Forest Service fire lookout towers

I'm not quite sure I understand the status of the Forest Service fire lookout towers nowadays.

Originally, these towers were built to be an early warning system, to try to learn about wilderness fires as early as possible. Here's a nice page: Fire Lookouts. The fire lookout towers had clever techniques for helping the rangers determine what they were seeing:

Osborne first invented a "firefinder" in Oregon in 1911 using a rotating steel disc with attached sighting mechanisms. This instrument allowed lookouts to accurately pinpoint the geographic location of forest fires by sighting distant smoke through the device. Further modifications and technological developments were made by Osborne to the firefinder over the next 30 years. The Osborne Firefinder was widely used by Forest Service lookouts throughout the 20th century, and production of the devices by various companies continues even today.

But my understanding is that much of the wilderness fire observation duties is now handled by satellite photography, meaning that many of these lookouts are no longer used. In fact, I understand it is now routine to rent a fire lookout as a vacation cabin.

But my son, who recently returned from a glorious camping trip at French Meadows Reservoir near Lake Tahoe, took a day trip up to Duncan Peak Fire Lookout Tower, which is most certainly not closed.

In fact, while Dan and his friends were getting a tour from the ranger, who graciously took the time to show them the (still-in-use!) Osborne Firefinder in the tower, as well as the carefully labelled sight lines from every one of the windows in the 360-degree view, the ranger was actually tracking two separate fires.

These are not Dan's pictures, but they show the lookout very nicely: Duncan Peak Fire Lookout Station

So, what's the actual story? Are they phasing out these lookout towers? Or is this still How It's Done?

Young Men and Fire: a very short review

Sometimes, while you are still reading a book, you know very clearly that it is the sort of book that will be with you a long time, for years perhaps.

Norman Maclean's Young Men and Fire is that sort of book. You don't just read this book: you dream it; you sweat it; you run from it; you run to it; you eat, drink, and breathe it.

Foremost, Young Men and Fire is the story of the Mann Gulch fire of 1949 in the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness on the Missouri River in western Montana, and of the great tragedy that occurred then: a crew of 15 United States Forest Service "Smokejumpers" parachuted into Mann Gulch to meet the Forest Ranger who had discovered the file, and to help him fight it; barely two hours later, all but 3 of these 16 men were dead or dying.

So Young Men and Fire is a story of death, and of tragedy; it is a book about young men.

But it is also a story of discovery: 3 men survived, and the information they shared with the world changed the practice of wilderness firefighting overnight. Secondly, then, Young Men and Fire is a history of wilderness firefighting in the last hundred years. It contains detailed information about the development of the United States Forest Service and its firefighting practices, about how the Smokejumpers came to be, about the types of fires that they fight and the ways that they fight them and the words they use to talk about them and tell us about them.

So Young Men and Fire is also a thoroughly researched and carefully presented history of wilderness firefighting; it is a book about fire.

Of course, Young Men and Fire is inspired by a most riveting and gut-wrenching mystery: how did those three men survive? What did they do right, or what did the others do wrong? And what, exactly, do we know about what happened in the critical 10 minute period during which the world turned to flame, and three men survived and thirteen died?

The most critical, and complex, of these questions involves the "escape fire" that foreman Dodge set at a critical moment, which enabled him to survive the inferno, using fire to save himself from fire. Why did the foreman survive, how did his technique work, and why, oh why, did all the members of his team pass him by, as he begged and pleaded with them to stay with him for safety?

So Young Men and Fire, of course, is a book about young men and fire.

But, finally, on some deeper level, Young Men and Fire is a meditation about truth, and fact, and history; it is about how we decide what it is that we know, and why we believe that we know it; it is about that peculiarly human need to learn, to study, to comprehend, and finally to be able to communicate that understanding to others.

It is truly a multi-level book.

It's also a book with a very odd history.

Maclean was actually near the Mann Gulch fire in 1949 just after it occurred:

I had just arrived from the East to spend several weeks in my cabin at Seeley Lake, Montana. The postmistress in the small town at the lower end of the lake told me about the fire and how thirteen Forest Service Smokejumpers had been burned to death on the fifth of August trying to get to the top of a ridge ahead of a blowup in tall, dead grass.

