Moonbow

It was Friday night and everyone was just hanging out when several of the YLP'ers asked if we wanted to come with them to see the moonbow later on.  They said it only happened on the full moon in May and June, and encouraged us to come.  And so, not wanting to miss something cool and rare, most of us piled into cars at around 930 and headed off for the Valley.

As it turns out, a moonbow is exactly what it sounds like.  It's a rainbow formed by the moon's light shining through the mist from Yosemite Falls.  The reason it only happens in May and June is that the fall has to be full enough with snowmelt so there is enough mist to create the full moonbow.  We arrived at the falls about twenty minutes before the moonbow was supposed to start and were met by quite a crowd of people, some with tripods, others huddled together trying to stay relatively warm and dry.  Apparently the secret of the moonbow was not so secret after all.  But despite the crowd, there was enough room that I could grab an unused rock to set up my little tripod and wait for the big event.

Just a few minutes later, right on schedule, the moon slowly inched up above the far side of the Valley and, as more light shone on the mist at the base of falls, slowly the moonbow formed.  At first it was just a faint glimmer, but soon it grew into a beautiful silvery rainbow stretching across from one side of the river to the other.  It was beautiful, but the weird thing about it was that because it was so dark, the rainbow appeared to the naked eye to be mostly silvery with only faint colors.  But when I captured it on film, the colors of the rainbow were clear to see.

So please, follow this link and enjoy the rest of the moonbow and night photography of Yosemite Valley.

Thar be Snow! ...Alternately: Where be Trail?

Good lunch spot.

To preface this post, let me apologize: this should have gone out on Thursday or so.

Anyway, Wednesday I went with my mentor up to Tenaya Lake to see if we could hike in to a meadow.  Theoretically we were trying to reach the earliest melting meadow to see if we could come back soon to start work, but unfortunately we never made it.  From Tenaya Lake, the meadows is about five miles in, but from the very beginning things didn't go smoothly.  

First, Kaitlin (my mentor) had told me there was small stream crossing near the road, but I wasn't expecting the entire trail to be flooded.  After lots of looking around, we eventually decided to ford the swollen stream, now about waist deep.  Fortunately, after we crossed the first stream the trail seemed better.  There was water everywhere and we had to hop between stepping stones or cross logjams several more times, but overall, the first part of the trail seemed pretty good.  We stopped to have lunch on a pile of large boulders for a while where I took the picture above.  Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse when we reached the base of the mountain we had to climb to reach the meadow. 

It's always comforting when you can hear the water running under the snow.

As soon as we left flat ground, we encountered snow, and lots of it.  In addition to being hard to walk on, the snow also covered the trail and we lost the blazes.  So instead of switchbacking up the mountain, we climbed straight up it following a stream as best we could.  When we finally reached the top of the ridge, there was a temporary reprieve from the snow, but before long we were back in it again.  After four hours of trudging uphill through snow full of sun cups, which are the impressions you can see in the first picture, we still hadn't reached the meadow.  Pretty tired and very frustrated, we turned around with just enough time to get back down the snow-covered slopes and back to the car before sunset. 

And sure enough, just as the sun was setting we made it out to the parking lot.  Honestly, that was the most exhausted I've been in a long time.  The hike itself was only about eight miles (because we stopped short of the meadow), but the combination of the steep grade and the bumpy snow made for a grueling day.  And if it was difficult going with daypacks, the hike would be impossible with full gear.  Needless to say, we're waiting until next week (July 5) to start our meadow research.

Bear Jams

Pictures this: you're driving along when suddenly all traffic stops.  Cars from both directions screech to a halt as people jump out of their vehicles with cameras slung around their necks.  They are clearly excited, talking rapidly in many different languages while running off into the forest chasing something.  Just off to the side of the road you see kids with their digital cameras held at arms length in front of their faces, squinting as they try to see the screens in the bright sunlight.  Meanwhile, one athletic middle-aged woman with a small telescope mounted to her camera jumps out of a nearby SUV and darts across the street in hot pursuit.  If this sounds familiar, then you too have been caught in a bear jam.

"No ma'am, that's not a teddy bear and no, your child cannot pose next to it."

Yes they're big and furry and kind of cute, but seriously, chasing after bears solely for a better picture?  Really?  Just 'cause it looks like a teddy bear, doesn't mean it won't maul your face off.  I understand that most people don't see much wildlife, but there is something about bears that just makes people absolutely insane.  I am not making this up either: I really did see people running off into the forest towards a bear to get a better look.  Don't get me wrong, I was curious too, so I pulled off the road at the next turnout and walked back to the jam.  But even after I got there, I stayed on the road and at least a couple hundred feet from the bear.  That's why my picture is so blurry.  Maybe one day I'll buy a bigger lens, but until that point, in the choice between a blurry picture and pissing off a bear, I'll choose a bad picture every time.

