In the 'Glades

So last weekend Aviva and I went down to Florida to visit Aviva's parents, and while we were there I took a day drove to down to Everglades National Park, which has long been one of my most desired destinations. Turned out to be a lot of driving and a long day, but an absolutely fabulous trip and well worth the time, saw some incredible wildlife (like this Great Blue Heron to the right) and amazing scenery (like the Mangrove Swamps around West Lake to the left), and came away with a burning desire to go back.

I woke up early and left Boca around 0830, heading down the Florida turnpike towards the park. I was driving Tanya's Lexus, and amazing car. The car was almost intelligent, anticipating many of my needs before I could even think of them myself, and I have to say that like driving an Audi, driving a car as well designed as the Lexus actually makes driving a joy.

So, enjoying the drive and overcoming a bit of trouble with my sunshine pass (the turnpike automatic payment system is not as simple as the EZ pass system in New England), I made it down to Homestead and turned into the glades. It was already hot, around 78 degrees, when I left Boca, and when I got out of the car at the Ernest F. Coe visitor center it was around 85. And quite humid. After talking with one of the rangers (this was the first park I have been to where all the rangers were retirees), I decided to walk the Anhinga (the Anhinga trail was named after Anhingas, see left) and Gumbo Limbo trails by the visitor center, then drive down to Flamingo and hit as many of the walking trails as I could on the way back up to Homestead.

After walking the trails mentioned above, I drove through the park down to Flamingo, enjoying the alternating saw grass plains and hardwood hammocks. In the Glades, small islands of elevated ground sitting 2 or 3 feet higher than the surrounding land grow different types of vegetation due to the flooding of the saw grass ocean in the wet season. These islands are called hammocks and keys, and they stand out as islands of green in a sea of brown saw grass (right) during the dry season. Most of the trails in this part of the park start on wooden bridges crossing the saw grass into hammocks covered with tropical hardwoods or slash pines (like those found on Long Pine Key, left).

At Flamingo I got out of the car for a while, ate lunch and walked along the water. Then I got back in the car and headed back toward Boca, stopping at Christian Point Trail, Mizrak Pond, West Lake, Mahogany Hammock, and Long Pine Key. Each of these stops had a short or long trail, mostly short, teaching me about the glades and showing off different aspects of their unique ecology. A truly beautiful place, with incredible flora and fauna (like the Julia Heliconian on the right or the Florida chicken turtle, below left, or the American alligator below right).

All in all it was a wonderful first trip, and I feel like I just scratched the surface of this amazing park (I mean, the place is over 1.5 million acres in size). Heading back after a long, luxurious day of hiking and photography, I left very happy but hungry for more. I guess I will have to go back :)

Enchanted in the Olympics

As we are driving up Graves Creek Road to the trail head where we will start our hike, Neal explains that in the term tropical rain forest, the first section of the phrase refers to temperature, while the second refers to level of precipitation. This insight is of particular import, as we are about to spend 3 days hiking through a temperate rain forest, and only in this time of relatively untouched and fertile area are you going to find trees big enough to do this in.

But first things first. I arrived in Seattle the Friday night, having almost killed myself getting here. Met up with Neal and Dave at the airport, and soon Matt came by in a supremely welcome sight, his brothers jeep Cherokee. The idea of spending 3-4 hours driving out to Olympic National Park with 4 guys and all of our gear stuck in Matts tiny jeep had been something I was dreading. Food shopping (we brought entirely too much food, easily enough for 6 people), a fair nights sleep and a few cups of coffee (none for me but hey, this is Seattle) later, we are on the road to Olympic. We went south on 5 until we hit 101, then followed in through Aberdeen and up to Quinault around 1 pm. Wilderness passes at the ranger station (for a nominal fee), and conformation that the snow situation in the park was truly as gnarly as we had heard. The Olympics get over 100 feet of snow per year and even in late June all the passes above 4000' were covered in snow at which Neal proclaimed the place the himalympics. Headed over to Amanda Park, got some fishing catch cards (which we were never to use) and Dave did some minor car repairs (old Sassie was tough, but with 200,000 miles and a 500$ price tag a little damage could be expected). Then back into the park, skidding our way along the muddy road up to Graves Creek trail head to start out to Enchanted Valley.

