The Way of The Elk. Part 3

I was able to shoot two elk today, both of which were tagged by other hunters. The cards did not fall my way today, as I shot one cow 3 times in the front shoulder. The brave elk stumbled another 50 feet as I was sprinting towards her, but she succumbed to another hunter's shots and tag. The elk karma needs to turn my way, and quick if I am to fill my tag.

The Way of the Elk, Part 2

I have been back to the the elk hunting grounds out in hyalite, but have yet to see an animal. The rain turned to snow, and I went skiing, which was deep for october! Hopefully november will bring some better luck...

Photos: bridger, late oct, 2010

The Way of the Elk. Pt 1

It was pitch black by the time I made it back to the road from an overland (that means no roads, no people) hunt last night ...The new forest service signs marking the attractions in Hyalite canyon glowed in the reflection of my headlamp as I jogged past. I probably looked like a german foot soldier with the riffle in my hand, but I was glad to be on the road.... I did not want to reverse miles of deadfall in the dark. The road would provided a nice running opportunity for me anyways.

It began to rain hard, and I cam upon a truck with some human activity. The rain was coming down in sheets , but I was able to make out 3 people near the bed of the truck. They looked to be sportsman.....maybe they will swing me a lift back to my car. I tried to buddy up.

"Any luck?"

"Ya, got three of 'em"

"Three Elk !?" ....with all the shooting I heard, three elk seemed reasonable.

"No, three trout."

"Say, how much farther till the dam?"

"bout 2.5 miles" one of them said as they sped off in their nice truck. I suppose I cant blame them, as I probably looked pretty crazy, soaked to the bone and toting a weapon.

I will be back in the same spot tonight to hunt again, but the rain will have turned to snow, which may help decipher the age of the thousands of elk tracks I saw.

Nobody Told Me There'd be Days Like These

Today was a little rough to say the least. It started at about 4:30 am as my roommate woke me for an airport ride. No problem, I am happy to help out friends, but I was extremely groggy, even for 4:30. My instant coffee tasted especially bitter, and I could not tell if the objectionable taste was from expired coffee or my woozy state. After a bit of tea and a short drive to the airport, I returned home to sleep another few hours to prepare for a full day of calculus and bioengineering research. This was a poor strategy. It still felt like I had only slept 5 hours despite catching a few winks before class....when the lecture hit, I was behind and not following along, for the TA is very fast and good. The mental punishment would not stop, and it came time for the opening quiz of the semester. I did not do that well and will have to continue to study hard just to pass ( despite the fact that the name of this blog is a play on the commonly used math term "take the limit as this or that goes to zero",taking closed book calculus tests is not my strong suit.) After class it was off to work, where I was hoping to be efficient enough to get all my work done by the weekend. Ya right. My boss informed me shortly thereafter that I would be working sunday night (July 4th). My day is not going well.... "Thats OK", I thought trying to think positively, "I have gone on lots of road trips to climbing destinations already this summer...every weekend....I can miss out this weekend." "I will get more calculus done."

I shake of the damage and return to my windowless lab full of shakers and hoods. Through the the rhythmic drone of glass beakers clinking metal in the shakers, I hear some rumpled thumping noises....

"what is that?" asks another researcher.

"HAIL!" I scream out.

Sure enough, baseball sized hail was pelting the Montana State University campus with unrelenting fury. Windows were broken out of many of the buildings. Someone was seen running down a stairwell with a blood stained shirt. I then realized that my room at home contains west facing windows, vulnerable to the stormy onslaught. I reluctantly pedaled my bike home between thunderclouds to inspect the damage. The streets were filled with storm debris. When I got home the giant hailstones in the yard told me what I already knew. Shattered glass covered my bedroom, which was soaking wet...John Lennon's lyrics played in my head...."Nobody told me there'd be days like these, nobody told me there'd be days like these. Strange days indeed."

Train up! Get psyched!

