Hike On! Worst Case Scenario, Colorado Hiking Edition

I really wonder about the popularity of those Worst Case Scenario books even as I browse them. They're clearly written for extreme situations. The advice is serious (in a superficial way), not snarky. Yet who plans to be in an extreme life-or-death situation? Who, when finding oneself in an extreme life-or-death situation, would have the presence of mind to pull out and consult a little yellow handbook? And who, having the book handy, would also have whatever tools are deemed necessary to survive the worst case?

We were camping with our boys, then aged three and nearly-one. We planned to drive to a pretty little lake, hike, and drive back to the campground. The lake was very pretty, but the path around it was flat.

In my world, one either strolls or hikes. Hiking involves hills, water, an elevated heart rate, and views; it's a good thing. Strolling involves flat paths, a cup of designer coffee and a cel phone, a sense of leisure, and a mall; it has its place, but that place is not Rocky Mountain National Park. We finish our stroll -- and it was a stroll, not a hike -- around the pretty lake by 11 AM. My then-husband thinks that's quite sufficient for the day, but I want to do more (perhaps that's a reason he became an ex-husband...but I digress). I consult the park handout map, devise a ten mile trail across a couple of ridgetops that would take me back to camp, refill the water bottles, and set out.

I hike alone about three miles straight up. So far, so good. The pretty little lake is just a speck down below. The trail is clearly marked, albeit little used on a beautiful sunny August day. I sing John Denver, badly, just like every other tourist in Colorado. Somewhere above the 10,000 foot mark, I pass the treeline (a point above which trees can't survive, although smaller alpine plants can.) Then the clouds roll in.

I'm a California native, and our storms take days to arrive. I'm not used to the Mountain West pattern of sudden afternoon thundershowers, and I'm only wearing typical summer t-shirt-and-shorts attire. Pretty soon, I'm drenched, but I continue on. A couple of bluejays squawk at me, as if to say "Foolish human!" I ignore them.

Thunder booms, not terribly far away. There's a couple of lightning strikes. I can tell, by the split seconds between the flashes and the noise, that the lightning is very, very close. I remember, quite fondly, a night spent in a wilderness above Pendleton, OR during a dry lightning storm, during which you could read a book by the near-constant glare. I keep hiking. I'm now the tallest thing on an exposed ridgeline.

Suddenly my entire field of vision goes blinding-white just as noise fills my ears. A bizarre sensation, like an electric shock, but much, much larger, and excruciatingly painful, smites me -- yes, "smites" is the right word. I'm knocked to the ground. I'm knocked out. When I come to, I'm sick to my stomach. At first I can't move my limbs at all. I stagger up like a drunken sailor, but still can't move my facial muscles. A couple of hours later the feeling dials down to tongue-swollen-and-numb.

I've been ground-shocked by lightning! I haven't suffered a direct hit. However, the lightning charge has traveled through the wet ground and up through me. If I had to estimate, the bolt came down perhaps ten feet away. A bolt of lightning can be 28,000 degrees fahrenheit, or five times hotter than the surface of the sun. I consider my options. I'm nearly halfway done with the hike, but if I were to return to the pretty lake, my husband would be gone and I'd be twenty road miles back to camp. I decide to finish the remaining six miles of the hike.

Much thereafter is blurry. A marmot scampers across the trail. It's laughing at me. Somehow I stagger back to camp. My husband decides we should go to the ranger station and ask about first aid. At the ranger station, I tell my story, whereupon I'm advised: If you're not dead already, you'll be fine.

And that, dear reader, is your Worst Case Scenario tip of the day on how to survive being struck by lightning: Don't die! No handbook required. If you do consult the Worst Case Scenarios handbook or webpage, you'll learn how to avoid lightning (stay below the treeline, get flat, and get inside), and you'll learn how to give CPR to someone who's been struck by lightning, but you won't learn how to get struck by lightning and live. (For the detail-oriented, Wikipedia elaborates: "The most critical injuries are to the circulatory system, the lungs, and the central nervous system. Many victims suffer immediate cardiac arrest and will not survive without prompt emergency care, which is safe to administer because the victim will not retain any electrical charge after the lightning has struck. Others incur myocardial infarction and various cardiac arrhythmias, either of which can be rapidly fatal as well. Loss of consciousness is very common immediately after a strike. Amnesia and confusion of varying duration often result as well." Thanks. I wouldn't have known that without reading it here.)

On the way back to California, we spend one night at a Vegas hotel. The afternoon thundershowers roll in. The lifeguards order everyone out of the pool. I'm the first one out. From here on, I take lightning seriously. However, I keep hiking.

Hike On! A Half-Hearted Fanatic Visits Yosemite in Winter

This year's Yosemite in January family trip took place in March. Edward Abbey has explained the need for the weekend better than I could.