The Quinault Rain Forest is absolutely stunning. It may be cliched, but this place felt alien and magical, like this was the land that time forgot ... or something equally cheesy yet completely awe-inspiring. Having just moved to the East Coast last summer, I thought I was familiar with green, but this place blew me away. Along an ice-blue and white river, ground to tree-top there was green and brown life, green and brown mosses draped everything, hundreds of ferns hovered just off the ground creating a gorgeous green under canopy and trees of every description crowded our view.

Hike started crossing Graves Creek, straight up a fire road for about 2 miles, then down along the river and across the Quinault at the Pony Creek campground. Although we were all fresh, it was slow going because we kept stopping to take pictures of the jaw-dropping beauty all around us. It kind of defies description, but these pictures might give some inkling as to what we were staring at as we walked. The ranger we had spoken to said the trail to Pyrites Creek, where we would camp the first night, was about 9.5 miles and pretty much flat. The ranger we had spoken to was full of shit. The trail was not particularly difficult, but could in no way be described as flat. You might say it was full of relatively shallow oscillations ... but clearly not flat. The first six miles to O'Neill Creek were up and down, wet and muddy but very pleasant, winding through moss covered hemlock and alder along and away from the banks of the Quinault river. After O'Neill the trail closed in on the river and we walked along the bank for some time, getting occasional unimpeded looks out on the river and the mountains beyond.

Grimy and sweaty, we rolled into Pyrites Creek around 5 pm. The campsite was on the shore of the river, separated from the water by a beautiful stand of birch trees. True to my declarations and much to the amusement of everyone else, I immediately went swimming in the river, which both refreshed me and damaged the circulation in my extremities. Snow melt is cold. After everyone finished washing their feet and laughing at me, we set up camp and started dinner, which was delicious ... pasta, fresh bread and two bottles of wine. We severely overestimated the amount of pasta we would need, particularly since we had so much other food (2.5 pounds of jerky, 2.5 pounds of dried fruit ... ridiculous) and Neal stepped huge and finished the extra half pound so we did not have to pack it out. We hung out until it got dark around 1030 drinking wine and whisky, then crashed, got up around 8 am, ate some oatmeal and set out for the short (3.5 mile) hike up to Enchanted Valley.

Just a bit past Pyrites creek Dave stopped us suddenly and we stood and gawked at a large Elk about 100 feet away in the woods. It paralleled us for a little while so we were never able to get closer to it, and made me wish heartily for a telephoto lens. Soon it bounded away, and we were again left alone to marvel at the huge, moss covered trees surrounding us. Then, maybe 45 minutes later, Dave was walking about 15 feet ahead of us and we heard him shout, "Bear!".

We hustled up the path over a slight rise to where Dave was standing and saw a mid-size black bear just sitting in the center of the trail, no more than 15 feet away. He was just minding his own business and when we all got there he started to move off into the woods. Being idiots, Neal, Dave and particularly I all got closer to take pictures, while Matt is standing in the background banging his hiking poles together and saying, "Uh guys. That's a bear. We need to scare it away not get close to it."

Matt was right, but it was a non-issue as the bear simply walked away into the woods. Soon afterwards we got to the gate to Enchanted Valley, a simple wooden structure clearly meant to keep the unicorns and elves in. Just after this gate we got our first glimpse of the snow-capped peaks crowning the valleys northern end , and then we started down into the valley itself, crossing a one-sided bridge and making our way back across a shallower, rocky section of the river to to the open ground. The views we breathtaking, walls over a thousand feet high towered on either side of us, steep rock walls covered with green, only broken up by the myriad of waterfalls made by the snow melt carving its way down the cliff face. Thick, tall foliage lined the eastern side of the valley with trees crawling up the mountainsides, while the on the western side the vegetation was more open, with lower trees and scrubs and wetland plants, with the river running in between them. Scattered about are wild flowers of all types, not in large patches but spread out like treasures in the greenery. I know that Neal is going to have a field day.

We checked out the rangers chalet at the base of the valley, got our bearings and set up camp in a campsite at the northern end of the valley. Lunch was quick (we had already been gorging on jerky and dried fruit) and after we had hung up our bear bags we were off to check out the ice caves we had seen in the snow patches on the mountainside to the west.

