hips communicate intentions from neurons to muscle firings to a system of kinetic and mechanical energy transferred throughout the bike. I propel myself forward, negotiate myself through tight packs, around turns and up hills, and respond to poor traction in rain and gravel almost as if my brain speaks and listens directly to the wheels. (A friend even joked that my hair plugs into the bike like the tails/hair of the characters in Avatar plug into their animals)

However, I can not say the same about mountain bikes. Last weekend was my first mountain bike race, and I only had about 30 minutes previous MTB experience (pre-riding a quarter of the course that morning). I found the bike had a mind of its own. I could suggest paths to it: between rocks, over logs, and around corners, but it would bounce, slide, and veer far beyond my own intentions. As the race went on (it was a 6-hour, two-person relay), I learned what to expect from it and how to work with the bike's responses. As the bike bounced over the terrain, I learned when to put power in my stroke and when to recover. I found the rhythm in the compression and expansion of the frame as I wove around trees and up embankments. I found myself in a dance with the bike. That said, if I poorly negotiate through situations with a dance partner, I just feel embarrassed and my partner may see me as a bad dancer. When I negotiated poorly with the bicycle, I went tumbling off the bike onto the forest floor with its sticks that stabbed my back and rocks that scraped my legs while my bike came crashing onto me in hot pursuit. Needless to say, that happened more than once.

The highlight of the whole race, of course, was all the camaraderie and the enjoyment of playing in the woods, but it also left me to wonder, if I spent as much time on a mountain bike as I do a road bike, would I come to also see it as an extension of myself? If I spent as much time dancing with someone, would we begin to move as extensions of one another? The farthest I have gotten in dance is to practice the negotiation of intention and movement between two different bodies. Maybe the higher level of dance is two separate bodies joined to have unified movement and intentions. Obviously this is nice to similarly think about as people move through life, but from my observations, that case is by no means common. When it occurs and it appears that two people move with unified intention, it actually seems there is a lack of character in the relationship. A bike is worthless without a rider and I am inhibited without a bike, but as far as I can tell, individuals function rather reliably on their own. There are some things that are nice to simply become an extension of or have as an extension of myself, but there are plenty of others that I hope, no matter how much time I spend with them, continue to challenge me and force me to learn and adapt.

Freedom... hopefully

A little under a year ago I managed to break free from what felt like a prison. One that was slowly filling with water. I nearly drowned in it and was almost left as an empty shell to the prison keeper, but managed to escape just in time. Since then, I have had the chance to put myself back together piece by piece. When I wrote programs for calculators, I somewhat enjoyed when the calculator crashed and I lost all my work. It gave me the chance to rebuild everything and make it better. I've been fortunate to have that chance with myself, but without having such a severe crash.

During these past months I've been afraid I would get caught by said keeper and dragged back. Now I am in the clear. Now I have the chance to put my life back together, better than before. It'll be hard and it's daunting, but it is also quite an exciting opportunity.