Lake Tahoe winter sports

Richard and me
atop powder and ski
down a road all white
with nothing in site
but snowy trees still green
forming a warm wintry scene
and a lonely rabbit's track
leading us back
to a sweeping alpine view
enjoyed by this German and Jew

Richard and I skied down the closed Soda Springs road for some miles and had the most awesome time breaking trail through the two or three feet of fresh powder that had fallen the previous day and night. My backcountry skiis were perfect for the stuff, with their curved tips keeping me afloat and allowed for effortless gliding over the snow, while Richard's snowshoes sunk half a foot (which was nothing compared to when he tried it without the snowshoes and sank in the snow to his waist) and made for strenuous walking for him. Snowshoes have their benefits on steeper terrain (when skiis would need skins to be practical), but on a road like this skiis are king.

Getting up to Tahoe on Chrismas day was a challenge, as the weather in San Francisco started out hurricane-like, with wind and rain. Once we drove past Sacramento and up to 2,000 feet altitude, the rain became snow, through which we drove up to the 8,000 foot altitude of Nick's house in Norden. Chain controls on I-80 made for slow driving, which even with chains was tough, because we were driving Win's rear-wheel drive car, which naturally tends to fishtail in the snow. Nonetheless, the four of us (Richard, Yoko, Win, and me) made it by the evening and set off to warm up the house (which included melting the ice that had formed solid in the toilet bowls, so that we could use the bathrooms) and shovel the driveway for the four more cars that would join us (shoveling space for four more cars out of 4 feet of snow made for some good exercise and one broken shovel). Jeff, Nobuko, and Jayden made it later that night, as did Jeff and Diana. Willie, Logic, Heidi, and her 2 kids didn't make it past Sacramento that night due to the blizzard, and joined us the following day. Nick did likewise. Getting to Nick's house was an adventure, but the lack of efficient public transportation to such a popular destination as Lake Tahoe from the metropolis of San Francisco is symptomatic of my country's sad shortcoming in infrastructure development, in which many "third-world" countries such as China have already surpassed us. We're going to have to overcome our selfish individualness as a society if we're to continue to compete and prosper in the 21st century and beyond.

Northern British Columbia

Nature shines but pollution persists at this gold mine on the border of Alaska and Canada. The vista is gorgeous, but mine tailings containing all sorts of heavy metals are stored in the beautiful frozen green-blue pond at right. The pond acts as a settling basin for the tailings, after which the run-off from the pond is treated before discharge to the river running down the fjord. The BC environment ministry requires the mine's owners to monitor the volume and content of water effluent from this system, so the site's intrepid field staff take water quality and flow measurements throughout the year. My URS coworkers John, Ben, and I were tasked with automating the flow measurements, so spent a week up here installing instruments that use RADAR and ultrasonic sensors to measure river discharge. We were awe-struck by the huge, snowy mountains that surrounded us, the glaciers that flowed down the fjords, the bald eagles that were as plentiful here as pigeons are in cities, the depth of the snow everywhere, and the toughness of the local residents, some of whom told us stories of surviving avalanches and grizzley bear attacks.

Ladybeetles aggregate as summer wanes

Richard and I joined Sierra Club hike leaders John and Lucy, along with their friend Steve, on a hike through the redwood grove of Purissima Creek, near Half Moon Bay, today. Wildlife spotting began at Stonestown mall, where we met our ride in the morning and saw what appeared to be a falcoln or eagle with a huge wingspan, touch down in the parking lot. On the trail, Lucy keenly spotted a huge banana slug, which the rest of us would have missed because its coloring so closely matched that of the soil and the deacying leaves in the duff. Near the end of the hike, however, Richard noticed that what appeared to be berries on the blackberry bushes actually weren't berries at all, but were hoards of ladybugs. All of the "berries" in this photo are such beetles. According to wikipedia, ladybugs gather together on the south sides of trees and stalks when winter approaches, and remain in this configuration to overwinter. Then, in the springtime when spring approaches, they disperse. According to the ladybugs, autumn has arrived in coastal California, so it's time to aggregate. Are ladybugs the autumnal groundhog?