Getting to the ice caves was required crossing the river and pushing through a fairly thick swampy area, but the caves were well worth it. Huge sections of snow had been washed away by water running down the mountains to join up with the river. The first cave was huge and very open, and as we bounded through we saw the waterfall that had carved it out running strong down the mountainside that made up the back wall. We separated a bit before we met up at the second cave, but Dave, Matt and myself all bonded over the mass of stinging nettles we walked through to get there (Neal, who can identify nettles and was leading the way, did not deign to notice the nasty plants because we was wearing long pants).

The second cave was up the cliff, so that looking out you could see the whole valley. In this cave the water had carved a 200 foot tunnel down the face of the mountain, so climbing through to see the waterfall at the top was really fun ... scrambling up wet rocks and muddy scree avoiding the freezing water to get a unique, close-up view of the waterfall at the top. It was beautiful, looking from the dark, wet, muddy cave up onto the clean, pure water cascading down the green hillside.

From that cave we decided to cross what seemed like a small rise covered with slide alder to get over to a little tongue of glacier we had seen from camp. This proved to be far more difficult than we had suspected it would be , and we ended up essentially walking in the trees for about a quarter of a mile, topping them like birds to get our bearings and escape from the incredibly dense vegetation. We finally emerged, scratched up and bruised but having a fantastic time, right beneath the snow field, which contained a third ice cave that seemed to pass directly under the center of the snow field.

Neal and Dave explored the cave while Matt and I appreciated the natural air conditioning and the spectacular view. The explorers came out, very cold, after about 20 minutes, and then Neal, who had brought his ice axe and crampons because he is crazy, decided to create a new exit through the roof of the cave. Although I think only crazy Neal could find this process fun, watching him provided the rest of us with great entertainment, especially when we threw snow balls at him from on top while he was in the cave. At this point we were all pretty beat, except for Neal, who is superhuman according to the park ranger at Grand Tetons. Dave, Matt and I forded the river and trekked back to camp. We hung out reading, eating and playing cards while Neal climbed the snow field and eventually got back to us around 630 pm, leaving his crampons on the other side of the river (something we did not find out until the next day).

General goofing around ensued, I put on the ugliest socks in history while Neal ran around blindly as the inept yet humorous campground criminal. Dinner was a wet but surprisingly good freeze dried veggie Pad Thai, topped off by finishing the whiskey we had all been nipping at most of the day. Around 830 pm clouds started to roll across the mountains, giving the valley an air of majesty and solemnity. It was really beautiful and made me feel like we were in a different place than the one we had set up camp in that afternoon. Clouds are fast becoming one of my favorite natural phenomena, they can rapidly transform a place, give it an image of mystery that moments before you would not have imagined it could possess.


After gawking at the scenery, we all crashed out. I woke the next morning to Neal yelling and shaking the tent, but did not come about for a bit. This turned out to be very lucky because when I finally did emerge a deer was eating about 5 feet from the tent. At first I was really excited and yelled to Dave and we took a bunch of photos, but then we realized the deer was basically tame and it hung out the whole time we ate breakfast. Matt, alas, never saw the deer as he was stuck at the pit toilet waiting for Neal to bring him toilet paper. Meanwhile, Neal was taking pictures of the deer.

After breakfast, Matt took a short hike up toward Anderson pass while Neal, Dave and myself went hunting a waterfall by following a spur of the river upstream. Despite large quantities of nettles, various spiny plants and some steep terrain, we followed the stream about half a mile and saw two beautiful waterfalls. We all met back up at camp around lunchtime, packed everything up and headed out for Pony Creek camp. We kept a pretty good pace and made it back to O'Neil Creek around 345 pm. At point the blisters Dave and I had developed the previous day were completely raw, so we were just ignoring them. About 2 miles later Matt started to agitate for a hike all the way out, adding about 2.5 miles from Pony Creek Camp to the car.

Personally I was wavering, my pack was really heavy (turns out I cannot pack properly and my pack was maybe 10-12 pounds too heavy ... but hey, I got a good workout right?) and my blisters hurt. But they talk turned to dinner and the prospect of hitting up Taco Bell in Aberdeen and my spirits were renewed. After a brief rest at Pony Creek campsite we pushed on the last 2.5 miles, back up the fire road and out to the car. Rapid unpacking was prompted by the swarms of mosquitos and soon Sassie was rolling out of the park, back towards Aberdeen and those delicious grilled, stuft burritos. A long, tough day, 13.5 miles (plus the morning hikes) in a little under six hours. Of course the trail was "flat" ...