But then, for some reason, Maclean put the topic aside, for twenty five years. It wasn't until after he retired, and until after the publication of his famous A River Runs Through It and Other Stories that he returned to the Mann Gulch fire and began investigating it in earnest.

At that point, Maclean was 74 years old.

He continued to study the fire, contact people, conduct interviews, and visit the area, for twelve more years, until his health finally gave out when he was 86 years old, and he could work on the book no more.

Maclean died in 1990, but the story does not end there. His family found the manuscript among his effects and gave it to the University of Chicago Press, who assigned an (uncredited?) editor who performed some additional work on the book and saw it through to publication. It was published in 1992, and won the National Book Critics Circle award for General Nonfiction, beating out such giants as Edward Wilson's The Diversity of Life.

What sort of story consumes a man for 40 years, so completely that he takes the book to his grave rather than being able to finish it?

What sort of story drives a man in his late 70's to travel to a remote wilderness gulch and crawl on his hands and knees "on a hill where you need at least one hand to hang on to the grass," searching for evidence 30 years after the fact?

For one thing, it is the task of the historian to bring understanding to bewilderment, to turn a catastrophe into a story:

Although young men died like squirrels in Mann Gulch, the Mann Gulch fire should not end there, smoke drifting away and leaving terror without consolation of explanation, and controversy without lasting settlement. Probably most catastrophes end this way without an ending, the dead not even knowing how they died but "still alertly erect in fear and wonder," those who loved them forever questioning "this unnecessary death," and the rest of us tiring of this inconsolable catastrophe and turning to the next one. This is a catastrophe that we hope will not end where it began; it might go on and become a story. It will not have to be made up -- that is all-important to us -- but we do have to know in what odd places to look for missing parts of a story about a wildfire and of course have to know a story and a wildfire when we see one. So this story is a test of its own belief -- that in this cockeyed world there are shapes and designs, if only we have some curiosity, training, and compassion and take care not to lie or be sentimental.

And, by practicing this art of the historian, Maclean hoped that, not only could he write some good history, but perhaps he could help teach others how to become historians:

It is hard to know what to do with all the detail that rises out of a fire. It rises out of a fire as thick as smoke and threatens to blot out everything -- some of it is true but doesn't make any difference, some is just plain wrong, and some doesn't even exist, except in your mind, as you slowly discover long afterwards. Some of it, though, is true -- and makes all the difference. The first half of the art of firefighting is learning to recognize a real piece of fire when you see one and not letting your supervisors talk you out of it. Some fires are more this way than others and are good practice for real life.

This question of story versus history obviously was of great concern to Maclean, a professor of English literature and an author of great fiction who was now working to bring his art to the world of non-fiction:

If a storyteller thinks enough of storytelling to regard it as a calling, unlike a historian he cannot turn from the sufferings of his characters. A storyteller, unlike a historian, must follow compassion wherever it leads him. He must be able to accompany his characters, even into smoke and fire, and bear witness to what they thought and felt even when they themselves no longer knew. This story of the Mann Gulch fire will not end until it feels able to walk the final distances to the crosses with those who for the time being are blotted out by smoke. they were young and did not leave much behind them and need someone to remember them.

If we have discussed the role of the storyteller, and that of the historian, what of the role of the scientist? During his researches, Maclean met scientists, and learned about scientists no longer among us, and meditated on the different sort of understanding that a scientist can bring. Telling the story of Harry Gisborne, one of the first true scientists of wildfire, who himself died in Mann Gulch while researching the Mann Gulch fire, Maclean concludes that:

This is the death of a scientist, a scientist who did much to establish a science. On the day of his death he had the pleasure of discovering that his theory about the Mann Gulch blowup was wrong.

...

For a scientist, this is a good way to live and die, maybe the ideal way for any of us -- excitedly finding we were wrong and excitedly waiting for tomorrow to come so we can start over.

