Antarctica (part 1)

Token penguin on top of an iceberg.
The boat in the background was my home for 26 days, the Yuzhmorgeologiya or Yuzmo as we fondly referred to it. It is 105 meters, by far the biggest ship I have worked on. There were 63 of us on board and not all of the bunks were filled.
What was I doing in Antarctica?
I got to participate in the Antarctic Marine Living Resource (AMLR) Program's annual krill survey. I was part of the zooplankton team. We had 101 stations to sample during the survey, two were dropped due to weather. Sampling was done around the clock. I had the night shift, which I actually really enjoyed. At night zooplankton migrate closer to the surface so the catch could be more diverse than during the day, plus I was always awake for sunrise and sunset which was great when it wasn't overcast.
The photo below is a regular size petri dish with a variety of common critters that we saw.
Some of the things we caught as seen under the microscope.....
This is a siphonophore. photo by Maria Paz Andrade Martinez. They form chains and are something like firm jello to touch.
An amphipod, they have shrimp like body armor, sort of the insects of the sea. The petri dish photo above has several other species of amphipod in it (Vibrilia sp., Themisto sp.). We identified this one as Gnathiphimedia sexdentata with the guide books we had, some are going to be sent to an expert to confim the id. We only caught it in one haul, but there were many of them.
Chaetognath! These guys are predators, this photo only shows its head and a small part of the body. Their bodies are perfectly clear and their jaws are huge. photo by Maria Paz Andrade MartinezCheck out those fangs, light brown, and all the jaw structure. I am very happy to be larger than they are. photo by Ryan Driscoll
Baby squid. I know you are all thinking, "that is the cutest cephalopod I have ever seen". photo by Maria Paz Andrade Martinez
photo by Maria Paz Andrade Martinez
This is a copepod and a big one at that. Most of them don't have as much color as this one.
This year turned out to be an odd year for zooplankton, according to those that know about these sorts of things. There were a lot of salps. Salps are another gelatinous animal that forms chains and filter sea water. The red dot is the nucleus the rest of the body is clear. Are you catching the theme?We caught a lot of them in the net, see below.
Tony is happily sorting through all the salps to look for any krill hiding among them. Thanks Tony! This was the largest catch we had over the whole survey. I am thankful for subsampling.Jasmine, Joelle, and Nicolas preparing to eat a salp.
I joined the International Salp Suckers Society. They are salty, and really cold neither of which should have come as a surprise. But the cold part really got me. I could feel it sliding down my throat and then it took a while for my throat to warm up again.
The net we use is shown below. The mesh is really fine to capture all the little critters. On the front is the sled that helps drive the net down. There is a flow meter attached to measure the amount of water filtered.
From time to time we would get a myctophid (small fish that migrate up and down following isolumes, light levels, and have many photophores). We also caught larval fish my two favorites are shown below. The first is an ice fish. The pectoral fins are so large they have the look of a dragon:This next photo is just to show how clear the body tissue is, you can see the back of its eye from the bottom of the jaw.This is a Harpagifer sp. larvae. I think they are pretty cute, big blue eyes and lots of yellow and black pigment spots.
Every once in a while we would catch some krill.Krill are very similar to shrimp in look. They are the primary food source for many of the predators in Antarctica, whales, seals, penguins. Joelle and I also discovered that they are good for short range water fights. All those legs trap water, so when you pick them up and they continue to try to swim away = instant water flinger. It is important to keep yourself entertained as you sort through hauls.
More later

Well here we are with the holidays all gone by and what a crazy bunch of holidays they were. The festivities kicked off the week before thanksgiving with Lou getting laid off. This may seem like a bad thing but let me tell you what he was more relieved than anything. This allowed for plenty of time to thoroughly enjoy a thanksgiving week in Las Vegas and Boulder. We set off to meet up with Keith, Jake, Graham, Pete, and Garret. Good times ensued fueled by 5 gallons of hard apple cider, great climbing at red rocks, gambling, and vegas shows.

Lou, throwing a sick dino to finish off a climb.
Jaz showing off her awesome arms.

Graham looking oh so aesthetic for the camera.

Somehow we never managed to get a group picture but this was such an awesome weekend. We had people coming in from 4 different states to hang out and climb. I will surely be trying to organize trips like this in the future.

