Colorado

Hello team! I've gotten to speak with several of you, and for the rest, I hope you are collectively having excellent summers. I'm going to show you a little about mine so far.

Lake Albion, Ward County, CO

I hear it's amazing working on lobsterboats in Maine. I imagine Williamstown to still be hot and humid but excellent for theoretical math and physics. I presume it must be nice to train with a group as committed as APU, CSU, or the Bend kids, and I learned volumes from Isaac's lengthy report on how "it's nice" in Truckee. But I can't imagine anywhere I'd rather be right now than where I am currently. 
How lucky I am to be doing something I love while I'm here.

Morning light shines down on a town in eastern Colorado

I flew into Denver about midmorning on Saturday and immediately made a dash for Boulder, perhaps the best big town in America. Great views, great people, and great research education are just a few of the things to be found here.  I met up with bear-related rival-team members Tommy Gaidus, Wade Davis, Max LaBerge, and Peter Drews (whom they still affectionately call "Petan"), who graciously offered to put me up for a night in their rented home. They live right near the University, which gives them opportunity not only to run in great areas, but also perhaps to engage to some extent in the social life of the town (or, as one of the runners said, "girls everywhere.")


Upon arrival I was informed of plans to go to a rodeo near Winter Park, west of the Continental Divide, almost a two-hour drive from Boulder. Almost immediately was heading back out the door for this new adventure. We brought not much more than running clothes, which turned out to be slightly foolhardy given the thunderstorms brewing in the mountains and our intent to stay most of the way through the event. (The event included a junior rodeo at 4, and the real deal at 7. Lots of rodeo.)

Gazing down the road towards old gold and silver mines

Running at altitude my first day was not as hard as expected and surprisingly I was able to keep pace with the runners on their warmup before some sort of interval workout, which Tommy and I thankfully skipped. However Phil and I had done a nasty double session the day before (Petersburg skate 30/30s plus a Livingstone workout), so my legs were feeling pretty wrecked despite only going for about 45 minutes.

The Crew

After it started raining and our poor choice of clothing was fully revealed to us, we decided to find a spot in the grandstand. It wasn't long before our underdressedness and clear out-of-town look attracted the attention of a rodeo clown and we were invited to compete in one of the crowd-pleasing intermission games where they try to pick some hapless Easterners to compete/make fun of. We did some sort of relay race with an inflatable bouncy horse thing, which was introduced something like this: "Hey Frasier, put your hands together for the three college boys from Massachusetts. And here to challenge them, these cute high school girls from your very own Frasier County! Who are YOU rooting for?!?"

Eyeing our competition

Max quieting the home crowd

After beating the Frasier high schoolers handily, we decided to use our tickets, which doubled as buy-one-get-one-free coupons to the Frasier McDonalds, and call it a night.

The next day (Sunday), I met up with Gabe Lewis and David Dethier (father of Evan '11) to make our way into the mountains. It was already fairly late by the time we got there, but we still managed to get set up and make friends with the REU kids, who we discovered were mostly studying marmots, pikas, and flowering plants of the alpine tundra. Monday morning we decided to check out the area and hike up to the lab in the tundra at which they do most of their research. The tundra lab is located at about 11,800 feet, and once we got there we couldn't resist walking the extra bit to get to what's called the D-1 meteorological station, which is located at 12,200 or so feet.

Gabe eyeing D-1

Gabe eyeing Kiowa peak

A view towards Aikaree glacier

Lake Albion and the abandoned township of Albion, once a mid-sized tungsten mining operation

The next morning, we took a jarring truckbed ride into the City of Boulder Watershed area 

This time, we found ourselves in the abandoned township of Albion. A decommissioned mine exists just to the left (south) of the Lake Albion Dam.

Roads are sketchy at best...

A long way down

Taking measurements at my field site

Theoretically, most of our snowmelt comes through here

Today's hike through upper Fourmile Canyon and surrounding area proved that we finally seem to be adjusting to the elevation

I went on my first hour run today (it reads 0:54, I forgot to start it until almost a mile into the excursion) up to the C-1 meteorological station, which actually went much better than expected. Gabe and I did a 3 hour hike loop this morning to find a glaciofluvial outwash channel that fed into Fourmile Canyon, the drainage area directly north of the research station.


Gabe and I go sit in an alpine stream called Como Creek every day after we get back from the field, which provides a pretty nice ~6-8ºC ice bath. 


More updates are coming soon. My bounding poles arrive in the mail tomorrow, and there is PLENTY of terrain to use them on...