...do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast...a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic.

We drove up Friday during a midnight snowstorm. Saturday morning's first light: one patch of gold shining on a glittering silver wall.

Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here.

Of course, the best way to enjoy snow-covered land is to throw snowballs at an innocent, defenseless, camera-wielding parent.

I've been slimed!

So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space.

Yosemite in winter has one-tenth of its summer human population but its full complement of animals. The snow may bring a sense of stillness, but Yosemite is never silent. My meadow running path took me between two scarlet winged blackbirds having a trill-off. A coyote trotted along the riverbank, ducks swam in a vernal pond, and deer grazed by the visitors' center.

We skiied cross-country to a glimpse of Glacier Point and a world painted in only three colors: pure white, evergreen, and that dazzling blue of a clear sky. No can of paint will ever be able to match the most perfect shade of blue in the known universe.

Each below-freezing night, Yosemite Falls becomes outlined with an ice rim from frozen spray, and each warm day the ice falls off in huge chunks, rumbling and crashing down the cliff. The entire Valley echoes with the sound of a localized, constant thunderstorm in a cloudless azure sky.

In the flatlands below the Sierra, lupines cast a cobalt haze on green meadows, but winter still blankets the high country. Yosemite Valley shares the best aspects of both: snow falls but doesn't linger too long. By Sunday evening, almost all of Friday night's snow had melted, and what was left was hard and icy.

As a California native who thinks snow should be visited once a year, I lack snow skills. In particular, I don't know how to build a snowman. My teen said, "But Calvin and Hobbes make it look so easy!" After much packing, we managed to turn one found snowball into a proper three-ball snowman.

Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: You will outlive the bastards.

My son is fascinated by Russia and political theory, so he named the snowman Wasp Dimitrius Lenin Marx Rasputin. I felt that global warming was bothering the snowman, so I lent him a jacket and renamed him Senator Inhofe. He'll be gone within a few weeks. I can only hope that the wrongs the Senator from Oklahoma commits against the planet will likewise melt away when exposed to sunlight.

On the way back home, I was hit with a stark reminder of the half-hearted fanatic's other half. A sign in the foothills bragged: "Pombo, Conservative for Congress." Yes, Richard Pombo, the extreme private property rights, enemy of the earth, ethically challenged former member of Congress who sought to sell off our national treasures and gut the Endangered Species Act, having been voted out of the 11th Congressional district, is now running in the 19th, which includes Yosemite. Retiring George Radanovich was bad for Yosemite, but Pombo will be a horror. Thus, I both enjoy the land and fight for it; each is necessary but not sufficient.

Random thoughts on Highway 99

I've driven the LA-to-Fresno more times than I can count beginning in the early 1980s. The billboards used to be what you'd expect in an agricultural, conservative community. "Food grows where water flows." "The weeder with the wiggle." "Abortion stops a beating heart." Ads for the Perko's diner, with lots of coffee pots.

In the early 2000s, new billboards sprouted like the housing tracts they advertised. "Own your home for $99,000." Then "Your dream home for $199,000." Later, "Starting at $299,000" and even "The American Dream, $399,000."

They're all gone, those housing tract ads. They've been replaced with...government ads. "Read.gov." "Census.gov" (that one showed up a lot). An adorable Hispanic toddler girl is another reason why you need food stamps.

But the politics haven't changed. The voters still hate government.

Hike On! Tarring Obama for a federal land grab that wasn't

Skepticism might be warranted for a Fox News exclusive, especially when it's accompanied by a Republican threatening tar and pitchforks over a non-event. A few weeks ago the vulpine network hyperventilated when it obtained a leaked memo: Obama Eyes Western Land for National Monuments, Angering Some, claiming that

Presidential use of the Antiquities Act is highly controversial because the White House, with the stroke of a pen, can lock up thousands of square miles of federal lands used for timber, ranching, mining and energy development without local input or congressional approval. The Act is generally interpreted to commemorate or protect a specific historical landmark, not prohibit development or deprive local communities of jobs and tax revenues.

Welcome to the Republican outrage machine, working hand in paw with Fox to hurt Western state Democrats.

Every viewer of Ken Burns' documentary knows that the Antiquities Act of 1906 might have originally been written to protect Anazasi ruins from pot hunters, but thanks to language permitting a President to declare objects of "scientific interest," was almost immediately was used by President Theodore Roosevelt chafing at Congressional dawdling to declare large swaths of land off limits to development. Arches (UT), Grand Canyon (AZ), Grand Teton (WY), and Katmai (AK), among others, all began as national monuments before becoming national parks. However, there's more to this tale than just inflammatory and misleading writing.