What is this "excitement"? What is it that we who come later are doing? Well, we are thinking, and we are looking for truth, and if we cannot do that, is there anything worth doing?

I was becoming more and more afraid I could not think when I needed to. It frightened me that this was probably my last trip into Mann Gulch and my last chance to find out the truth of its tragedy. I kept myself going by reminding myself that the only poem I had a chance of writing about the Mann Gulch fire was the truth about it.

There is a need for truth, in Maclean's view, because memory is an undependable and unreliable creature:

we don't remember as exactly the desparate moments when our lives are in the balance as we remember the moments after, when the balance has tipped in our favor and we know we are safe and have turned to helping others.

Ever been in a car crash? You'll know immediately exactly what Maclean means.

Memory, says Maclean,

has the consistency more of a giant emotional cloud that closes things together with mist, either obliterating the rest of objective reality or moving the remaining details of reality around until, like furniture, they fit into the room of our nightmare in which only a few pieces appear where they are in reality.

Struggling with his own memories of his youth in Montana, and of his own days working on fire crews with the Forest Service when he was young, Maclean tries to find more exact and more certain methods of learning the truth.

Part of Maclean's frustration is that, even with all our modern science, with our tools and methods, we still are faced with limits to our knowledge:

If mathematics can be used to predict the intensity and rate of spread of wildfires of the future (either hypothetical fires or fires actually burning but whose outcome is not yet known), why can't the direction of the analysis be reversed in order to reconstruct the characteristics of important fires of the past? Or why can't the direction be reversed from prophecy to history? The one great tragedy suffered by the Smokejumpers was fading out of memory before its outline had been cleared of the smoke of controversy, before the missing parts, perhaps some self-cultivated, had been recovered, before its deferred trial had taken place in public court, and before its suffering had finally been placed within the reach of the public that would like to remember and honor it with sympathetic understanding.

Maclean consults with Forest Service mathematicians, who help him import the basic parameters of the fire into sophisticated computer models, and show him graphs and charts and lines which intersect as the line of forest fighters races up the hill, only to intersect with the leading edge of the fire.

I found this part of the book easier to understand when I came across the wonderful Mann Gulch Fire Virtual Field Trip created by Rod Benson, science teacher at Helena High. Great work, Rod!

The methods of the scientists are precise, and when Maclean and the Forest Service team apply them to the Mann Gulch fire, the results predict very accurately the behavior of the Mann Gulch fire. By using these tools, Maclean acquires a much more detailed understanding of how the tragedy occurred, why the men were (mostly) unable to escape, and what the blowup did to trap them in the canyon.

Telling this (reconstructed) story of the final 15 minutes of the Smokejumper team in the Mann Gulch fire occupies a large section of the book, a 100 page fever dream that will pass before you in rapt hours, during which time you can scarcely take a breath.

But, in the end, Maclean finds himself unable to comprehend the tragedy with science, and returns to a tool that he's more familiar with: poetry. Drawing parallels with Thomas Hardy's The Convergence of the Twain, Maclean finds the limits of analytics:

We are beyond where arithmetic can explain what was happening in the piece of nature that had been the head of Mann Gulch. Converging geometries had created something invisible like suction to carry off a natural explanation of the attraction of geometries to each other. In between these geometries for something like four minutes it was a painfully moving line with pieces of it dropping out until there came an end to biology. Then it was pure geometry, and later still the solid geometry of concrete crosses.

It's hard to read the story of the Smokejumpers, that "painfully moving line" which met with an "end to biology", with dry eyes.

Perhaps this book just hit me at the right time, or perhaps I have some sort of inner kinship with Maclean. Sadly, his career at the University of Chicago was over a decade before I arrived there; I think I should surely have enjoyed meeting him and learning from him.

In the end, one thing I can say for sure: you won't regret the time you spend in the mountains of western Montana with Maclean and the brave men of the United States Forest Service while reading Young Men and Fire.

The surveillance state

I feel like I need to have something to say about Edward Snowden.

But I'm not sure I know how I feel.