Mormons and Arches

SNIP, the unlikely acronym for the Society for NeuroImmune Pharmacology, held this years annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah. My initial response was that I could not think of a more unfun, unlikely place to hold a conference. All the negatives of high altitude with dry lips, headaches, etc ... plus the unique problems of no nightlife and a maximum alcohol content of 3.2% in beer. The only pluses I could see would be tremendous eye candy, as the numbers of hot, young mormon girls performing their missions in Salt Lake City is very high and the fact that I very much liked the movie SLC Punk (which by the way co-stars my friend Ryans cousin) and this is where the movie takes place.

To prepare for this excursion to the heart of Mormon country, I read Under the Banner of Heaven, an excellent yet frightening book charting the history of the Mormon religion as it explores two brutal murders committed in the name of God under the teachings of Mormon fundamentalism. Krakauer is the same guy who wrote Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, accounts of brutal, deadly interactions between man and nature. That he consider Mormon fundamentalism as extreme and frightening as the Everest expedition and walking off alone into the Alaskan wilderness certainly says something about the religion and the graphic violence of the murders and virtual insanity of the belief system that lead to them back up Krakauers opinion.

The start of the trip matched and then outstripped my expectations and Aimee, Clarisa and myself woke up far too early and got to LaGuardia at 730 am so that we could sit on the runway until 10 am, leaving just in time to completely miss out connection in O'Hare. Landing in O'Hare at noonish, we discoverd that Chicago was covered in snow, the largest freak April snowstorm in years ... everything was grounded or delayed and there was not another flight to Salt Lake City until 630 that evening. Spent the day watching Dr. Who on my computer (the new Dr. Who from the Sci-Fi channel is awesome) and running around the airport, finally finagling us onto a flight leaving Chicago at 755, which was good as our flight was postponed until 955pm. Completely missed our poster session and only got to the hotel at a reasonable time because my old boss Howard, who is simply fabulous, actually came to the airport to pick us up.

As to Salt Lake City, I was way wrong. It is a really excellent conference venue, with a walkable, compact downtown, with excellent restaurants and friendly folks, private clubs that serve normal beer and of course the Mormon Temple for an afternoons entertainment. The place is so quiet and peaceful that they actually have street crossing flags to allow you move across major thoroughfares in the downtown Just pick one up and walk and traffic actually stops for you. You then put it on the other side of the street when you are across. In New York this would not work as a) you would get run over as people laughed at your silly flags and b) the flags would be stolen rapidly.

The conference was good, parts of it great, especially the interaction I had with a number of the more senior folks in the society, definitely made me feel good about going. I also got a number of excellent reactions to my poster and my current work, which is always something you want. The whole thing was too short and there was not enough meet and greet time (I feel so old thinking that), but on the whole a great meeting. Plus Aimee, Clarisa and I got to Spencers, one of the best steakhouses in the country, for dinner ... that was truly an epicurean delight, probably the best rib eye I have ever had. We also took in a Jazz-Suns game, which was great ... and would have been better is the Jazz were not getting 20 pieced by half-time. I gotta say, Nash is really incredible and Stodamire is a freak of nature, as no one that big can move that fast. Otherwise the only notable experiences were watching Dee Brown score a career high 11 points while Clarisa fell in love with him and watching creepy Mormon guy to Aimees left proposition her to become one of his wives. Oh, and the random, violent R2D2 mail box in the center of town was great. Following the conference, Aimee and Clarisa went off to Las Vegas for two days of sin, debauchery and eating while I took my rental car and drove south to Arches and Canyonlands for two days of hiking in the high desert. Driving across Utah was a treat in itself, it is beautiful there, with all the mountains I have been missing on te East Coast. I got to Arches, which is about 3.5 hours SE of Salt Lake City, bought a poster and slapped on some sunscreen and took off on the longest loop I could find, the primtive trail up in the Devils Garden. The park is named Arches and this trail delivered, showing me a number of arches including but certainly not limited to Landscape Arch, Partition Arch, Navajo Arch, and the most spectacular, Double O Arch Arches aside, this was a pretty spectacular trail. Dusty and often badly marked, it would around, up and down huge boulders and rock canyons, between massive fins and under arches, along a dry streambed and into what felt like serious backcountry. During the primitive section of the trail I didn't see a soul for about three hours as I scrambled around huge rocks following small rock cairns and slick, faint paths. This section was my favorite, despite the lack of Arches, because of the difficulty of the terrain and the spectacular scenery. Getting back to my car around six, I had just enough time to drive back through the park and catch sunset at Delicate Arch, easily the most spectacular thing I saw on this trip. I was told to skip the direct hike and just use the view point, but my friend Neal, normally infallible in outdoor matters, is an idiot here. The arch was amazing, enormous and frail, floating like a huge granite titan over a massive rock bowl on one side and a 1000 foot cliff on the other. Getting up there was tough, 1.5 miles straight up hill, and I saw all kinds of people who would probably take the elevator instead of a single flight of stairs walking up. Pretty much sums up the spectacularness (word?), when people who don't walk take a rough hike to see something. But you can judge for yourself, I however, am sure it was worth it. Getting down from Delicate Arch I drove over to the Island in the Sky section of Canyonlands, conveniently located just up the highway across from the crazy indian themed gas station/RV park. Camped for the night, wolfing down some fried chicken for dinner and crashed out around 10. Woke up at midnight to wind so strong it was lift my tent off the ground, so I grabbed some big rocks and put them inside the tent and slept like a baby until the morning, when I got up and drove over to upheaval dome.

