Author Archives: Kate

I’m on the last leg of my traveling adventures, and this is by far the most exciting, interesting, beautiful, and anxiety-ridden leg! Right now, I’m sitting in my hotel room in JERUSALEM. Yes, that’s right, in a land where people have been waging war for thousands of years, and the government is currently fighting a war to the bitter end, I’m visiting for a conference! Well, actually it’s a week-long workshop at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on improving the prediction of global warming.

The conference starts tomorrow, so today the students met at breakfast and discussed sight-seeing plans. We had hoped to travel as a group today, but budgets, safety concerns (or lack-there-of for some German students) and general destination goals left Rachel and I to head for the Old City on our own.

This turned out to be a great decision. The Old City is walled and crawling with security, police, check points, and guys (and girls!) with very big guns. We’ve had our bags riffled through, gone through metal detectors, been physically patted down and questioned so many times in the last two days that it’s really becoming commonplace.

So this morning, Rachel and I were in a 4000-year-old city, the site of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the ancestral home of Judaic people, a cultural center for Islam, and what were we most excited about? That’s right, THE SHOPPING! Ohmygosh. King David street runs down the center of the city is a beautiful, busy, amazing bazaar, full of people and things from around the world. There were beautiful oriental scarves, decorative Arabic daggers straight out of Aladdin, chess sets carved by hand in India, spices piled in barrels on the sides of the street, beautiful jewelry from Africa and people everywhere calling out prices, haggling, and doing business. It was so cool.

After walking the bazaar, we paid admittance and spent a couple of hours exploring the archeological park in the northwest corner of the city. We ended up directly below the Al Aqsa Mosque when the noon prayers were called. I’ve never heard a call to prayer before, much less one in city where several thousand devout Muslims live, and it was amazing. Rachel took some video to record it, but the whole experience was ethereal. As we were down in a park, we were sitting in a lovely garden listening to the voices come over loud speakers in the minarets and hearing the distant responses echo through the Islamic quarter (which we didn’t visit). The pigeons roosting in the ancient temple walls were sent flying each time the calls rang out. It was so cool.

So, a good first day in Israel! Aside from getting “war prices” from the vendors, the battles of the south seem so distant, it’s like they’re in another country. Life here goes on as normal, or as normal as it can be in a place like Jerusalem.

Tonight is my last night in the big apple, and I’m finally taking a few hours to relax and stop moving! Unsurprisingly, it seems hard to relax in the city that never sleeps.

I’m in New York for a team meeting of the Science and Technology Center (STC) which my advisor runs. It’s a beautiful city, and I’ve had a great time. There’s been beautiful views, big city life, funky shopping in the village, a walk past Ground Zero and down Wall Street, and lots and lots of great food.

I also got a lot of work done, including planning for the programming class I’m teaching this spring, distributing the material from my Climate Change course, meeting some wonderful, brilliant, people, and learning a whole bunch. It’s been a great trip, and I’ve got a lot of great pictures up in the gallery. More to come later!

This year has been one for the books. Everybody is writing their sum-ups and introspections these days, and I’ve been thinking about this for a while too. Mark and I talked about what this post should say while driving across Nebraska last weekend, and I think I may have waited too long to write it.

The basic gist of the idea is that, this year, Mark and I learned that we need to let go a bit. We were very goal-oriented in our climbing this year, and in our lives. We both felt like we spent way too much time and energy on plans that fell apart at the last minute, or goals that we didn’t accomplish. We both realized, while journeying home, that we are happiest when we’re not obsessing about the outcome, but simply enjoying the ride.

Our best climbing days were unplanned. We woke up, got to the trailhead, and then walked up to a climb and decided to give it a try. The days when we attempted big ticks (Mainliner or The Petite Grepon) the plan tended to fall apart, with harsh consequences on our egos and psyches.

So, for 2009 you won’t see any plans, or tick lists on ColoCalders. You won’t see training schedules, or apex trips. Our only goal is to accept life as it comes by us, and enjoy it for what we have, not what we want.

If you read this blog, you know that I am a huge weather geek. Atmospheric Science is not only my profession, but it’s also one of the things I can’t stop talking about (weather and rock climbing!) So last night we had a great weather night!

A relatively small trough, or cold front, moved over our area, and hit the front range just right to spark an awesome Chinook wind event. Check out these stats!!

Temperature (ºF)	Wind Speed (mph)	Relative Humidity (%)

These are the weather conditions at the Foothills campus (my building at school) for the last two days. Check it out! Right at midnight, as the action got started, we recorded a wind gust of well over 80 mph!! The temperature spiked to near 60ºF, and hasn’t dropped down below 50ºF yet. And the relative humidity plummeted to around 10%. It’s dry out here anyway, but today I’m feeling like the moisture is being sucked out of my skin.

As I drove into school this morning, there was damage all over town. Tree limbs on the street, trash cans, gas grills, and lawn furniture scattered about, the construction trailer for our new building was laying on its side! Weather is so cool.

We had a good week of travel through the midwest for our Christmas celebrations this year. It was an interesting holiday, full of bad weather, surprises, happy families, and some difficult times.

We spent the first part of the week with Mark’s family in Fort Wayne, Indiana. On our trip out to Indiana, we hit bitterly cold temps in Iowa. The next morning, the check engine light came on in the yellow truck, and the engine started noticeably miss-firing. We thought we had gotten bad gas, and after looking for an open mechanic shop in eastern Des Moines for about an hour, we just put in some fuel cleaner and drove off. We found out the next day that our ignition coil had shorted, and we got to drop a chunk of change on car repairs in Fort Wayne.