On the one hand, I agree with those who have been frustrated that so much of the coverage is about Snowden himself, rather than about the issues he raised. For example, John Naughton, writing in the Guardian: Edward Snowden's not the story. The fate of the internet is

we have been fed a constant stream of journalistic pap – speculation about Snowden's travel plans, asylum requests, state of mind, physical appearance, etc. The "human interest" angle has trumped the real story

And because of that "journalistic pap" (and because my mind was in the mountains for two weeks), I haven't been paying enough attention to the overall story.

So, I turn to some of those who have been paying attention, and whose ideas are worth listening to.

First, Bruce Sterling: The Ecuadorian Library or, The Blast Shack After Three Years. Sterling, as usual, lights it up, but along with the entertainment he has some pretty important points to make.

For one thing, Sterling professes himself somewhat surprised and disappointed that, of all the potential allies that Snowden might have found, he ended up having to rely on the rather extreme Julian Assange:

It’s incredible to me that, among the eight zillion civil society groups on the planet that hate and fear spooks and police spies, not one of them could offer Snowden one shred of practical help, except for Wikileaks. This valiant service came from Julian Assange, a dude who can’t even pack his own suitcase without having a fit.

...

did they have the least idea what was actually going on with the hardware of their beloved Internet? Not a clue. They’ve been living in a pitiful dream world where their imaginary rule of law applies to an electronic frontier — a frontier being, by definition, a place that never had any laws.

But more importantly, says Sterling, it's not clear that "we", as human beings, actually know how we feel about this:

Computers were invented as crypto-ware and spy-ware and control-ware. That’s what Alan Turing was all about. That’s where computing came from, that’s the scene’s original sin, and also its poisoned apple.

...

Digital, globalized societies — where capital and information moves, and where labor and human flesh doesn’t move — they behave like this. That is what we are witnessing and experiencing. It’s weird because we are weird. We’re half actual and half digital now. We’re like the squirming brood of a tiger mated to a shark.

As Sterling observes, we actually like to be watched.

We post our pictures on Flickr.

We post our thoughts on Twitter.

We post our relationship status on Facebook.

On our own, we built these institutions, and willingly submitted ourselves to them:

And, yeah, by the way, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Google et al, they are all the blood brothers of Huawei in China — because they are intelligence assets posing as commercial operations. They are surveillance marketers. They give you free stuff in order to spy on you and pass that info along the value chain. Personal computers can have users, but social media has livestock.

For me, part of the problem is that there are no heroes here. Snowden is rather a worm; the NSA are aloof, secretive, and omnipotent; our political leaders are whiny and defensive; and our civil leaders are fawning and complicit. No matter which direction you look, the first thing you want to do is wash your hands.

Others seem to feel the same way.

Danah Boyd proposes that Snowden represents the modern version of a leader in civil disobedience: Whistleblowing Is the New Civil Disobedience: Why Edward Snowden Matters

he’s creating a template for how to share information. He’s clearly learned from previous whistleblowers and is using many of their tactics. But he’s also forged his own path which has had its own follies. Regardless of whether he succeeds or fails in getting asylum somewhere, he’s inspired others to think about how they can serve as a check to power.

Boyd's take is fine, as far as it goes, but I think she's overstating the case to put Edward Snowden on the level of those for whom the term "civil disobedience" was coined.

Mike Masnick has been watching the political response, and is terribly disappointed: Confessed Liar To Congress, James Clapper, Gets To Set Up The 'Independent' Review Over NSA Surveillance

that was Friday. Today is Monday. And, on Monday we learn that "outside" and "independent" actually means setup by Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper -- the same guy who has already admitted to lying to Congress about the program, and has received no punishment for doing so. This is independent? From this we're supposed to expect real oversight?!?

Indeed, it does seem like the first thoughts of our elected leaders are: consolidate, and cover up. What a sad, sad shame.

