End of Autumn, Begining of Winter

These past two weeks we've really seen a transition from autumn to winter here in Reno. Prior to Thanksgiving I had a couple of opportunities to get out and go hiking. Scotty Strachan and I did an afternoon hike up Snow Valley Peak, which overlooks Carson City and Marlette Lake. I'd highly recommend the peak. It can be accessed from the Spooner Summit trailhead of the Tahoe Rim Trail. Alas, with the recent snow that will probably be one of my last hikes of the season that doesn't require snowshoes.

This last week we received our first major storm of the winter in the Sierra, which included a little dusting down here in Reno. The snow seemed to be perfectly timed to make it feel a bit more holiday-like. Most of the major ski resorts are open now, but it will still take quite a bit more snow for them to open all of their terrain. Next weekend I'm planning on doing a little skiing at Northstar, which is the resort that I chose to get a season's pass for this year. The following weekend Holly and I will be headed to Jackson Hole for Christmas.

I filed all of the paperwork for graduation, so now I'm official. Although I'm graduating this semester I won't walk in the ceremony until next semester. Also, I've submitted my first manuscript for publication in an academic journal: the Annals of the Association of American Geographers.

Back in the mountains

For the first time since this summer I went hiking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, near my home in Reno. It was nice to get out in nature once again after such a long absence of outdoor activity. Holly and I took Chester to the Davis Creek Park end of Ophir Creek Trail, just south of Reno. We had a nice hike up to a small alpine lake, which we had all to ourselves.

In other news Holly and I got ski passes to Northstar-at-Tahoe this year. Being lower in elevation than the other ski areas means that it tends to get less snow, so it is sort of a gamble. However, I wanted to try something a little different this year, and the pass also includes access to the cross-country ski trails as well as the downhill ski lifts.

Successful thesis defense

Last week I defended my master's thesis, which included a public presentation of my research. Fortunately, things went well, and there were no hiccups. The title of my thesis was "Morphometric characterization of artificial post-mining landforms and natural landforms using a Geographic Information System", which is quite a mouthful. However, the premise is fairly easy to understand. Gold mining in Nevada produces large landforms, hills really. The goal of the thesis was to use GIS to determine how artificially-produced terrain differs from natural terrain, in other words, to quantify the shape and form of landforms. I've got a few minor revisions to the thesis before I submit it to the graduate school and then I'm done!

Thesis defense scheduled

I've scheduled my thesis defense for 4:00 pm November 6th in Mackay Science. I'm excited about finishing my master's and presenting the results of my thesis.

Got married at Lake Tahoe

The biggest news in my life this fall is that Holly and I got married. We had a small ceremony at an old fire lookout that overlooks Lake Tahoe. The ceremony included exchanging vows that we had written and a champagne toast. The weather turned out to be beautiful on Sunday even though there was a 1/4 foot of snow on the ground on Friday. Reverend Stephanie of Carson City performed the ceremony. Liz Barrett was Holly's maid of honor and witness. Stephanie's daughter, Nadia, was our second witness, and Chester was present too. We have a wedding website that provides more details including a link to a photo gallery. The reception won't be held until May 24th, 2008 at Rancho San Rafael in Reno.

New professional website

New job and new professional website -

This past week I started working for the Great Basin Landscape Ecology Lab at the university as a full time researcher. The lab is headed by Dr. Peter Weisberg and is comprised of postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Peter has a variety of field studies going on at this point, most of them are scattered across California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. The project that I'm going to be working on is the Walker River Basin project, which investigates the ecological implications of changing land use in the Walker River Basin. The goal of the project is to identify changes in land use that might result in putting water back into Walker Lake, which at present, is rapidly disappearing. My tasks involve using GIS and spatial modeling to scale up plot-level studies in order to estimate evapotranspiration, net primary productivity, biomass, etc. for the basin under different potential land use scenarios.