California Climate and Glacial Geomorphology

Willie, Richard, Tetsuya, Chris B. and I took a trip to Freel Peak, at almost 11,000 feet the highest point in the Lake Tahoe basin. Chris took this great panarama facing north, with Tahoe and its surrounding forests on the left, the arid (though irrigated) Carson Valley of Nevada on the right, and the alpine Starr Lake near the pass at center. The juxtaposition of forests to the west and desert to the east show how the effects of mountains dominate the climate of the western USA. Storms advect eastward from the Pacific Ocean. As the Sierra Nevada forces the moist air upwards, the air cools to its dewpoint and drops rain and snow over the western slopes of the Sierra, and over Tahoe. Over 10,000 years ago, this moisture also fed the glaciers which carved out many of the lakes and hanging valleys in the Tahoe basin and elsewhere in the Sierra Nevada. After a storm loses a good deal of its moisture to the Sierra Nevada, the storm flows eastward, down the leeward slope of the mountain range, gets compressed as the air pressure increases, and heats up. Since the air is now drier than it had been during its trip up the western slope of the Sierras, there is less moisture to evaporate than had been condensed over the western slope, so the temperature of the air east of the mountains rises above what it had been at the same altitude west of the mountains. The result is the hot, dry desert of Nevada, easily seen in the brown Carson Valley. Even the glacial history of the region was heavily affected by this gradient in moisture: the Sierras and are full of glacial-carved lakes, valleys, and moraines, while the mountains to the east of Carson Valley, though nearly as high, did not receive enough moisture to feed glaciers, and thus do not show these glacial-carved features.

Chris was really on a role with these beautiful panoramas he shot during the trip. This one was taken from Maggie's peak, looking northeast toward South Lake Tahoe. We accessed this peak from the top of Emerald Bay, and at the summit ran into a UC Berkeley geomorphology class being taught by Prof. Deitrich! Naturally we hung out for this fascinating lecture in the field, and, as we were freeloading without paying tuition, it's only right that I share the learning here. Cascade Lake is in the foreground. This lake exists at the furthest extent of an ancient glacier, which dropped down off the mountain and deposited its terminal moraine at Cascade Lake's northern (left) end, and which built up lateral moraines that now confine both sides of the lake (the lateral moraines are the hills which run along the long axis of the lake). Fallen Leaf Lake (at far right) is a larger lake formed in the same way; the lateral moraines of the glacier that formed it are still visible as forested hills on the lake's flanks, and the terminal moraine forms the isthmus between Fallen Leaf Lake and Lake Tahoe. That isthmus is now a relatively flat, marshy regions atop which the city of South Lake Tahoe and the casinos of Stateline have been built. The meadows and marshes along the stream flowing from Fallen Leaf to Tahoe hold nice campsites and flat-ground trails which should make scenic (and easy) cross-country skiing in the wintertime!

At the far left of the photo is Emerald Bay. This was also likely formed by a glacier ending in the lake. The lateral moraines (hills) which confine the long axis of the lake are readily visible. There does not seem to be a terminal moraine, however. This may have been due to the lake slowly rising in level during a wet period, flooding over the terminal moraine, and eventually eroding it away (as the Mediterranean eroded the Bhosperous during what may have been the Great Flood of the Bible). Alternatively, Prof. Dietrich said the lack of terminal moraine may be due to a lake seiche (tsunami) resulting from the Meek's Bay landslide that occurred many thousands of years ago on Tahoe's western shore. The landslide in the lake may have caused a long wave that washed over the low-lying moraine, eroded it away, and thereby dug a connection between Tahoe and Emerald Bay.

I've got to include a photo of my buddies at the summit!