Meanwhile, both Jeff Jarvis and Bruce Schneier are taking corporate leaders to task, arguing (as you have to with businessmen) to their wallets, while simultaneously begging and pleading for these champions of industry to step into the gap and provide the needed leadership. First, Jarvis: We need Big Tech to protect us from Big Brother

At the Guardian Activate conference in London last month, I asked Vint Cerf, an architect of the net and evangelist for Google, about encrypting our communication as a defense against NSA spying. He suggested that communication should be encrypted into and out of internet companies' servers (thwarting, or so we'd hope, the eavesdropping on the net's every bit over telcos' fibre) – but should be decrypted inside the companies' servers so they could bring us added value based on the content: a boarding pass on our phone, a reminder from our calendar, an alert about a story we're following (not to mention a targeted ad).

Oh. My. God. Vint Cerf, what have you become?

And Schneier: The NSA Is Commandeering the Internet

This is why you have to fight. When it becomes public that the NSA has been hoovering up all of your users' communications and personal files, what's going to save you in the eyes of those users is whether or not you fought. Fighting will cost you money in the short term, but capitulating will cost you more in the long term.

Awkwardly, all these conversations with the titans of technology always seem to turn to a technical solution, justified by an appeal to greed, as with the Vint Cert conversation described by Jarvis above.

As I said, it is disappointing in all directions.

But that is not to say that there are no bright lights at all.

For instance, there is the ever-wonderful Brewster Kahle, who not only took on The Man, he won: What It's Like To Get A National Security Letter

Hundreds of thousands of national-security letters have been sent. But only the plaintiffs in the three successful challenges so far—Kahle; Nicholas Merrill, of Calyx Internet Access; and the Connecticut librarians George Christian, Barbara Bailey, Peter Chase, and Janet Nocek—are known to have had them rescinded.

And there are others who are willing to stand up and proclaim that the Emperor wears no clothes; as Poul Henning-Kamp persuasively argues, the problems here are not algorithmic, but social: More Encryption Is Not the Solution

The only surefire way to gain back our privacy is also the least likely: the citizens of all nation- states must empower politicians who will defund and dismantle the espionage machinery and instead rely on international cooperation to expose and prevent terrorist activity.

It is important to recognize that there will be no one-size-fits-all solution. Different nation- states have vastly different attitudes to privacy: in Denmark, tax forms are secret; in Norway they are public; and it would be hard to find two nation-states separated by less time and space than Denmark and Norway.

There will also always be a role for encryption, for human-rights activists, diplomats, spies, and other "professionals." But for Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the solution can only come from politics that respect a basic human right to privacy—an encryption arms race will not work.

And, of course, there is Snowden himself, who, as Roger Cohen points out, has certainly achieved something: The Service of Snowden

a long-overdue debate about what the U.S. government does and does not do in the name of post-9/11 security — the standards applied in the F.I.S.A. court, the safeguards and oversight surrounding it and the Prism program, the protection of civil liberties against the devouring appetites of intelligence agencies armed with new data-crunching technology — would not have occurred, at least not now.

All this was needed because, since it was attacked in an unimaginable way, the United States has gone through a Great Disorientation. Institutions at the core of the checks and balances that frame American democracy and civil liberties failed. Congress gave a blank check to the president to wage war wherever and whenever he pleased. The press scarcely questioned the march to a war in Iraq begun under false pretenses. Guantánamo made a mockery of due process. The United States, in Obama’s own words, compromised its "basic values" as the president gained "unbound powers."

So perhaps there is hope. But when it comes to public policy, and foreign affairs, and corporate governance, I struggle. But, as Tip O'Neill said, "all politics is local". So, what does this mean to me, and to computer scientists like me?

In this, I found Emin Gun Sirer's story quite compelling: How the Snowden Saga will End. Sirer relates a story from his early academic career, when "someone very very high up in the intelligence community" came to visit him at Cornell, and made his request:

"What if I had a graph. A really, really large graph. Billions of nodes. Trillions of edges. Let's say every node on the graph was a person. Edges between people described phone calls, interactions, stuff like that." He paused for dramatic effect, as he mentally took another puff from his non-existent cigar. "How would you find bin Laden?"

When you think about it this way, it's no surprise that computer scientists jump at the chance: "I could just write a computer program, and be a national hero? Where do I sign up?" The temptation, when challenged by that Man In A Suit, must be immense.

