Spring in the Desert

What better to do on a three-day weekend than to put on a pack and get walkin'? Nothin'. Liz was heading to Utah anyway to raft Cataract Canyon so she just came down a little early and we, along with three of my friends, spent four days in Canyonlands. Possibly the best time I have had on a backpacking trip. It was fantastic! (Which means there are lots of pictures as well).

We spent our last night in Chesler Park. It is a gorgeous meadow surrounded by needles. Our first night on the trail we had a permit for backcountry camping. We had a great site up on some rocks with great views. Lots of shooting stars!
Above our camp the first night were some pot hole pools. These form in rock depressions after rain. They are great for finding water to drink and for a foot spa treatment while watching the sun set. Blissful.

Druid Arch, a few miles from Chesler Park.
A small section of the trail went through a slot canyon, but that was just the beginning. One slot canyon led to another, and another, and another... For me exploring the slot canyons was the highlight of the trip. So much fun!
The great group from top to bottom: Heber, Ben, Melinda, and Liz.
The trail itself was fun outside of the slots as well. It crawled up and down rocks leading from one great view to the next.
The confluence. This is where the Green and Colorado Rivers meet and rush into Cataract Canyon. Needless to say, seeing this was Liz's favorite part of the trip.

The slot canyon that the trail went through was chock full of creative cairns. This was one of my favorites.
We also saw a couple of Anasazi (or "ancestral puebloean") ruins and rock art.
Another highlight of the trip (for me at least). Was laying on my tummy and looking for tiny lifeforms in the potholes. This is actually a lot funner than some of you may think.
The desert was in full bloom so I had to add some boring flower pictures.

I forgot the name of this one, but it was all over the place and gorgeous.

Desert primrose.
Okay, so not a flower, but it warmed my nerdy heart to see so many native grasses. This is another shot of Chesler Park (and Indian Rice Grass).
Utah's state flower: Sego Lily.

The cacti were in bloom as well.
Yucca at our first camp.

Globe mallow at dusk.

Back in the Saddle

Spring has sprung and that means that the Shrub lab is hopping with work to be done. In just a week I have been up Spanish Fork Canyon, Santaquin Canyon, and out in the west desert. Lots of interesting stuff. In Spanish Fork Canyon we have a project going on that is a bit different than our others. There is a small purple flower called Phasilia, that only grows in two populations in Spanish Fork Canyon. You don't get much more endangered than that. We have been trying to re-establish it in other areas throughout the canyon and learn about its life history. We are just a few years into it, and these things take a while, but so far, so good.
This is one of them. They don't get their pretty purple flowers until later in the summer.
One of the things we were doing last week was collecting tissue samples (a few leaves) from some of the plants so we can run DNA tests and see how closely related they are between the two populations. This is important information to know because re-establishment will be trickier if they are all closely related. My boss, Susan Meyer, is in the middle of this photo. Bitsy, is to the left, and the other two are the genetics lab guys who do the DNA work. They came up so they could see the bigger picture of what they do in the lab.

This was a neat find. A certain type of wasp (I don't remember the name) has some pretty incredible saliva that reacts with leaf tissue in a very advantageous way. When the wasp chews on the leaf, the leaf reacts by growing a sac where the wasp then lays it's eggs. Inside this sac are hundreds of baby wasps. That is like us chewing on a tree and having it grow a cradle.

Unsettled

After a few days in the Evergreen State I find myself back in good ol' Provo and it is a strange mix of comfy and weird. Strange to be at the end of something that has occupied my thoughts and efforts for so long. People keep on asking me what the worst/best/favorite part of it all was, and what did I learn. I find it hard to recap and sum up the experience into a nice neat paragraph when I have yet to fully understand it. It was great, it was hard, it was unexpected, usually are satisfactory answers to everyone but myself. It sounds cliche to say that I see my life and the world a bit differently now, but it is true. And I think it is too early to understand to what extent my semester in Patagonia has affected me. Argentina tossed me way outside of my comfort zone and forced me to take up residency there until my comfort zone grew out to meet me. Now in Provo I feel a bit unsettled; but I think it is healthy to be ruffled now and again.

Patagonia with parents part 5

Pictures are finally here! They are more or less in order in five separate posts. Hope you enjoy!

We had a few hours to burn between flights in Buenos Aires so we walked to this famous, old, huge cemetery that is all crypts, not graves. It is like a city with walkways instead of roads, crypts instead of houses, and the only permanent living residents are the hundreds of feral cats that roam the tombs. Some crypts are really old, some less old, some are extremely fancy, some very plain. All belong to families. Evita is buried here as well as several presidents, rulers, and generals. The cemetery is right in the middle of the modern bustling city of Buenos Aires but it doesn't seem to fit with the rhythm outside it's walls. It was quite the unique and intriguing place.

Patagonia with parents part 4

Crossing the Strait of Magellan over onto Tierra del Fuego was like one of those childhood dreams that you never think would ever happen. I can remember learning about these places in geography and history and wondering what it was like in those far away and mysterious places. On the first crossing a penguin torpedoed through the water next to the ferry. The crossing back to the mainland was a bit rough as waves came over into the ferry and over top the bus as we all rocked back and forth with the rolls.As they say, "this isn't the end of the world, but you can see it from here." Ushuaia claims the title of being the most southern city in the world. It is on the Beagle Channel on the southern end of Tierra del Fuego.

Purple mushrooms in the Tierra del Fuego National Park. We took a nice day hike along the shore and inlets.

Patagonia with parents part 3

Our first view of the towers upon entering the park. The three towers of Torres del Paine were formed from a singe mountain that was ground down by glaciers during the last ice age. In case you were wondering. These peaks, Cuernos del Paine, are neat because the bottom white rocks are a type of granite and the top black rock is a type of sedimentary rock that is only found here. You can see how much faster the black sedimentary rock eroded away in comparison to the tougher white granite below. This group of peaks at the headwaters for all the rivers that flow into the surrounding lakes and it was neat to see the white and black boulders, rocks, and then pebbles shrink in size and become polished smooth as we followed the streams. There were no other types of rocks mixed in and the contrasting colors in the river beds were really pretty.
Along with drugs, don't do fire. (This is for all the Boy Scouts out there).
Camp after a rainy day.
Puerto Natales is on the Pacific ocean. Really good seafood. :)
Perito Moreno Glacier is huge! I have seen a fair bit of glaciers in my day, but this one was REALLY big! And it calved big chunks of ice with shot gun cracks about every 1/2 hour. The glacier comes out across the lake and runs into the land on the other side separating the lake into two. About every five years or so enough pressure builds up on the north end of the lake where the rivers enter that a huge calving event occurs creating a channel the again joins the two sides of the lake. This is predicted to occur any day now so the glacier is being watched very carefully so that it can be caught on film.

The clearer ice is older and more compact. The range of blues was surreal.

Patagonia with parents part 2

Our first peek at Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy from the plane to El Calafate.
The park at Fitz Roy had fun signs and each was illustrated.
Our first look at Cerro Torre (largest of the spires to the left) and Fitz Roy (the big tower) from the bus from El Calafate to El Chalten. You ride along through the brown flat pampas, turn a corner, and wham! you are face to face with what some consider to be the most impressive peaks in the world.
View of Cerro Torre from our first camp.

Even when the towers weren't in view this hike was incredibly beautiful and wonderfully calm as it was after tourist season.
Clouds seemed to appear out of nowhere around Fitz Roy and were often times the designs in the sky rivaled the sculptures of the land.
Dad and I got up early one morning to climb a nearby ridge for a good view of Fitz Roy in the morning. It was freezing! But we still stayed up there for a long time examining every part of these amazing peaks.