Next we loaded up our little jetta with 4 people and all of there gear and headed for the mountains. Somehow we managed to get it all actually in the car without strapping anything on the top. That left precious little room inside but jake and keith did great job of folding themselves up to about half of there size to make it work. The drive ended with meeting up with a whole new group of people in Boulder, Alison, Melanie, Josh, Ashley, and Bro. Dinner was hot and ready when we got there which was awesome and the evening rapidly progressed through eating, drinking, dancing, and game playing. Just one more late night. The next day thanksgiving was upon us and everyone did there part to prepare a wonderful feast.

Josh and Ashley deep frying the turkey. Jaz and I had never had a deep fried turkey and it was great. I will certainly be doing this more in the future. It also takes way less time than baking one. The rest of the weekend got rounded out with a little more climbing, chasing after elk in RMNP (which is probably a big no no but we did have a bonified biologist with us, i.e. jazzi), and the ususal friends, games, and good eats.

Lou on lead in Mesa Verde canyon outside of Boulder. Running after elk in the snow. This was super fun. I almost botched up the whole thing from the start by basically running right at them. I had lots to learn about the capabilities of elk. They are no dumb animals that is for sure.


Jaz and Mel in Rocky Mountain National Park.

It was back to the reality of school for jaz once we returned to california and back to job hunting for lou. After about a week of solid looking I determined that no jobs were going to be landed until after the new years. Well I got antzy pretty quick so the decision was pretty easy to start the Christmas vestivaties early. I bought a ticket and headed to Homer, AK for the next three weeks. Aside from general relaxing in the hot tube, eating ice-cream, skiing, and watching movies I was rather productive. I made about 1000 gallons of wine and helped my brother and sister in laws frame in there portch for there new house. That is right they are building a house in alaska in the winter. Not such a big deal if you are working on the inside but we weren't.


Lou dressed for home building in the winter cold of Alaska.
A posotively breathtaking january skyline in Homer, AK.

Quiz 3: Try Googling This!

Background:
One of the more disgusting things that scientists of the world get to do it diet studies. This may not sound bad in principle but how do you truly figure out what and how much of what an animal has eaten. This is a particularly tricky task for marine animals since it is very difficult to observe them for any significant amount of time.

The best way of finding out what an animal has eaten is look at what is inside that animal. Yep, that's right. You have to catch the animal, kill it, and then dissect its innards to find out what kind of animals are in its digestive track. To the untrained eye most things just look like a pile of goo since they are inevitably in some sort of decomposed state but believe it or not people become very good at identifying those piles of goo.

The fact that there are indigestible parts of animals is a huge help to scientists that perform these studies. Body part such as bones, otoliths, beaks and eye lenses can all be counted and potentially linked to a specific prey.

Question:
And so we finally arrive at the questions, how do you tell the difference between fish eye lenses and squid eye lens?
ANSWER:
Keith is correct. Squid and fish eye lenses are different shapes. Fish eyes are sphere shape and squid eyes have a flat surface. Keith you are ready to dig into some guts and start describing food chains.

Big Spiders

We spent Sunday climbing at Pinnacles in preparation for the Red Rocks trip. It was a great day, we managed to stay in the shade except on anchor of the last few routes. We got to see a lot of wildlife too. Before arriving at the craig we spotted three hairy spiders aka tarantulas. First wild tarantulas we had ever seen.
The photo above shows how well they blend in with the ground, you can just make out it's last legs and abdomen in front of Louie as it leaves the road. I made Lou take the close up pictures as I didn't really want to get that close.


We also saw frogs, two soaring CA condors, woodpeckers stashing acorns for the winter and deer. We even made a new friend! Any who, it was a good day. Now we are counting down to Red Rocks and Thanksgiving, 6 days until mayhem begins and we can't wait!

This is from last month, Louie spent a weekend in Yosemite with Graham, Greta, Jake and Emily. They had a grand ol' time. I thought this was a great pic of Graham.

We only got one photo from our weekend in Tahoe, and this is it. Good times with family and friends!