You can view my new web page and CV at:


http://www.cabnr.unr.edu/weisberg/people/tom.htm

Forced vacation does some good

Power outage at the university forces me away from my computer -

These last couple of months I've been pretty tied up trying to finish my master's thesis. Well, an unsuspected power outage at the university left Mackay Science without power for four days. I decided to take the opportunity to take some time off and enjoy the wonderful summer that we've been having in the eastern Sierra. On Friday Holly, Chester and I headed up to Lake Tahoe for some swimming. Then we joined Holly's aunt, uncle, and cousin for a camping trip to Bridgeport, California. By the way, if you've never been to the eastern Sierra I'd highly recommend going. It is absolutely beautiful and relatively uncrowded by California standards. We spent Saturday checking out the historic ghost town of Bodie, which is by itself way out in the desert. Then Sunday we traveled up to Twin Lakes, in the shadow of the Sawtooth Mountains.

Maps featured in Climbing Magazine

Maps featured in the most current edition of Climbing Magazine -

We all have a gut feel about which places are the best to live for climbing. However, I wanted to see how things would look if livability based upon climbing was put on a map. The result are the three maps below. The first map only factors in crags within 100 kilometers, the second 200 kilometers, and the third 400 kilometers. For more information about the methods see the poster in my July posting. You can also save the images by clicking on them to enlarge them and then right clicking and selecting save.

Photo on the College of Science Website

Poster contest photo featured on the College of Science Website -

Tim Weigel and I recently were featured on the University of Nevada Reno College of Science website along with the other winners of the student poster contest. Our poster took third place. The poster was entitled "A weights-of-evidence approach to mapping avalanche terrain in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, USA", and was a class project that we had done in the fall semester. That is Tim in the white shirt. I'm in the blue shirt on the far right side.

http://www.unr.edu/cos/Main-Events.html

In other news I'll be traveling to Elko, Nevada next week for a mine closure and reclamation workshop. I'm planning on giving a talk entitled "Geographic information systems, landscape ecology, and geomorphometry: what they are and what they can do for mine reclamation".

Work soon to be featured in Climbing Magazine

Defining livability based upon proximity to climbing crags -

This winter I undertook a project to determine which portions of the country are the best for climbers. After contacting Climbing Magazine, editor Matt Samet agreed to write a piece about my research. Look for my maps and an interview in the Off the Wall column of the August edition. I scanned, georeferenced, and digitized maps from Rock N' Road, a climbing atlas authored by Tim Toula. Then I analyzed the data in a GIS to produce a map of livability based upon the number of crags in the vicinity. Hopefully, the maps will provide people with a graphical representation of climbing potential in certain areas of the lower-forty eight states. At this time I feel that Alaska, Canada, Mexico, and maybe Hawaii haven't been as thoroughly explored as the forty-eight contiguous states, and that it wouldn't be fair to compare them. Sort of like apples and oranges. Below is a poster that I put together and presented at the Nevada GIS Conference in South Lake Tahoe.

New Addition to the Family

Chester Joins the Family -

Today Holly and I went to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals shelter in Reno, near the coner of 4th and Wells. We adopted Chester, a 10 month old yellow lab with a great temperament. We've been looking at getting a dog for quite a while now, but have been waiting for the perfect dog to catch our attention. Holly noticed Chester on a visit to the shelter to look at another dog. Chester has a great personality and lots of energy. He appears to be mild mannered, yet full of energy and curious of everything around him. We're looking forward to taking him on walks and hikes.

Photograph of Mount Moffit in Alaska

Mount Moffit from Mount Hayes -

My rock climbing season got off to a good start this year until something called a thesis got in the way. As a result of my thesis I'm going to be working 24/7 this summer to get the thing done so that I can graduate. Of course that means that I won't be posting frequently this summer. Therefore, I've decided to throw up a photograph from a trip to Mount Hayes that Sean Bemis and I undertook in 2004.

The photo was taken from a spot called Levi's Bump, which is on the northeast ridge. The view looks out across the Trident Glacier to the east. That big peak is Mount Moffit, a truly impressive and challenging peak. After hiking in 30 miles and spending several days on the ridge at 10,000 feet we never made the summit. Frequent snows and rapidly changing weather conditions shut us down and sent us back early. We had to cross the Delta River at flood stage.