Things I Didn't Know About CPR Before Thursday

1. Most lives are saved with the Heimlich Maneuver.

2. Only about 1 in 100 recipients of CPR survive (they succumb to their injuries).

3. While doing CPR, you will probably break all of their ribs, but "Ribs heal, dead doesn't."

4. If you're feeling optimistic, hum "Staying Alive" to keep up the rhythm for CPR, otherwise, "Another One Bites the Dust" works well too. 

And that was my Thursday.  We left Wawona at 7:30 thinking we'd make it to the medical center in the Valley with lots of time (it's about a 45 minute drive), but due to construction, we didn't pull into the parking lot until just about nine - right when the class was scheduled to start.  The rest of the day wasn't much better, although it was punctured by moments of hilarity, namely the first aid scenario reenactments.  To pass first aid, we each had to properly respond to an imaginary accident scenario and stabilize the victims until the ambulances arrived.  We split into two groups, and my group were the victims first.  For our accident, we pretended we were in a VW bus, complete with all the hippie trimmings.  We broke a guardrail, rolled down a hill and were thrown clear as the bus rolled.  I pretended to be in shock and impaled by a broken hooka pipe... And that was the high point of my day.

Here I am in shock after our imaginary VW bus rolled down the hill... apparently it

was pretty funny.

Friday was better.  All the REU and YLP (another internship program through UC Merced) students met up in the morning for a joint leadership training session, after which we split and went our separate ways.  Us REU kids spent the rest of the morning learning about water and carbon dynamics in high elevation meadows.  Not really the sexiest of topics, until you realize that studying them means backpacking in the mountains.  

After the lecture finished up and we had lunch, I met with my mentors Kaitlin Lubetkin and Dr. Lara Kueppers to talk about my project.  The overarching subject is conifer encroachment, or pine trees growing in subalpine meadows.  Because this is such a large area, my plan was to focus on determining if soil moisture affects how trees grow in the meadows.  Unfortunately, the soil moisture tool needs custom sized plastic tubes to be embedded in the ground first, and the company Kaitlin thought she could order them from went out of business.  That, in addition to the absurdly late snowmelt (see pictures from Mt. Hoffman) this year has put a kink in the research plans.  Fortunately Dr. Kueppers tells me there is a backup plan.  I'm meeting with Kaitlin on Monday to try it out.

The real gem of my week, however, was the hike on Saturday.  Even though getting everyone moving in the same direction was like herding cats, at around 5:30 seven of us headed out from Wawona on foot up the trail to Chilnualna Falls (say that ten times fast!).  The hike was beautiful but pretty intense, rising over 2000 feet in the 4.5 miles to the falls.  By the time we finally reached the top of the falls and found a campsite, the sun had just set over the hills.  It was at this point that we learned our camping lesson for the day: know how to set up your tent before you leave because if you don't, you will have to figure it out in the dark.

Lower Chilnualna Falls.

Now let me be clear, I checked out a tent that I knew how to set up, but not everyone else knew how to set up their tents.  So instead of setting up our tents and getting straight to dinner, there was a good hour of flailing around trying to figure out how to set up a couple of tents I'd never seen before.  Note for the future: the poles go inside of black diamond tents, unlike every other tent I've used.  It would have been easier to help them out if I'd known that ahead of time.  But regardless, eventually we set everything up, built a small campfire, cooked dinner and went to sleep.

The tent in front is an REI Half-Dome and yes, I do know how to set it up, thank you very much.

The real treat of the hike though, beyond just getting out and camping for fun, was the view of the falls.  There is nothing quite like seeing a river swollen with snowmelt hurl itself off the edge of a granite cliff and crash onto the rocks below.  While definitely not as large as one of the major falls in the Valley, Chilnualna is still a beautiful sight.  

A mist rainbow over the upper part of Chilnualna Falls.

Yosemite Valley...

...Might just be the most beautiful place ever.

There is really no way to describe the view as you first leave the tunnel and are transported from the real world to a magical place that looks more like it belongs in the movie The Land Before Time than in California.   Just before you exit the tunnel, there is a sign telling you to slow down and look for pedestrians.  I guess someone figured that people seeing the Valley for the first time would stop wherever they were and their mouths would drop open.  It's probably true.

Yosemite Valley from the first turnout coming up from Wawona.

After the initial drive down into the Valley, we stopped in several spots for basic botany lessons in the various Valley areas.  We learned about the trees in the yellow pine--ceder forest areas as well as in the riparian areas.  It's weird to think that not even two hundred years ago there were no trees in the Valley at all.  The Native Americans who lived in the valley used to set periodic fires in addition to the lightening-started fires throughout the valley to keep it a grassland (for hunting).  In the hundred+ years since, fires have been very limited, and as a result, now the valley floor is covered with Ponderosa Pine, Incense Cedar and other mountain trees.

