Training Log Archive: AliC

Yay for other astronomer-orienteers! Got an email last week or so from Ann Marie saying she'd seen my name on the conference list and asking if I'd be interested in orienteering at Catalina on the afternoon off- of course!

So Ann Marie, Tom and I headed down after hearing about exoplanet formation theory all morning (the streaming instability and pebbles are all the rage) and geared up for some more desert orienteering.

Scariest things: Hearing a rattle snake! Eep! And got a cholla pod stuck to me for the first time.

Southwest Spring Blue Long (8.3k)

1- Saw a dead snake in the first meadow, eep! Trail to reentrant to second set of double boulders.
2- Bearing and long reentrant right before.
3 - Not sure I ended up in the right small reentrant, or perhaps was in right one just too low. I didn't feel in great contact approaching circle. Deflecting left earlier would have made a surer approach.
4- Used the trail mostly, because so tough to pick ones way amongst the rocks and cacti! Then spotted the proper saguaro and ran to it.
5- Good.
6- Daintily going around cholla forrest. Didn't do a great job of going the right direction on nose, should have noticed change in direction of contours earlier.
7 - Looong leg. Eep! Heard a rattle of a rattle snake. But was already on my way running past the sound, so just kept going. Deflected onto an unmarked trail at one point, had to descent to get back to desired trail. Good after leaving trail, but following indistinct trail was slow.
8 - Easy.
9 - Adventures in washland. Had to get used to what was mapped as what, but then made sense.
10 - Ran past because mini-reentrant itself was nearly invisible, but later trail emerging from wash let me know I went too far.
11 - Good.
12 - Initially too close to road.
13 - Think I must have been one reentrant north...
14 - Initially one reentrant off to the northwest.
15, 16, 17 - Fine, back in washland/campground.

C • Rattlesnakes 3

Morning run with 4 other astronomers (woo!) in Oracle State Park. Tom's boss came back alive, a good thing! Washes apparently can count as trails. Sandy!

Putter around the grounds of Biosphere 2. Still at a bit of altitude 4500, but legs are just tired from past 2 days.

Wow, first desert orienteering experience. At Rock Spring with leftover controls from last weekend that Tom and I went out to collect in.

Cacti are difficult! All over so it's just a constant dance around them and then there are the particularly evil cholla with their stick-and-become-fishhooks behavior. Had to take my shoes off twice because I just couldn't bear their attack into my skin with every step.

But, there are also some super cool things, like slot canyons and multi-color rock and fantastic visibility and the saguaro cacti which are impressive and don't really get in your way.

I totally was not in touch with the map at the beginning and flung myself way to far to get to the first control, which embarrassingly and due to mistakenly going through some dark green took a half hour, whoops! After that, I modified my plan to basically just include the controls I needed to get, not the ones Tom was in charge of, like my original plan, so did that. Even doing that was out far too long and was super dehydrated at the end, not good!

C • Like 1

After a lot of restoring water, an orange juice and an ice cream sundae (thanks goodness for the cafe there!), headed back out to pick up three of the controls for the adventure race. Got to see some new areas and then had my own adventure, coming back through the creek for fun, but initially missing the trail turn off back to the dirt road. Gosh-a-roni it is not easy.

A round of drills in the parking lot, waiting for Tom to ready his brand-new day pack for the hike!

Mt. Elden hike with Tom!

The trail started just across the highway from the Flagstaff Mall. So very proximate to town... And the highway noises most of the way up were probably the only downside.

A great and well-maintained trail, neat lava rocky stuff and closer to the top, snow! The final 0.2 miles were slippy, but luckily not post-holey. Summit at 9,301 ft and could easily see Humphries Peak, all of Flagstaff and both the forest and desert beyond.

Also neat: alligator juniper. Notably gnarly trees with scaly-looking bark. They are hearty things, most look like they'd survived a fire or two.. Despite the promise of a few varieties of cactus, we only saw two. An aloe-plant shaped thing and a prickly-pear looking thing.

And a bit of a run afterwards, discovered a route that is nearly all trail and doesn't immediately climb all the way up Mars Hill. Win!

Morning run with Tom around Flagstaff, then a little bit extra on my own.

A research-only day, which hasn't happened in ages! Gave full effort to a new project on very young star clusters in some early-type galaxies with molecular gas. Also had a great chat with one of the staff astronomers about many things dynamics, from galaxies within clusters to exchanging Oort cloud bodies with exo-Oort clouds. He also said it would be ok to bug him with questions as I attempt to resurrect the Reed telescope this summer... could be very helpful!

And at altitude! Made it to Flagstaff last night, gave my talk at Lowell Observatory today (not so many extragalactic astronomers here, but everyone was paying attention and a few questions at the end from those who are, so ok!).

Also participated in morning's science tea. Potential young hot Jupiters, rings around asteroids and really awesome bagels. It can't possibly be that Flagstaff has better bagels than Portland can it? Maybe I haven't searched hard enough.

The run pretty much took me back up to Lowell and a bit around the plateau. Nearly got knocked out by a frisbee golfer on the way up...

Scrumptious Italian dinner with Tom afterwards.

C • Bagels in Portland 2