So Sirer reviews the deep, muddy, rotten mess we are in, but then owns up to the fact that, as computer scientists are at least partly responsible for this debacle, we need to be at least partly responsible for the solution:

we need tightened definitions for what kinds of surveillance data can be collected, as well as technical and legal measures to keep that data used solely in accordance with appropriate policies. Interestingly, there are technologies that can restrict what users, including Snowden-like "super users", can do with data. Once we re-establish our principles, we have the technical means to enact them. But first, the current era of covert, boundless data collection must come to an end.

I worry that Sirer is too optimistic about the potential of these Trustworty Computing technologies.

But I'm too much the optimist to throw in the towel and concede the inevitable Orwellian future at this point.

So I'll encourage those like Sirer who think they can build better software.

And I'll loudly praise those like Kahle and the other librarians in the trenches:

Libraries have had a long history of dealing with authoritarian organizations demanding reader records—who’s read what—and this has led to people being rounded up and killed. As a librarian, you take this very, very seriously. So, when you get demands for information about a patron’s activities, there are things that sort of flash before your mind. Where am I? What century is this? What country am I in?

And I'll hope that, even as we seem to sometimes move one step forward and two steps back, enough people will open their minds, and be willing to consider the thoughts and ideas of others, and perhaps during my lifetime we will see a retreat from xenophobia and the fear of the Unknown Terrorist, somehow.

Grouse Lake, all to ourselves

Once again, the heavens aligned, and I was lucky enough to get some unplugged time in the mountains with old friends.

This year's backpacking trip was a 4-day, 3-night adventure in the Mokelumne Wilderness, one of about 150 wilderness areas in California.

The Mokelumne ("muh-KAL-uhm-knee") Wilderness is a bit of a patchwork, tucked into the Sierra Nevada mountains about midway between Lake Tahoe and Yosemite. The wilderness encloses Mokelumne Peak, as well as the headwaters of the Mokelumne River, a river I'm quite interested in since it provides the bulk of my personal drinking water at home.

To get to the Mokelumne Wilderness we headed up California Route 88, the middle of the six great modern passes across the central Sierra Nevada:

1. U.S. I-80 (Donner Pass)
2. U.S. 50 (Echo Pass)
3. CA 88 (Carson Pass)
4. CA 4 (Ebbetts Pass)
5. CA 108 (Sonora Pass)
6. CA 120 (Tioga Pass)

California 88 is in the middle both horizontally and vertically, as it goes up higher than routes 50 and 80, but not as high as routes 108 and 120. Route 88 leads up to Carson Pass, at 8,574 feet, so up we went. It's Carson, Carson, Carson up here, by which of course we mean Kit Carson, John Fremont's guide, for whom Carson Pass, Carson River, and Carson City are named.

The geography gets a bit twisted up here. As I said, the Mokelumne Wilderness contains the headwaters of the Mokelumne River, which flows westward from its headwaters in Indian Valley near Reynolds Peak. And yet, the Mokelumne Wilderness also contains the headwaters of the Carson River, which flows eastward from its headwaters in the Lost Lakes region of Hope Valley. And, although the Carson River is generally found to the east of the Mokelumne River, up here near the crest it is all tangled up, such that the Carson River's headwaters are a good 10 miles west of the Mokelumne River's headwaters. This map shows it all.

The Grouse Lake trail head is at Upper Blue Lake, a P.G. & E. hydro-electric reservoir at 8,100 feet. It's nice to get access to the mountains from a high trail head, as it makes for fewer feet to climb, so we parked the car at the Grouse Lake trail head and got walking.

The trail leads gently from the trail head along the creek. After three quarters of a mile, we enter the Mokelumne Wilderness proper, and two miles in we're at Granite Lake, which really should be named "Dog Lake" for its popularity with the day hikers from the enormous Blue Lakes campgrounds.

All kidding aside, Granite Lake is a beautiful lake, and we had a short rest and snack while we enjoyed the view.