Sights of Mt. Tallac

Lone pines and cheeky chipmunks thrive on this granite behemoth overlooking Lake Tahoe. The talus was deposited by glaciers, upon whose lateral moraines twist the trail up the mountain. At the base of Tallac is Fallen Leaf Lake, which is separated by a terminal moraine (acting as a dam) from lower Lake Tahoe.

Oakland Engineers' softball league playoff game

Yesterday was the playoff game for the B-league teams in the Oakland Engineers' softball league. Though we lost the final playoff game, we had a great season, evidenced by the fact that we actually made it to the final playoff game for our B-league. It was my first time ever playing softball (or even baseball), which turns out to be much more fun to play than to watch! Though the sport was new to me, the technique used to transmit power from the body's core through the arms and bat to the ball was very familiar, as it's the same technique used in swimming and couple dancing, where power is transmitted from the body's core to the water or to one's dance partner, respectively.

We played all our regular season games in West Oakland, right in the middle of gangland. The fields and parks are nice, but the surrounding neighborhoods and projects made for a sometimes-frightening experience, especially when games would drag on till dark and we'd hear gunshots in the distance. None of us ever saw anything disheartening in the area, but gang-related crime is common there, so hearing shots was always frightening. After the games in West Oakland, I'd skate back to the nearby BART station, incuring such cautionary comments from my teammates as "common, dude, this ain't Malibu...". Though I knew safe routes along which to skate to the station, the area does have a lot of crime, and my teammates' worries are not unsubstantiated. 40 years ago, West Oakland was a rich suburb of downtown, and still has the large old homes to prove such. Sometime since then, however, the area descended into poverty and crime. This was likely due to the closing-down of Oakland's WWII steel and shipbuilding (Kaiser) industries, the "white flight" of the 50's to the suburbs that was accompanied by the invasion of Oakland with flyover freeways that divided neighborhoods, and the abandonment of the once-extensive transit systems that until that time kept this area well-connected with the rest of the Bay Area. Regardless, the area is still home to the largest port in the region; with all the commerce and jobs created by the port, why is the area still so poverty stricken? Why do gangs hold a monopoly on the area's youth?

On the bright side, however, I did meet local softball coaches, who organized the area's kids into softball and soccer teams, keeping them off the streets and out of reach of the gangsters who would otherwise lure them into another life. Men like these coaches are hope for a brighter future for Oakland and us all.

Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne

From the Sierra crest in Yosemite, the Tuolumne River flows through a series of cascades and a glacial valley, before ending up in Hetch Hetchy reservoir, which was built in the 1920's as storage for San Francisco's drinking water supply. On an overnight trip, Gerard, Richard, Jeff, Tetsuya, and I hiked from White Wolf, down to the river just above the reservoir, and then up the remote Canyon to Tuolumne Meadows near the river's headwaters.

The reservoir at the beginning of the hike is steeped in the struggles between humans and nature, and between human and human, that have defined California and its scarce water resources. John Muir and the Sierra Club battled Gifford Pinchot, the US Forest Service, and the City of San Francisco over the fate of Hetch Hetchy Valley, already protected in a National Park but viewed as a sustainable and pristine water supply for the state's largest and ever-growing metropolis. The conservationists won out over the preservationists when Congress granted the City their permit to build O'Shaughnessy Dam, but Muir's legacy was never forgotten and continues to guide policy and public thinking. As long as our state experiences the competing interests of agriculture and urban growth, this struggle will never end, so we need both camps to find compromises and intelligent solutions in order to best guide our growth. It's too bad that Muir and Pinchot turned from friends to adversaries over the Hetch Hetchy struggle, as men of their influence could have guided our state onto a more consensus-based path. Alas, that has never been the path chosen by our countrymen, as nothing unifies us other than the fact that we each seek to further our own self-interest.

