Is pretty today.

Sometimes they’re better than funny.

Sadness on Hood this weekend. Thoughts, as always, are with the climbers, rescuers, and families. May the mountain let the living come home.

On the way into the lab today, the impending formation of our familiar convergence zone was apparent. Clouds were wrapping around both sides of the Olympics, with clear sky between. They’re overhead now, and a fine sunset is delivering an encore on our week and a half of cold clear weather. Whomever’s cranking the climate knob’s obviously having fun – a series of warm fronts/bands are set to roll through this week. The first will make it snow. The next will make it snow a lot, and the third will kick off an avalanche cycle.

Reports are finally coming in and documenting the extensive faceting of the snowpack that normally comes with december high pressure. It should be a neat week in the hills.

G’bye clear sky – see you in January!

It’s easier to look for Yeti in the dark.

I was pleasantly and fortuitously interrupted this evening just as I was about to upgrade my NC 10 from lenny to squeeze, in hopes that various minor troubles I’ve had with the netbook might be resolved upstream. Thanks to the interruption, I had the presence of mind to see whether octave-2.1.73 was in the squeeze repository. It is not. Since my thesis work, the normalization of my ffts, and my sanity may hang on the now deprecated functions of 2.1, I’m very glad I didn’t hit “go”.

Some people’s timing just can’t be pec’ed.

The right music at the right time… thanks Massive Attack.

There’s a reason I don’t usually get in to work early. It’s because no matter what happens, I wind up staying late.

It would seem that Yeti doesn’t just reside in the theoretical details. He’s got enough moxie to keep experimentalists on their toes in their area of expertise too.

A definitely productive day. Lots of fiddling with gauges, nuts, and bolts. Much was learned, and old adages were renewed.

A symmetric selection of the day’s detritus.

That red dot? Unexpected success. Pats on the back to month-ago me.

Message boards are starting to light up with discussions of skiing mountains near routes I covet as first descents. With the aftereffects of the summer’s injury and the present effects of physics research, I’m not sure I’ll be strong enough, physically and mentally, to go after them this winter. All I can do is train and hope, both for good conditions and that nobody else will try, and that feels wrong.

Bruce Tremper has had a lot to say about avalanches, but I think this is just as appropriate for the sudden, jagged, and rarely visited invernal peaks of the North Cascades:

“as soon as I heard that the northwest face of Gobblers Knob
had pulled out wall-to-wall with a huge, wet slab avalanche,
I grabbed my skis and headed up — alone. It’s important, I think,
to be alone and the first to arrive at the aftermath of big avalanches.
I climbed over the 30-foot-high debris pile, skinned up the
gouged-to-the-dirt bobsled run of the avalanche’s track and
dug profiles all along the half-mile wide fracture. the stupendous
power, the destruction, the horror, the puniness of people
in the face of it… to be first and alone is essential.” — Tremper

For me, at least in the North Cascades in winter, alone is now modified to include a small party. Grandeur is even better shared.

It’s good to be near mountains.

They help put things in perspective.

0.3 milliseconds, glacier to eyeball.

Turkey day came and went, but not without notable interaction.

A glory. Faint but symmetric. Contrast/color enhanced to emphasize structure.

Few trips to The City are complete without a blurry skyline photo taken from a train.

Hockey bears of the great white not-so-far north.

Bear Dreams

Dinosaurs got her feet!

Yes, dear, they have bear slippers too.

No matter where you go, the sun still sets.