October/November

Time for an update. Since our last post we have continued to have fun outside and I have been making progress on my thesis.
I am taking a diving class this fall. Last week we were diving with a foraging sea otter and the week before we got to dive in the Monterey Bay Aquarium's kelp forest exhibit. It has all been awesome. Check out the MBA exhibit live link at http://www.mbayaq.org/efc/efc_kelp/kelp_underwatercam.asp
In the mornings between 9-10 they have a diver in there to feed the fish. While you are checking out the site you can print out a sea food watch card, they recently put together one for sushi.
Louie has spent some weekends without me in Yosemite. He met up with Jake and Emily, and Graham and Greta last month for a fabulous weekend in the park while I made progress on my thesis.
Halloween weekend was the annual Tahoe trip with my Grampa Don. We were joined by a new cast of characters (new to the Tahoe weekend), including Louie's mom, her boyfriend and his daughter, my grandpa's girlfriend Pam, and Jake and Emily.
The weekend started on Halloween night in Sacramento. Louie and I dressed as Dr. Seus's Thing 1 and Thing 2 complete with silly string, water gun, and balloons for props. It is good fun to create small bits of mischief at a party where you only know two other people.
Saturday night we spent several hours at the casino. Emily played 4 hours of blackjack and didn't lose any money! I sat down at a roulette table and placed 6 chips on number 23. The ball was tossed spinning around and coming to rest on......23! The first spin! One spin and I doubled my gambling money. One spin and I was cashing in, a short successful night of gambling for me. Jake played some roulette later and won all the chips in his color!
Most of our group walked out of the casino with some extra money or at least even, and we all had fun.
We played a great game of Pictionary and went on a group run. There was a lot of rain this year so no climbing, but there was great company, good food, and a welcome soak in the hottub.

One week into November and we are preparing for our Thanksgiving vacation. Louie and I are much looking forward to some time climbing at Red Rocks with a slew of friends we don't get to see often enough. At the last head count we will be joined by Pete, Keith, Jake, Graham, Garrett, and Eric. After four days of climbing we are headed to Boulder to meet up with even more of our fantastic friends for Thanksgiving feasting and other festivities.

Look for a third quiz question coming soon. Melanie is two for two, any challengers out there?
First person to correctly answer three quiz questions will receive a treat from the Fraurer's bakery.

Laboring In Tuolumne

So this is going to be one more post about the greatness that can be found in Yosemite. There are just way to many world class climbs, amazing trails, and awesome animals to not spend at least one weekend a month in Yosemite. Jaz and I got our selves and four of our friends together for a backpacking, fishing, climbing trip in Toulumne meadows.

Here is the whole crew minus one, Kenny, who is taking the picture.

The trip started out pretty average with high spirits and beautiful scenery. Joelle thoroughly enjoys being outside as can be witnessed by her zen like stretching. We made it over out first pass which was an average climb but pretty windy. Apparently there are two methods for dealing with the wind, one is to try to put your head into it and power through. The other is to embrace it in the hopes that you will gain some lift and allow you to easily move forward. Kenny and Jasmine explored both methods.

Our second pass was cross country hiking (no trail) and after reaching the top we were rewarded with a spectacular view of our climb for the next day, Matthes Crest. This is a view from the east side instead of the standard approach view from the west side. We camped at Matthes Crest Lake which is off to the left.

The first evening in camp quickly exposed our weaknesses in gear and otherwise. Lewis proceeded to get progressively ill which proved to be extremely serious later in the trip while our stove, Joelle's and Lewis' stove, and our water filter all failed. Not so good for preparing food. Joelle gave us some good lessons in cooking over an open fire, a first for me, and after some small flare ups in frustrations a late dinner was served and amazing then everyone was just fine.

We awoke to what was probably the most beautiful sunrise I have ever witnessed. You can imagine how beautiful it was considering the picture was taken by complete amateurs with a cheap point and shoot. This did cause a significant delay in starting the climb however since who wants to climb on a 11000 ft. ridge with the risk of thundershowers looming.

Matthes Crest route deserves every one of the five stars that SuperTopo gives it. We climbed it in 30 mph winds that were biting cold wearing every piece of clothing we had on the trip but managed to have a great time. Especially once we got jasmine climbing and she could warm up a little. She admittedly did not have the best first pitch due to the cold. The route is usually climbed from south to north and has 300 feet of vertical climbing to gain the ridge. Then there is about one mile of traversing that is interspersed with 5.6 downcliming and upcliming moves. The last two pitches are the crux with a 5.6 downclimb and 5.7 lead. We then did two rappels off the east side to return to our camp. The standard rap route to the west had tons of rap stations but we found slings and did not have to leave behind any gear.