Leaving Granite Lake, the trail winds westward until it reaches the rim of Snow Canyon. Although it's short, barely 1.5 miles long, Snow Canyon is an astonishingly beautiful sight, rising 1600 feet from its mouth at Meadow Lake up to its source in the springs high on Deadwood Peak. At the point where the trail reaches the canyon, a marvelous vista provides a 270-degree view of the canyons and peaks of the Mokelumne Wilderness, and we stopped for our well-deserved lunch.

After lunch, the real fun begins. Up to this point, we'd walked about 3 miles and climbed about 450 feet, from the 8,136 foot trail head to the 8,600 foot mark where we met Snow Canyon.

In the next mile, though, the trail climbs 650 feet, until it reaches Snow Canyon's upper lip at just under 9,300 feet on the shoulder of Deadwood Peak. Many choice words were uttered during this portion, as this is not an easy section of trail, foregoing switchbacks and staircases for a simple and direct path along the canyon rim.

But we persevered, reveling in the spectacular terrain, and grateful that we'd made the decision to acclimate to the altitude by spending the first night in a hotel room at the Kirkwood Resort before striking out.

The trail's peak is also the Mokelumne River's peak, as we top out at a remarkable sight: a year-round spring bubbling fresh mountain water at 9,300 feet up Deadwood Peak. In the midst of the barren terrain, well above the tree line, the wildflower meadow around the bubbling brook has to be seen to be believed!

From here, though, the trail descends, nearly as rapidly as it rose, dropping 800 feet in the final 1.5 miles down to Grouse Lake, which sits perched in a small bowl above the just-as-dramatic Summit City Creek canyon.

Grouse Lake is the picture of the perfect Sierra Nevada lake: crystal clear waters, groves of pines and firs providing shelter, and stark granite walls enclosing the pocket-sized valley. We were even more pleased when we realized that we had met all three of the parties that were camped there the night before on the trail, heading out, and nobody else was following us in, so the lake was ours to enjoy in solitude.

We spent three delightful days at Grouse Lake, meditating by the shore, exploring the lake region, climbing the nearby rocks, and soaking up the views. At night, the 8,500 foot altitude and the new moon provided a nearly perfect starscape for our pleasure, and the hardier among us stayed up til the wee hours, identifying stars and constellations, and picking out the occasional shooting star.

Perhaps due to the remoteness of the valley, perhaps due to the altitude, perhaps due to the dry winter, we encountered very little wildlife: many birds and chipmunks, a few deer, and a single very brave mouse who ventured out to collect cookie crumbs right from under our feet!

All good things must end, so on our final morning we arose early, packed up and tidied the site, and retraced our steps back to Upper Blue Lake.

A few practical notes:

• It never rained, and the temperature was mild, from overnight lows in the 40's to mid-afternoon highs in the 70's.
• Although the winter was dry, there was plenty of water. Both lakes were full, and there were several springs and creeks along the trail should we have needed them.
• Our timing was perfect, as there were almost no mosquitoes
• A small fire on the second day sent a cloud of smoke through the valley, but the smoke cleared quickly in the afternoon winds and we experienced little more than a smoky smell and a bright orange sunset. I don't know for sure, but I suspect this was the Power Fire

  

• The lake water was surprisingly warm, for a Sierra lake of this altitude, probably due to the dry winter and absent snow pack. Even Bryan The Timid was a swimmer on this trip!

And, a few gear notes:

• My year-old, barely used Lowa Zephyr Desert boots become more comfortable with every hike. My first pair of Lowas lasted me nearly a decade, and this new pair shows every sign of being just as well-designed and well-built. They're not cheap, but boy are they worth it.
• My Alite Monarch rocking chair was the hit of the trip. It's incredibly light and comfortable, and, when collapsed into its sack, is trivial to throw in the backpack for toting along on day hikes. Most recommended.
• I ended up not trying my Aquamira Water Treatment Drops. I didn't even carry them on the trail. This was not due to any problem with the Aquamira product; it was just that our group already had two proven SteriPEN Classic units and we didn't see the need for any additional backup. The SteriPEN devices have been our first choice for several years, and they continue to perform well.
• I was quite pleased with my Fenix LD01 flashlight. It's extremely light, produces a clear, powerful beam, and runs for hours on a single AAA battery. Roger's Mini MAGlite AAA LED was brighter and threw its beam further, but it is also substantially heavier and larger.