With 8 inches of snow in my yard and possible tendonitis in both knees from another long ski season, I can only dream of sunny rock climbing anywhere in the western US. Luckily this weekend should provide weather in the 60's near Butte, with a maze of world class granite (maybe a stretch) to explore and climb. Hopefully we will see perfect climbing temps....more likely mixed rain and sun with snow on the ground. I have been waiting to regularly climb for a while.... in an effort to stop being so terribly weak and mediocre at the sport of climbing, I have been training. Despite this fact, I regularly flail and curse on anything harder than 5.10+, simultaneously calling for slack/take in the rope, before letting out a guttural scream mid-fall. If only I was as psyched as my good buddy Ethan (pictured, crazy). Ethan boulders and generally climbs like a crazed person, putting in long sessions at the local rock gym. Post send, Ethan then further crushes an intense climbing workout full of ridiculous one arm hangs, campusing/pull-ups and dips on gymnast rings (ever tried one?....so burly. my body convulses as I crank out 1.5 dips). The one time I have attempted the workout it hurt to sit up the next day, and sneezing was out of the question. Ethan does it multiple times a week, aspiring to climb 5.14 (ya right).

The mind must also be trained If I am to break through. Snow and boredom have pushed me to practice climbing self rescue and study more engineering. I practice escaping the belay, jugging the rope and the 3:1 haul, among other techniques so that I may be prepared to save my climbing partner in an accident. I practice because I am psyched. Psyched to climb longer and more difficult routes on peaks here in the rockies this summer, but the real challenge may be balancing full time work and school and the relatively new feeling of being a weekend warrior. Last summer I lived the dream of every other week being free from impingements...my climbing improved rapidly with multiple destination climbing trips. The strength gained has faded, but I will never forget the climbs, which is important for psyche factor. Hopefully this summer will bring some new adventures, probably in steep mountains with some of my best friends, including Ethan, if he ever leaves the gym.

Coal Ash

If you've read the latest Rolling Stone ( issue #1101, I have read it, i'm hip) you may have seen the "national affairs" section, a piece about coal ash. Usually this section contains an alarmist story bashing industry and the right wing (not necessarily bad..... google coal ash and get scared), and this story is no different. Coal ash is the solid waste scrubbed from the smoke stacks at coal burning power plants and amounts to a huge annual mass...140 million tons according to RS. These companies are required to scrub the effluent of their smoke stakes of dangerous heavy metals like arsenic and mercury, as mandated in the 1970s. Since then, this solid waste has been unregulated as nonhazardous solid waste (contentious) and has been dumped in unlined lagoons. This leads to leaching of the heavy metals into groundwater (drinking water) which is very bad. A recent billion gallon spill of coal ash from a Tennessee lagoon has pushed this issue into the forefront, and the EPA under Obama has finally addressed the issue, with EPA chief Lisa Jackson quoting "The EPA currently has, and has in the past, assessed its regulatory options. I think it is time to re-ask those questions." This news probably has the coal industry's pants on fire, and they are now lobbying hard to keep coal ash designated as unregulated-by-the-EPA nonhazardous material (which it isn't, coal ash has been causing cancer for years). The lobbyists argue that regulation will cost to much and increase energy prices and further hinder the economy. In an effort to keep things political and save space for celeb gossip, RS did not address why regulation will increase cost, nor was there much on remediation of existing coal ash lagoons. Regulation will drive up energy cost due to the complexity of chemical separations. The power companies will have to further separate the heavy metals. As an undergraduate chemical and biological engineering student, I am currently in "separations" class (aka "mass transfer"). This class deals with chemical separations, and is super difficult, with chapter 3 of the textbook alone containing some 300 equations (not easy ones, either). Just thinking about it makes my head hurt. Luckily, we have great professors who proficiently explain the material. The coal companies also have top scientists, and they figured out how to separate these toxins from the gasses leaving the plant. Unfortunately they take that scrubbed material and essentially dump it down the drain instead of separating it further (costly/difficult). What will happen next is anyone's guess. Advances in leaching the solid waste or Sequestering the scrubbed material in better, sealed lagoons is probable. Biological remediation is one viable option for the existing lagoons. In the lab where I work at the Center for Biofilm Engineering at Montana State University, microbiologists and engineers are hard at work looking into whether or not microorganisms can transform the valence state of chromium(VI) contained within hazardous waste to render it less transportable by water (huh?). Basically, bacteria could be let loose in a haz-mat, superfund type site to see if the bugs will eat up the deadly stuff. Our lab is funded by the DOE, and my bosses are currently in D.C. hobnobbing with the moneybags there to get funding for exactly this kind of research. Hopefully coal ash site remediation will get similar notice from the DOE and EPA in the near future.