All ready to go and checking out the approach after the clouds cleared at 9am


Chris and Kenny climbed first so Kenny is taking the picture, Chris is the first one on the ridge, then me and Jaz are simul-climbing behind them. Jaz is the light blue spot on the highest point.


My awesome wife looking like the rock star that she is on the ridiculously exposed climbing that is Matthes Crest. I love being outside with her.



We got back to camp at 5pm, hungry but not too cold. The wind helped deliver the coldest night of our trip though and it got down to about 15F. I was the first one out of bed because jasmine and I had just purchased a new down bag two person sleeping system and were just as cozy as could be all cuddled up all night without wearing any extra cloths. Everyone was quick to jump out of there bags once I got a fire started and we started packing up to move to Cathedral lake. This hike took the four climbers of the group about 3 hours. Lewis' health had continued to deteriorate though and the hike took him and Joelle about 6 hours to complete. That evening we were all quite worried about him. He certainly was not having a very good time. We spent the evening relaxing, eating shmores, and talking logistics of getting Lewis out of the backcountry as early as possible. This involved us getting up a 4:30 to do our climb of Cathedral Peaks regular route so off to bed we went.

Now you may not think that you need an early start (especially a 4:30 one) for a climb on a mid-week day when you only have a 45 min approach but we sure were glad that we got that early of a start. Sure it was for other reasons than to beat the crowds but it still worked out that we had crowds to beat. The route was superb, again worthy of all 5 stars. Consistent, well protected, and fun 5.6 climbing for 5 pitches. This route is the debateably the most popular in all of Tuolumne for a reason. We were able to make it to the fourth pitch before anyone else even started at the base but by the time that we had walked off there were 5 other teams on the route, what a mess! I can not re-iterate enough how valuable our lesson of getting an early start has been in Yosemite on numerous occasions, thanks Chris.

Me and Jaz with South Cathedral Lake and Cathedral Peak in the background. Our route followed the right hand skyline of the peak. Our camp was off to the left.


Jasmine leading the perfect shoulder width chimney pitch and having a great time enjoying warm sunshine and zero wind.

For the most part the trip was totally awesome, relaxing, and well executed. I say for the most part because there was some fallout to deal with once Lewis got himself out of the backcountry. I have been hinting at issues all along which is exactly how it felt while we were out there. Things got serious pretty fast when Jaz and I woke up to a message from Joelle about taking Lewis to the hospital and being admitted into the ICU. We rushed to the hospital to find Lewis in stable condition but with absolutely no word as to what was wrong with him. I will spare you the details but the synopsis is that the poor guy most likely had a viral infection that was greatly exacerbated by the heavy physical exercise and high elevation. This in turn caused an acute kidney failure which of course lead to dehydration, head aches, and pneumonia. Lewis is doing quite well now but what a trip for him. Come to find out him and Joelle have numerous outrageous backpacking tails so if any of you reading this ever run into them you have an instant conversation starter. Simply ask them about the trip Lewis almost died or the trip that Joelle almost got eaten by a bear, or the trip that went horribly wrong in Big Sur.

Well, if there is anyone still reading this I am sure that you have had plenty of a story so until next time...don't get in viral infections.

APPLE CIDER SUNDAY

Look at all those apples! We spent Sunday harvesting the lovely fruit and mashing them to a dry pulp. It was great fun. Lou and I have talked about making hard cider since some of our very first conversations over a pint or three of Keith's hard cider and this weekend we finally did it. Our friends Joelle and Lewis live on a property that has four apple bearing trees, all with branches looking like the one in the photo.
We have 15 gallons of juice bubbling away, and another 5 of fresh apple juice for drinking right now.
Joelle collecting good apples that had already fallen off the tree.
Wheel barrel #1 of many.
Lewis, Joelle, and Louie getting it done. We decided to call this cider the Double J Double L Brew.The hornets loved the apple juice and apple pulp. They would land on the juice and float their way to the spout bursting into flight as they flowed over the edge.
Other happenings...we got a new summer sleeping bag! It is one bag that when open zips to a cover for two sleeping pads, pretty slick set-up. It will definately save on weight. I got dibs on the blue side. The hydromedary is new too, it is important to stay well hydrated.
We have still been getting a day of climbing in a week and I captured a few of the many "louie" faces I am sure you will all recognize while taking a lunch break out on the rock.
The "OH! that's interesting, I'm gunna get it" face.
The "humph, I don't know about that " face.The "my life totally rocks" face