It was clear on our trip that the Sierra Nevada wilderness areas are no longer the secret that they were decades ago. But these beautiful mountains have been well-protected and well-preserved, and I have every hope that, as long as I can keep mustering up the strength and willpower to explore them, there will be spectacular nooks and crannies like Grouse Lake for me to see and enjoy.

My backpacking trips with Mike

During a recent discussion (see an article coming out Real Soon Now), it emerged that I've gone backpacking with my friend Mike for more than a decade.

So we tried to remember all our trips, and here's what I can remember:

1. Mokelumne Wilderness: Grouse Lake from the Upper Blue Lake trailhead (2013)
2. Yosemite National Park: Rancheria Creek from the Hetch Hetchy dam trailhead (2012)
3. Caribou Wilderness: Posey Lake from the Hay Meadow trailhead (2011)
4. Trinity Alps Wilderness: Lilypad Lake via Poison Canyon (2010)
5. John Muir Wilderness: Baboon Lake from the Lake Sabrina trailhead (2009)
6. Yosemite National Park: unnamed lake below Mt Hoffman from the May Lake trailhead (2008)
7. Emigrant Wilderness: Relief Reservoir via Kennedy Meadows trailhead, with Dan (2007?)
8. No trip in 2006?
9. No trip in 2005?
10. Yosemite National Park: Rancheria Creek from the Hetch Hetchy dam trailhead (2004 -- yes, we did this trip twice)
11. Hoover Wilderness: Robinson Lakes via the Twin Lakes trailhead (2003?)
12. Sequoia National Park: Mosquito Lakes from the Mineral King trailhead (2002?)
13. John Muir Wilderness: South Fork of the San Joaquin River from the Florence Lakes trailhead (2001?)
14. Desolation Wilderness: American Lake from the Echo Lakes trailhead. (2001?)

I'm sure there's more trips. I'm sure of it.

I Just Can't Remember.

See you in a week

In an unplanned coincidence, I'm going to go follow in the footsteps of William Brewer, exactly 150 years later, for I'm headed off to the Mokelumne headwaters for some unplugged time in the wilderness.

Nice writeup of Time

Everybody who knows me knows that I adore Randall Munroe's xkcd.

On the occasion of the conclusion of the astonishing work of art, Time, Wired's Laura Hudson wrote a nice piece about the work, the community that's formed around the work, and Munroe's observations about his achievement: Creator of xkcd Reveals Secret Backstory of His Epic 3,990-Panel Comic.

The obsessive devotees of the comic-within-a-comic created a discussion thread that exceeded 1,300 pages, a “Time”-specific Wikipedia, and even made a glossary of the lexicon they invented to describe the world of “Time” and their experiences with it. While they refer to Munroe simply as “OTA” (the One True Author), a “newpic” (plural: “newpix”) is defined as the unit of time that elapses between updates, also known as “outsider minutes.” True to its name, “Time”–where a single step could last an hour, and a night could last days–took on its own internal sense of chronological speed: glacially slow for animation, but imbued with a continual sense of motion that felt utterly unique for a comic.

Munroe's attention to detail, although well-known for years, is still impressive:

Munroe researched and illustrated very specific plants and wildlife to offer readers hints about the location. “I got suggestions from botanists and herpetologists, and I had a file with details on every species the characters encountered or talked about, like dwarf palms, juniper trees, horned vipers, and sand boas.”

The last few times I tried, the frame-jumping navigator was overloaded and responding very sluggishly. I enjoy the YouTube movie, although I'm not sure if it's better to watch it with the sound turned off, since the original piece is not set to music.

Munroe's epic works are not always easy to approach, and this one is no exception, but it also rewards study and meditation; it's truly a beautiful work. It's becoming increasingly clear that Munroe will take his place as one of the great artists of my generation.