After our valley floor lesson, we all piled back into the cars and headed up the other side of the valley, starting out climb towards Tioga Pass.  As we started ascending, the temperature started to drop from a very comfortable 75-80 in the valley to 50-60 as we approached the entrance to May Lake Road at around 8700 feet of elevation.  Initially, we had planned to take the trail all the way up and over a ridge to May Lake, but when we arrived we found feet of snow still on the ground and after a while the trail became impassible.  Still, the views were beautiful and although the air was pretty thin, it was fresh and cool.  All in all, it was a great first trip to the valley.

Note: I want to apologize, this post was supposed to go out on Thursday, but I forgot.  Anyway, more posts to follow.  And Happy Father's Day!

The First Real Post!

It's the end of day two, which means that I have now been in Yosemite for over 24 hours, and I am already loving it.  Yesterday wasn't a real day, mostly spent arriving and getting situated, but today was packed full.  In the morning we went on a short walk with a ranger through a village that has been assembled from the various log cabins from all over the park.  According to the ranger, to make it easier to fix up and protect the cabins, they were moved from their various locations to a little corner of Wawona, the town where I'm staying.  While we were visiting the various cabins, the ranger told us all about the various settlers that came to Yosemite and how it went from discovery to National Park.

Speaking of Wawona though, I should probably talk a little bit about where we are living and how the program works.  So when I applied, I pictured some grand program with deep roots and a well established way of doing things, but I forgot that UC Merced is only six years old.  The Yosemite REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) Program is now in its third year, is run by a UC Merced professor, and accepts only eight students each year.  Each selected student has a specific research project and a faculty mentor.  My project is through the lab of Dr. Lara Kuepper (who I will meet on Friday), and is about conifer encroachment in subalpine meadows.  Essentially, there is a high altitude grassland ecosystem that is starting to have woody trees growing, and I will be trying to figure out why.  This is fairly new project, so I don't expect any results this year, but I will be collecting data throughout the summer in the hopes of eventually finding an explanation for the causes of this tree growth.

As for housing, I am staying with the other four guys and a few volunteer park rangers in a very nice house being leased to UC Merced in the town of Wawona, located within the park boundaries.  Wawona is unique in that it has some private and some federally owned property located within the park boundary.  At some point in the past, Yosemite was briefly opened to private development, but then about thirty years ago, the Park Service decided the experiment was a bad idea and purchased many of the houses back.  Today Wawona is about half and half, and of the public half, a few of those houses are leased to institutions like UC Merced. 

 The Sierra Nevada Research Institute, where we gather for meetings and also where several friendly rangers are stationed.

Anyway, back to today, after learning about all the different settlers who discovered Yosemite Valley and a short lunch break, we went into a geology talk.  One of the project professors gave a presentation that covered everything from the formation of the earth to the specific geological processes that formed the Sierra Nevada mountains and Yosemite National Park.  For example, we learned that most of California was formed by material that was scraped off of the Pacific Plate piling up along the coast, and St. Louis Missouri is due for another massive earthquake.

Finally, because it was such a beautiful day, after the talk was done, myself and four other REU students decided to go for a walk/hike around a nearby meadow, across the road from the Wawona Hotel.  It was beautiful but kind of disappointing.  We were told to look out for both bears and rattlesnakes, but we saw neither.  But regardless, I couldn't help marvel at the enormous Ponderosa Pine and Douglas Fir trees that dotted the edges of the meadow.  

For lack of a better name, I'm calling this Wawona Meadow, and we definitely didn't see any bears or any rattlesnakes.  Very disappointing!

Whether or not this is going to be a typical day, I don't know yet, but I do know that I am very excited for tomorrow.  Originally we were planning on going to Yosemite Valley today, but plans changed, and instead we are going tomorrow.  We are all waking up early and I think we will be hiking both in the Valley and up at Tioga Pass.  There will most certainly be more pictures to come.  

Thanks for reading, and until next time, goodnight.

The Wasserman Times, Up and Running!

Friends and Family,

After an afternoon spent playing with Pages and an image of the New York Time frontpage, I am happy to announce the official start of The Wasserman Times, my very first blog!

"Why start a blog now?" You might be asking yourself.

Well, that's a great question.  As some of you may already know, next week I will be starting an internship with UC Merced in Yosemite National Park.  In addition to buying new batteries for my digital camera, I thought writing about my trip would be a great way to not only share my experiences with friends and family, but also to help preserve the memories.  Three years ago I spent the summer in Israel with a BBYO program.  While I was there, I took hundreds of pictures, but looking back through them again I realize that I don't remember where they were all taken.  I'm hoping this blog will help jumpstart my memory when I look back on this coming summer in the future.

Thank you for reading and there will be more to come soon.