The day before we arrived, northern Indiana had a horrible ice storm, that knocked out power to over 400,000 people in the region. Mark’s parents were lucky, and when we got there, the power was still on. The only pictures I took during the whole trip were of the ice in Mark’s parents’ backyard the day after we arrived. The ice was beautiful, and there’s a small set of pictures in the gallery.

The day before Christmas Eve, though, high winds blew through town and a branch dropped on the neighborhood power lines, leaving us in the dark and cold. We lit candles and read or napped for the as snow fell gently outside. My parents were stuck in an ice storm on I-70 in middle Indiana at this point. They spent 5 hours sitting on the interstate that evening.

On Christmas Eve the power was still out, and Mark, Liv and I all headed to Akron Ohio to see my family. We had a fantastic visit with my grandparents, uncles and aunts, and cousins in the area. Mark’s family continued in the dark and cold for another two days, and their power didn’t come on until about 10pm on the day after Christmas.

We started trekking back west on Friday. Mark’s brother was scheduled to fly out of Fort Wayne early on Saturday morning, but his flight was canceled at the last minute. The family had to drive him two hours south to the Indianapolis airport, where he stayed in a hotel Saturday night and got on a flight Sunday morning. It’s been a year of bad surprises, and it seemed like Christmas was no exception. But the family was together, and celebrating, and we all had a pretty good time regardless.

Every year in December, the American Geophysical Union hosts a meeting in San Francisco. This year, my abstract was accepted, and I presented my work as a poster at the meeting.

The meeting is open to all members of AGU, their families and guests, and several vendors and research institutes. It has become more popular in recent years, and this year there were over 16,000 attendees! I’ve never been to a conference so large, and it was a bit overwhelming.

Outside of the conference, I got to spend a little time in San Francisco. I did some shopping in the crowded mall area between the Moscone Center and my hotel. I had one fantastic dinner at a seafood restaurant called Farallon, which was incredible.

The place was decorated with tiles and low-hanging lamps that made me feel like I was in Atlantis. I had a Turbot fillet covered in butter and caviar, and it was gooood. If you are ever in the area, I highly recommend it!

My poster session was over on Friday afternoon, and then I flew home, arriving on time, but late at night. On Saturday morning, we hopped in the car and started our trip to the midwest for Christmas!

It’s about time! As much as I like the yellow aspens, I’m getting tired of looking at them. The other not-so-secret purpose for the trip up to Loch Vale was to make a slightly more seasonal desktop background. I had a bunch of great photos (Check out the gallery!), but I liked this one the best. As usual, I’ve saved the image as a few different sizes for the most common screen resolutions. Feel free to down load the one that works for you by clicking on the link to the correct size below the image! Enjoy, and Happy Imminent Boreal Winter Solstice!

1024 x 768, 1440 x 900, 1600 x 1200, 1680 x 1050, 2560 x 1600

It’s been a horribly busy fall for both Mark and I. I’ve been focusing on school, Mark’s been working hard at the office, and we’ve been spending our weekends catching up or doing more work. Pretty sad, really. So, we decided to make a conscious effort to get some good, quality, mountain time in last weekend.

We ended up snowshoeing up to Loch Vale in the Glacier Gorge area of Rocky Mountain National Park. We actually hiked this trail twice last summer, and Mark mentioned later that he wasn’t particularly happy with the choice in the morning. But the National Park in the snow is like a whole different world.

About 10 minutes into our hike, we saw a beaten path in the snow head off the side of the trail. Last summer, when we were hiking the approach to the Petite Grepon, we saw climbers head off into the woods in this direction. Mark suggested we try this trail out, and determine if it was actually a short cut, or a trail to a different destination all together. Always up for an adventure, I agreed. And we set off into the woods, off trail, with the promise of a gathering winter storm in the evening, in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Despite our joking about how we were destined to end up on “Storm Stories” next year for this decision, the trail was very easy to follow in the deep snow. It headed straight up the hill, and half an hour later we popped out on the marked trail, just below the split to Loch Vale. Success! I haven’t downloaded our GPS data yet, but I think we cut off about a half of a mile from this section of trail, which means we’ll be using this path for future hikes to climbs in the area.

As we started up the switchbacks below the Loch, we began hearing voices in the woods across the valley. We came upon the tracks of several people leaving the trail, and followed them up the far side of the valley to where a big group of people were ice climbing. Mark and I talked to them for a bit, careful to stay out of the fall zone for the sharp ice that was raining down, or pointy axes or crampons that might be flung about.

The group had top ropes set on various parts of the flow, and, when asked, declared that the route we were looking at was called “Mo’ Flo’ than Go” and was rated, according to the climbers, “um, 3?” “3+, I think” “5!” “1” “20!” “100!”, or something in that range. Mountain project says WI 3-. It looked like a fun, if short, route, and Mark and I watched for a while before heading back to the trail and finally up to the Loch.

Last summer, I declared Loch Vale to be the prettiest spot in the park, even when it was crawling with people. It was even prettier when we showed up there at 5:30am a few weeks later, and the place was dead quiet except for the bugs and fish jumping. On Saturday, it was even prettier. The lake was frozen over, the wind tossed snow about in sweeps and gyres. There was nobody else, and no other living creatures, around at all. The whole scene was full of roaring wind one minute, and then desperately silent the next. It felt like the mountains and lake had been encased in crystal, and would remain like this forever.

After a lot of pictures, and some time spent soaking it all in, we put the snowshoes back on and headed down the hill. We cruised back to the car in less than an hour, practically jogging down some sections in our lightweight snowshoes. Then it was back to our house for hot coffee and even hotter showers, as the promised winter storm blew in.