As we hiked further up the Canyon, we left behind the reservoir along with any other signs of man, other than the path upon which we trod. The river was flowing low this time of year, the late summer, exposing a broad and cobble-filled floodplain where the canyon was wide enough. In narrow spots, however, the river fell through chutes. Granite precipices were also common, over which cascades plunged along the smooth granite that Muir coined "glacial pavement", and above which pools took shape.

The hike was strenuous, the air was hot, and the cool riverine pools were much too inviting inviting, spurring the hike-mother too often to scowl and herd his fellows away from their fun and back to the march up the canyon to get back to the car before the night waned too dark.

Gutennichiwa

At home in San Francisco with my German and Japanese roomates.

Yosemite in winter

Willie and I took a weekend trip to Glacier Point, on the south rim of Yosemite Valley. After skiing in, we set up camp on top of 20 feet of snow; it's been a wet winter. I was proud of my wind-shelter, built from blocks of snow, to protect our tent from gusts. It had been a warm shorts & t-shirt day, as is not uncommon during fair winter weather in the Sierras, but the night was bound to be cold, so we needed as much shelter as possible. Building the walls was my task as Willie diligently cooked dinner on his stove.

After setting up camp, we were treated to the warm glow of the sunset reflecting off the snow and the granite, the waterfalls and the clouds, across the valley.

お花見

サンフランシスコの辺(Stinson浜)で桜の花が咲いているから嬉しい！！！

Ken and Hiromi-chan's wedding

The highlight of the trip was Ken and Hiromi-chan's wedding ceremony. They were a beautiful couple, and, at the sight of two such dear souls radiant with joy, I also felt a joy that I hadn't know for a long time. The last time I felt joy like that was a year ago, when I last saw Naoko's loving smile. I wish all my friends could find as good a match as Ken and Hiromi found in each other, because the joy they experience from each other overflows to grace all those around them.

Now I'm back in Berkeley, and have spent three days at my new job at URS-Oakland. The first two days were tough because I was suffering from jet-lag, which, combined with a fast-paced job, is not a good recipie. But today I recovered from the jet lag and felt awake, thereby enjoying the fast pace and the interesting projects. It's going to be a challenge, but I feel a lot of motivation for what I'm doing there. My projects so far include the design of shore protection for a reservoir, and dilution analysis of the effluent of a wastewater plant. Today I also began bicycling to work, which is an easy 25 minute ride each way; it helps get my blood flowing in the morning.

Kyoto with Hideo

This being Gerard's first trip to Japan, visiting the ancient imperial capital of Kyoto was a must. We met my hiking buddy Hideo, who has more knowledge of the local flora and history than anyone else I know, and he took us on a hike from the bucolic Nanzenji temple, over a forested ridge, to Kyoto city. Pictured here is the Lake Biwa aquaduct, which was built in the 19th century to generate hydropower for Japan's first electric streetcars; it takes water from the lake, tunnels through a mountain, and runs downhill through turbines into a canal that runs through town. It's an impressive engineering feat for the age in which it was built, as Meiji Japan had just barely emerged from feudalism at that time. Hideo then invited us back to his home on the shore of Lake Biwa, where we ate yu-tofu, another traditional hot winter dish, this one a soup with tofu and veggies, and tempura. As always on visits to Hideo's home, we spoke about politics in our two countries, which is an energizing and sometimes confusing topic, especially in a foreign language. Again, natsukashikatta!

New Year's in Japan

Gerard and I travelled to Japan over this winter's break. We spent the New Year holiday at Nobuko-chan's family's home in the countryside, eating delicious mochi and zenzai, the traditional hot foods of winter celebrations. That was followed by a visit to Kobe to see old friends from the IOC. We spent a day hiking over Rokko-san and down the other side to Arima Onsen, with one of the original hot springs pictured here; natsukashii! The only wildlife we encountered on the way was one inoshishi (wild boar) digging for grubs. It was a sweet time spent with good old friends enjoying each others' company and the outdoors all together. Josh, Junko, and Wendy hosted us with food and lodging in their apartments; I'm lucky to know such kind folks! I've missed you guys.