I planned to hike the Syncline Loop trail, an 8.3 mile hike around the dome .. I later found out that this was considered the toughest mapped hike in this section of the park. Sunscreen, hat, powerbars, water and we're off. Day is beautiful and just the right temperature and the hike is great. The trail is marked by cairns every 50 to 100 feet, but sometimes these have fallen down or been damaged, so it is easy to get lost. I kind of like that, it makes the hike more active for your mind and its a lot like the trail markers I am beginning to enjoy seeing all over the East Coast. Beautiful desert flowers spot the trail and until about mile 4.5 things are perfect.

At this point I lose the trail and cannot seem to find my way, ending up about 600 feet off the valley floor on a slick ledge. I start talking to two older guys at about the same height across the valley and between us and the group of hikers coming the other way we manager to find the trail, which to might delight takes us up and down a large boulder field. Its great. I stick with the older guys for the rest of the hike, chatting about their hiking experiences around the Southwest (they are froun Colorado) and my own experiences in different National Parks around the US. As we are walking the sky keeps getting darker and I am reminded of my hike through the Zion Narrows, and how I learned all about flash floods, in particular how they are very dangerous in slot canyons like the one we are walking in, as part of my preparation.

By the time we reach the climb out of the canyon, the sky was getting pretty dark and I could hear thunder in the distance. I talked to my new friends and they told me I didn't need to wait for them, but I said that if the weather turned I would rather be with people, plus I wanted to make sure they got out okay. We shouldn't have said anything, because about a quarter mile after cresting the first rise it started to rain, then hail and within 10 minutes the weather was as bleak as i have ever seen it.

We quickly found shelter under a rock as hailstones the size of golf balls rained out of the sky, bruising us up pretty good. We were pretty sure we were only a mile or so from the parking lot, so the experience was more novel and fun than scary, but witnessing the power of nature like that first hand was pretty impressive. After about half an hour, when we were all pretty damn cold and cramping, the hail let up a bit and we got up and trudged another mile or so uphill (making the last 1.5 miles of the hike a 1300 foot climb) through the snow, sleet and numerous small waterfalls that were newly created. I am sure there was a flash flood where we had been half an hour before. Still, from where we were I thought it was a hell of an adventure, and one of the most exciting hikes I have ever done. Got back to the cars, said my goodbyes and took off for SLC, thinking that after freezing and baking and hiking 20 miles in 2 days I just wanted a shower and a bed, as crappy as it might be (and it turned out to be pretty awful). On massive rainstorm later (seems I followed the thunderstorm across Utah) I was ensconced in a dingy, unpleasant motel in Provo for about 40$. Crashed out, got up and got to the airport in time to avoid the extra day of car rental, then hung out and waited for Aimee and Clarisa to show up. Vegas didn't eat them and despite flying through O'Hare we all got back safe and sound. Now, Aimee and Clarisa had to wait 2 hours after landing to get their luggage, but thats another tale for another time.