banff and jasper

two weeks ago nate, jeannie, and i headed up to canada for a little 4 day excursion to banff and jasper national parks. it's really nice having flexibility in our work schedules.. i mean we don't really have a schedule. generally we're here monday to friday but everybody's research projects vary and with many people working out in the field to collect data, their schedule is pretty abnormal. it's really nice because through the REU program, we get all of our meals provided, even weekend ones. for this trip, we put in a food request form and got a whole cooler of goodies and leftovers to take with us. we started out by driving up to the southern part of jasper np where the columbia icefields are. it took about 350 miles to get there. unfortunately the weather wasn't so hot up there.. pretty rainy and chilly, but it couldve been worse. we camped that night near the icefields and had a nice big campfire to warm ourselves up. also unfortunately for us, the canadian exchange rate pretty much stinks now.. our dollars are almost equal in value. the next morning we hiked to wilcox pass, which was really cool because it was all alpine environment...so lots of low shrubs and cool lichens and little alpine bogs. we also ran into a whole bunch of bighorn sheep chilling out on the cliffs. that afternoon we drove back down into banff np, trying to skirt the rain, and hiked out to a pretty waterfall. the lakes up there are totally awesome because they're really bright blue right now.. almost fake looking. it's because of all this 'glacial flour' (fine minerals) getting washed into the lakes with glacial runoff due to warming. i was pretty excited because on the hike back, i spotted a female moose taking a drink out of the pond and i had realllly wanted to see a moose:) that night we camped in a beautiful little campground near lake louise and stopped to buy some marshmallows so we could toast them over the fire. the weather predictions continued to say 'sunny' and 70, even though it was more like 50 and rainy. the next day we hiked out to some points overlooking lake louise and then out to the plain of six glaciers, the area whose runoff feeds lake louise. we were surprised to find an old teahouse built by swiss mountaineers at the turn of the 20th century at the end of the trail where i splurged on a $2.50 but very hot cup of tea. that evening we explored the city of banff (which unfortunately was even more touristy than i had thought) and then camped outside the city. on our way back to our campsite, we ran into a whole herd of elk, so that was pretty cool. the next morning we drove back via yoho national park (since we had come up to banff via kootenay national park) and that way we could say we visited all 4 canadian rocky parks. yoho was neat because it's where they found this super important area of well-preserved fossils that we talked about endlessly in one of my classes back at cornell. after a little trouble at the border, we made it back home and stopped to see pirates of the caribbean 2 (which i would not recommend...) and checked out a cowboy store where i refrained from buying some cowboy boots hehe. this past weekend, we headed down to missoula to pick up our friend robert and went tubing on the blackfoot river just northeast of missoula. it was over a hundred degrees and the good ole inner tubes cost just 4 bucks to rent so it was a wonderful and cheap way to relax... and we went through some pretty sweet rapids. basically everybody and their brother were out on the river.. it was like one big party.
it's hard to believe that we now only have 2 weekends left and our projects are wrapping up. the kids taking classes will be leaving in a week and a half so it'll get pretty lonely here the last week with just us 10 REU"ers left. my project is going really well.. since it involves mostly computer modeling and data analysis (which i dont mind that much because it's pretty cool the stuff that i've been able to do) i've also been going out in the field helping other people with their sampling so i can enjoy the warm weather and get outside. i've mostly been helping jeannie sampling vegetation in a little wetland/bay south on the lake, so that's been fun because it involves me wading through neck deep in grass and muck to sample stuff.
i cant believe it's almost august!!! and julie's gonna be 17 soon!!

to missoula and beyond

i realize, much to your dismay, that i haven't updated my adventures in a while. i haven't been on any really exciting backpacking trips lately because (gasp!) i've been out on the lake working on my project and working on writing programs in MATLAB (a computer programming language) to analyze wind data on the lake. in short, we're deploying wave gauges in various spots around the lake which will collect raw data on water pressure and velocity changes. using this information, we can make graphs of wave amplitude change over time, direction of wave propogation, and how much wave energy is directed towards certain parts of shore. i've been working for the last week on actually putting my MATLAB skills to real use and writing a program to take wind speed and wind direction data and calculate how much wave energy that would result in for 6 different wind stations around the lake. this guy living in the area works for UC santa barbara doing analysis of wave data and whatnot and used to deploy wave gauges for them out in the pacific, so he's been helping me figure everything out and debug my program. after lots and lots of errors and frustration, i got some rough, but very pretty to me graphs of wave power on the lake using my program.
here's proof i really have been doing work here...

for the weekend before july 4, we headed down to missoula to drop off robert and help him move into his dorm at the UM campus because he has to work on his project at a lab down there for a bit. the town is beautiful and green and very bike friendly. the campus has a mountain right behind it where there's a big white 'm' that you can hike up to and see the whole valley from. we hung out on campus for the weekend, exploring the town, playing ultimate frisbee and eating lots of huckleberry pie and huckleberry ice cream and trying out big sky brewery's brews, including the famous moose drool brown ale. while we were at the brewery, i saw a sign for a bluegrass festival down in hamilton, MT (about an hour below missoula) that i thought would be fun to go to. never in my wildest dreams did i think that i could convince 15 people from the bio station to come down with me to the festival for this weekend! it was quite a fun time, with lots of good bands and we got to camp there at the fairgrounds. of course, i had my cowboy hat on all weekend. yesterday, i went out to a bay on the southern part of the lake and helped jeannie survey vegetation for her project and check out this invasive plant that i'm also studying. the weather changed so quick and we ended up having to rush back to the state park where we had our truck and trailer parked to avoid the rain and hail just in the nick of time. ps. i need to learn to drive stickshift for real when i get home. oh, and we also drove through the national bison range last weekend and checked out the beautiful views of the mission mountains, glacial lake missoula and of course the pronghorns and bison. tomorrow, i'm headed off to banff national parc in canada until saturday with nate and jeannie just to hike and sightsee because i've been dying to go there forever. my mentor's gone for the rest of the week so my schedule's pretty flexible as long as i get the work done that i need to so i'm pretty psyched to head out tomorrow! and of course there will be some beauteous pictures of that when i get back.. :)