Ironically, that week was to be the final rain event of the summer. The summer of 2004 turned out to be a record fire season in interior Alaska. That summer we were forced to live in a thick cloud of smoke, because no matter which direction the wind was blowing from there was always a fire.

Added Links

Added Links Section -

I've added links to some of my favorite websites. First up is Scotty Strachan's Dayhike.net which is a great source of information on peaks in the Great Basin and the Sierra Nevada. Scotty is a personal friend of mine and has an impressive list of summits that he has visited. Check out his website.

The second link that I've added is Vagabonding al Mundo, which is my sister's blog that chronicles her trips around the world. During her college years she managed to travel five continents and has spent time in Switzerland, Morocco, Uganda, Thailand, Kyrgyzstan, and Singapore. Check out her blog to hear about her worldwide adventures.

Ecological Footprint Quiz

How big is your footprint? -

In honor of Earth Day and at the recommendation of Holly I decided to check out what my ecological footprint is. I went to http://www.myfootprint.org/ and took their online quiz. It turns out that my life style requires 14 acres, and that if everybody were to live like me it would take 4.5 Earths. Ouch!! However, I'm still doing better than the average American who uses 24 acres per person.

Tahoe Regional Planning Authority reverses decison about North Bowl Expansions

North Bowl Trees Saved -

This week during a re-hearing the Tahoe Regional Planning Authority reversed its decison to allow Heavenly to cut the North Bowl old growth to allow for a high speed chairlift. As of now, they are leaving it up to Heavenly to choose between Alternative 4A- The kinked lift, and Alternative 5 - Replace existing lifts with high speed quads. This is a victory in the Tahoe Basin, and an amazing demonstration of how impactful community organizing and grass roots efforts can be. Not only was the board meeting room completley packed with concerned local citizens yesterday, but they had to set up an overflow room with video-conferencing - and the overflow room was also standing room only. Pretty amazing!

Poster takes third place in College of Science contest

Avalanche Terrain Poster takes third -

Last semester Tim Weigel and I took a class from Gary Raines of the USGS about modeling using GIS. We learned about weights of evidence, fuzzy logic, and artificial neural networks. Tim and I did a project in collaboration with Randall Osterhuber at the Central Sierra Snow Laboratory in which we used weights of evidence to model avalanche terrain in watersheds adjacent to two watersheds that had been heavily studied.

We entered the poster that we made for class in the 2007 College of Science poster competion and took third place. I'm planning on giving a talk at the Nevada GIS conference at South Lake Tahoe next month about this project. Below is a snapshot of the poster. Click on the image for a larger view. I intend to update the image with a better one sometime in the near future.

Spring in Full Bloom

Spring Arrives in Reno -

Spring is in full bloom here in Reno! Never before have I lived in a city with so many cherry trees. It certainly came as a big surprise, since cherry blossoms are not usually what people associate with Nevada. The university campus, in particular, is beautiful this time of year. The large elm trees that line the historic quad have leafed out and the grass is a brilliant green. Holly and I are beginning to prepare the garden for summer.

The photograph on the left is of daffodils that our neighbors have planted. The photograph on the right is of the tree next to our house.

Climbing at Sugarloaf and River Rock

Climbing at Sugarloaf and River Rock -

The last couple of weekends I've discovered new climbing spots here in the Reno/Tahoe area. The first was Sugarloaf, which lies just west of Lover's Leap along Highway 50. Sugarloaf is an old school crag climbed by the likes of Warren Harding in the 1950s. It features an incredible variety of chimneys, cracks, and off-widths and has a surprisingly Yosemite-like feel. The area is southfacing and is great for early season climbing.

