Teaching, Flatirons, and Indian Creek

It's been a while since I posted, so I thought I would give a quick update.  After leaving Tuolumne Meadows, we headed for Tahoe.  When we got there I got an email from UCB asking if I was available to teach this year... so we spent some time thinking about that.  I didn't want to come back to Boulder, and it's uncomfortable being here, but the job is what I want to be doing... so here I am.

The job is going well. Teaching is always fun and it's a class I like, even if Boulder is a bit stressful.  You can check out the class here.  The website was a fun project for a week or so last year... I have since found a number of annoying "features" which unfortunately I can only blame myself for.  The same is true about all the lecture slides... so I'm slowly re-making them and updating the lab procedures as I go.  This means that the class is a lot more work than it should be for what they pay me.  I made more money and had better benefits as a grad student than I do as an 'Adjunct Professor'.

I've changed a few things about the class since last year.  I moved some portions of each lab into a pre-lab assignment.  We had struggled with students spending the first half of lab just reading the lab procedures... so hopefully this will help.  It seems like it has so far.

We also have weekly quizzes now which I think was the larger change.  There were two goals with this.  The first was to have each student work through some problems similar to what they would do in lab, but on their own.  If they have been relying on their lab partners the quiz grades will show that.

The second goal was to just have another check that students are learning from lab and not just following a series of steps with no understanding.  Writing questions to check this is a bit difficult but hopefully is worth it.  Or maybe not.  In any-case more practice is never a bad thing so I think the quizzes should stay.

In other news, both of us only work three days a week.  Much of my free time is taken up working on the Google Little Box Challenge.  The idea is to build an inverter  with a power density much larger than the current state of the art.  Inverters take DC power and translate it to AC power.  This is a useful thing if you have for example a DC renewable source like solar and want to dump energy to the existing AC grid.  The power density is a figure of merit for power converters, and is a measure of how much power can be processed per unit volume.  Google wants entrants to come up with an inverter with power densities higher than 50Watts per cubic inch.  That's about 80-90% better than existing technologies.  So it should be interesting.

I have a home and can cook again! Some nice stew.  Because fall is for stew.

Other than work... there has been lots of fun climbing.  Fall is a bit windy but the temps are so nice that a bit of wind is just fine.  I've never done the first flatiron, and neither had Athena, so we ran up that one of our first weeks back.

Athena on the north arete of the first flatiron.  Somewhere near the summit.

We thought that early morning in the middle of the week would save us from the usual hoards of people you find on the popular flatirons routes (we wanted to do the classic direct east face)... but apparently no one has to work on Wednesday morning in this town.  We hiked up the south edge for a bit instead of dealing with the lines, and found the approximate start to another route (Fandango).  In the end we didn't stay on any of the usual routes but that's one of the fun things about flatirons climbing: go wherever you want and you will be fine.

We made it up to Vedauwoo in Wyoming as well.  The rock is  bit painful, but it's beautiful landscape and the weather is nice.

Slab climbing ... Athena trying to convince herself that she really can stand up on that nothing-foot.

Tom doing a little try-hard climbing.  His terribly burnt back blends in to the rock well, and my poorly chosen shirt blends into the bush.

 I've only bouldered in Vedauwoo before, so it was fun to explore some of the other areas.  Athena did a bit of off-width, and we left a bail biner.  Then I found a sling and biner on the excellent Edwards' Crack.  So it all evened out nicely.

Back in boulder we ticked a few more flatiron climbs including the seal (East Face North Side) and the third flatiron (sort of the Standard East Face), neither of which Athena had done before.

If you look south-west from the top of the seal, you get an interesting view of the mountains.  Boulder is to the right, and golden way in the distance on the left.

 We took a short break to head down to Cathedral Spires as well where we climbed Cynical Pinnacle (Center Route).

The Cynical Pinnacle.  We overestimated the length of the drive, so slept in the car for a couple hours at the base till it warmed up a bit.

South Platte Selfie.  Athena is becoming less and less amused by these I think.

The route we did roughly follows the line of shadow to the false summit just to the right of the tallest point.

Top of the third flatiron.  From here you can usually see people on top of the second flatiron (just to the right of athena) and people on top of the first flatiron (above her head) at the same time. 

We simul climbed the third flatiron, and almost made it in one long pitch.  Unfortunately I ran out of slings just before the final stretch.  After some creative anchor building on my part Athena ended up leading the last 60 feet or so.

While at my anchor some bro from Golden soloed past us.  We chatted... he told me I didn't need ropes, and somehow I found my self defending my decision to rope up while climbing.  This felt distinctly odd.   I've never been judged for being safe before.  He kept talking about how climbing the flatirons was just like a walk for him now.  He seemed so uninterested in it, as though the experience bored him.  What an ass.  Stay home if it's boring for you, and let the rest of us rope up for safety in peace.

Belay bolt on the back of the third.

This past week I both Athena and I took off some time and headed down to Indian Creek, near Moab Utah.  Athena really likes crack climbing.  I still find it painful but it's growing on me.

It's me!

The extremely popular 'Incredible Hand Crack'.  It's more of a wide hand crack / almost fist crack now, as the hoards of climbers are rubbing the sandstone down and widening the crack.

A pillar/flake fell and formed a cave, behind which you can find... 'Cave Route'.  It's sort of boring and painful, but for some reason people get overly excited about it being in a cave.

Mormon Tea... or some plant of the Ephedra Genus. Called Indian Tea or Mormon Tea as natives and pioneers drank a tea made from the plant.  The plant contains ephedrine and phudoephedrine.  It is a stimulant among other things, and plants of this genus are still used as a supplement. 

Super awkward start. After a sweet jump to the ledge... I decided to scoot behind the flake instead of just mantling.  A terrible mistake.  

I'm just starting to lead routes at Indian Creek.  Crack climbing is not my thing.  I tried to make sure I lead at least one thing every day, which worked OK.  In general I just follow what Athena puts up, which means I do a lot of whining on thin hands.

We visited the Blue Gramma wall.  There's a lot of petroglyphs at this wall, some really well preserved.

Why petroglyphs and not pictographs?  Petroglyphs are tapped or carved into the rock using another small rock.  Petroglyphs are drawn on top of the rock with pigments or paints.

Lots of animals and shapes.  Here we have... deer chases triangle.  I guess.

It's sort of neat to think that some ancient person's hand was right here.  According to some studies, this person had healthy knees and a low risk of prostate cancer. 

One of my favorites, as this guy has the odd shapes above his head.

All the figures are drawn a bit differently than we draw stick figures today.  We were wondering if different cultures just had slightly different ways of representing people, or if there were specific parts of this figure that had been purposely stylized.

Some climbs have had their anchors removed, such as this one.  It starts right over some petroglyphs, and so isn't climbed any more to help preserve them.

The reds and blues are nice.

The elusive Utah Kangaroo makes an appearance.

Andy leads us up some terribly difficult climbs.

Andy's pup.  

Fall and spring are really nice in the desert.  The weather is wonderful and the colors are beautiful.  You just have to try a bit harder to get away from the crowds.

On the drive back we followed this trailer for a bit.  There were tons of little doors on the side... which we assumed each held a super fast pigeon.  This is a real thing; there is even a website.

We got back late Saturday night.  We have a new governor now, and seem to have become a solidly red state.  Albeit a pro-choice, legal weed smoking, gay marriage supporting red state.  So that should be interesting.