The second locale is River Rock. River Rock is located just outside of Verdi about 2 miles past the California border. Although it is a relatively small area it has great routes, quality rock, and is located in a nice spot near the Truckee River. More information about River Rock can be found at the following website:
http://harter-climbing.aci.net/riv.html

Rock Climbing at Owen's River Gorge

Rock Climbing at Owen's River Gorge -

This past Friday I found myself traveling down to Owen's River Gorge outside of Bishop, California to do a little bit of sport climbing. The weather turned out to be perfect. Sunny skies with cool morning, warm daytime temps, and cool evenings. We opted to camp at the free campground up the road. This trip was the first significant outdoor climbing trip of the season for me.

We arrived after about a four hour drive from Reno in time to catch a few 5.9s on the left side of the Great Wall of China. After the sun caught up with us we switched over to the Warm Up Wall to finish the day. The following day we caught some great climbing on a climb named Paradise (5.9) followed by a nearby 10c arete and a 5.7. We moved over to the more crowded Pub Wall and did several climbs there before moving on to the Negress Wall and back to the Warm Up Wall. Our final day finished with a 10a, 10b, and three 9s all on the left hand side of the Great Wall of China. In total 21 climbs ranging from 5.6 to 5.10c, all excellent quality.

Owen's River Gorge is reputed to be the best sport climbing in California. With over 700 routes to choose from, winter climbing a possibility, and shade or sun available depending upon where you choose to climb, I can see why it is so appealing. In fact, we met several people from Colorado and Utah who had come just to climb the gorge. Newton and I were impressed that the place was not overbolted or grid bolted, and that the crowds seemed very reasonable. We'll certainly be returning!

Last Climb at Lee Vining

Spring Ice at Lee Vining Canyon -

Gwen Linde and I returned to Lee Vining Canyon for one last ice climb of the season. It turns out that the ice was very wet and mushy, although still leadable, particularly in the morning. Great for hard toproping! However, if you choose lead make sure you do it in the morning before the ice gets too mushy. My guess is that there won't be a bit of ice left by the end of March.

Matanuska Glacier Trip, 2005, Republished

Mount Marcus Baker Attempt, March 2005 -

During March of 2005 Sarah Masco, Andy Mahoney, Sean Bemis, and I decided to attempt to climb Mount Marcus Baker, the highest point in the Chugach Mountains. We knew that we would need a spell of good weather as the mountain had a reputation for being quite windy. Afterall, it is at the crest of the Chugach and is quite exposed to weather systems coming off of the Gulf of Alaska. Sean snapped the photograph at the top of the page from the window of an Alaska Airlines jet.

We began our trip from Mike Meekin's place just up the road from where Sarah was living in Chickaloon. High winds delayed us for two days, but once out we were greeted by beautiful scenery. Mike is a very skilled pilot, but his Super Cub is tiny. Therefore, we each had to be ferried in individually. I was the last to arrive just before sundown and was greeted by cold temperatures. Luckily, the others had the tents up and we went to work building a sturdy snow wall that turned out to be very much needed. That night the weather set in and we were grounded for three days. The storm deposited a lot of snow and we were forced to go outside about every hour or two to clear off the tents. Finally, on the final day of the storm the weather improved somewhat and we got out to dig a snowcave, which ended up being far more comfortable than two tents.

After one night in the snowcave the sun broke out and presented us with a choice. Should we move camp up the mountain to a an exposed plateau or should we head down glacier and attempt smaller peaks near the Scandinavian Glacier Hut? Given that we were wet and cold we decided to head for the hut.

The hut turned out to be a nice option. Besides giving us a chance to dry out it was stocked with books, magazines, and games, all of which turned out to be useful because nasty windy weather set in the following day. The day after proved to be beautiful, so we decided to make an attempt on Finland Peak. On a previous trip in 1998 I had stayed at this exact hut and climbed Norway Peak and Denmark Peak. I was eager to give Finland a shot. Plus Finland offered one of the nicest ski descents, as well as a summit ridge that featured some alpine ice climbing.

Photos from left to right:

View of Mt. Marcus Baker from the Matanuska Glacier, Finland Peak, and the Scandinavian Glacier Hut.

Photos from left to right:

Sarah climbing the final slopes to the summit of Finland Peak, the summit ridge of Finland Peak, group photo on the summit.

Return to Lee Vining Canyon

Facing the Bard Head On -

This was my third week climbing ice at Lee Vining Canyon with Gwen Linde. After leading single pitches on the Chouinard Wall and the Bard Harrington Wall. We decided it was time to climb all 3 or 4 pitches of Bard Harrington. The ice in the canyon is still in excellent condition. It's north facing exposure ensures that minimal sun reaches the wall. Nonetheless, it is still recommended to get an early start and avoid the left hand side during the afternoon. Gwen and I witnessed several large icicles detach around 3 pm two weeks ago.

We ended up splitting the route into four pitches, although we probably could have completed it in three. Luckily for me it meant splitting the crux pitch into two manageable pitches. The two middle pitches probably went at about WI 3+ or 4-, which was perfect for me.

Top photo: Bard Harrington Wall on the left, Main Wall in the center (kind of hard to see), and Chouinard Wall on the far right, which appears to be the favorite for mountaineering clubs.

Bottom photo: I'm following the first pitch on Bard Harrington.

Interagency Weeds Inventory IMS Website

Interagency Weeds Inventory IMS Website -

Last year I took Gary Johnson's GIS Design Studio class here at UNR. One of the projects that I undertook was designing a Weeds Inventory IMS site for the state of Nevada. The site is intended to serve as a tool for weed inventory specialists in Nevada and to demonstrate the utility of ArcIMS. I also gave a brief talk at the ESRI Northern Nevada Users Group Meeting held here in Reno this past December. You can view the site yourself by clicking below:

http://mapserver2.library.unr.edu/website/BLM_Weeds_Test/viewer.htm

Save the North Bowl Trees at Heavenly

Save the North Bowl Trees at Heavenly -

Heavenly has some great tree skiing, including the North Bowl! However, these old growth trees are threatened by the resort, which plans on building a high speed chairlift and cutting three to four new runs. That may not sound like much, but it will totally change the character of the place and impact the lake's clarity. Furthermore, local groups have recommended and support a "kinked" chairlift, similar to those that they have in Colorado. A kinked chairlift would allow Heavenly to build the lift without sacrificing the trees, lake clarity, slope stability, wildlife habitat, and good old fashioned adventurous skiing. I urge all of you to take a look at the following websites to get more information. I think that we can have a win-win situation, but the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and Vail Resorts need to be convinced.

http://northbowl.blogspot.com/
http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/article/20070223/Opinion/102230069

Ice Climbing in Lee Vining Canyon -

I got my first taste of Sierra ice this winter. This past weekend I teemed up with Gwen Linde, who is a PhD student in geology at UNR, and went down to climb California's best ice, Lee Vining Canyon. Lee Vining is just outside the east entrance to Yosemite National Park. It is in a spectacular location down amidst a deep canyon. Most of the ice flows are on shady north-facing slopes, so they stay relatively cool throughout the winter. It turned out that the ice was perfect and the approach was superb. Gwen and I both led WI3 routes on Chouinard Wall and we did a bit of top roping too. With such a poor snow season and such great ice I guess it is a no brainer.

Lean Winter Ski Conditions -

This year I got my season ski pass for Heavenly Ski Resort down in South Lake Tahoe. Tim Weigel, Shasta Ferranto and myself have teemed up to make up the tele mafia at Heavenly. There really aren't too many other tele skiers on the mountain so we're probably quite noticeable. I think this has been one of the leanest snow years for the Sierra Nevada on record. Certainly it is way below last year. As a result most of the skiing is pretty restricted to groomed runs with snowmaking, and this February! Actually, we did score a few decent tree shots but that was just after New Years.

My goal for the season is to get comfortable skiing moguls on tele skis. The rationale is that moguls will force me to be quick on my feet as well as force me to ski the fall line. Hopefully these two traits will come in handy in the woods and on the steeps. To date I've clocked 11 ski days this season, although some days were on alpine skis and not every day has been a full day.