Fox's ire centers on a Department of the Interior memo, headed "internal draft -- not for release," obtained by Rob Bishop (R-UT) and now available on a House Republican website (pdf).

The memo lists 13 areas in the West, beginning with the San Rafael Swell in Utah, worthy of further evaluation:

Located in South-Central Utah, the San Rafael Swell is a 75 by 40 mile giant dome made of sandstone, shale and limestone -- one of the most spectacular displays of geology in the country. The Swell is surrounded by canyons, gorges, mesas and buttes and is home to eight rare plant species, desert big horns, coyotes, bobcats, cottontail rabbits, badgers, gray and kit fox, and the golden eagle. Visitors to the area can find ancient Indian rock art and explore a landscape with geographic features resembling those found on Mars.

The Bureau of Land Management already manages much of the San Rafael Swell, in which geology has folded, twisted, and contorted the land. Miles of waterless slot canyons can be reached only by four wheel drive or very prepared hikers. No humans live in such inhospitable terrain. For the practical among us, the San Rafael Swell is bisected by I-70 between its western terminus at Salina and Green River, nearly 100 miles of seductive, steep, sinuous curves, no radio reception, and no motorist services. (Map, below, credit: San Rafael Swell) The Mars Society, an organization devoted to exploring the Red Planet, selected the Swell to best simulate Mars in setting up a Mars Desert Research Station. Former Utah governor Mike Leavitt, a Republican, advocated a San Rafael National Monument in 2002, echoing a similar push in the 1930s. The Swell is also part of a proposed America's Red Rock Wilderness Act.

Bishop, the national parks' worst enemy in Congress, obtained the memo from a -mole- trusted source and ran to Fox, yelling:

We are taking this seriously. The tar is warming up. The pitchforks are ready.

The Fox story goes on to compare Obama's "land grab" to Clinton's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which infuriated residents, at least until they began to see opportunities for tourism.

And the Fox story underlines perceived political peril for President Obama, courtesy of a Bush-era source:

The list contains a number of political land mines for the president, according to a former Bush Interior Department appointee familiar with the document who asked to remain anonymous.

"Right now a number of senior officials are going over the report," he told Fox News. "When Clinton did it, most of the West was red states and he didn't have any blowback. Obama has to ask himself, if he chooses a Nevada location, will it hurt (Senator Harry) Reid's re-election. The same is true in almost every (Western) state where Democrats have made serious inroads."

So how far along is the secret land grab?

Not happening at all, says absolutely everyone not named Bishop. Utah's governor Gary Herbert met with Ken Salazar to be assured that nothing is being fast-tracked in clandestine meetings. The New York Times reports that the memo was simply a brainstorming session, not a secret at all. Even the Fox story is honest enough, at its very end, to check with an Interior Department spokesperson, who says (contrary to Bishop): the memo "reflects some brainstorming discussions within [the Bureau of Land Management], but no decisions have been made about which areas, if any, might merit more serious review and consideration." Just to score cheap political points, Senators Bennett (R-UT) and Hatch (R-UT) and Representative Bishop have introduced a bill requiring Congressional consent before any national monuments are declared in Utah.

All that outrage, all that tar stirred, all those pitchforks collected, for a chimera! Leaving several interesting if self-evident questions:

How are preliminary brainstorming session memos being leaked to Republicans in Congress known to hate national lands?

Why is Fox aiding Bishop in inflating a brainstorming memo into a secret land grab?

Has this draft internal memo been blown up into an "exclusive" for any purpose other than the purpose of undermining support for Democrats in Western states?

Am I the only one bothered by the threat by a member of Congress to tar and pitchfork a President?

And why on earth shouldn't the San Rafael Swell be a national monument anyway?

Slouching Toward Copenhagen

A post that I wrote shortly before the Copenhagen climate conference. My pessimism was, I believe, largely borne out by events.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

the spin machine twirls and curls: Email fracas shows perils of trying to spin science

Yeats predicts: "The end of an age, which always receives the revelation of the character of the next age, is represented by the coming of one gyre to its place of greatest expansion and of the other to its place of greatest contraction... The revelation [that] approaches will... take its character from the contrary movement of the interior gyre...." Meanwhile, the spinners succeed and the mainstream media are misdirected in the stolen email story.

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

and people cease listening to inconvenient truths of science and reason as fewer Americans continue to believe in global warming; the Australian opposition party dumps its leader over climate legislation; and a new survey shows that world concerns about global warming have dwindled.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Senate chairs split over climate bill; "Hanging in the balance is one of President Barack Obama’s top domestic priorities, as well as the president’s credibility among potential signatories to an international climate pact." Meanwhile, UN environmental chief calls upon United States and China to raise their offers.

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

The United States Senate puts off climate bill until spring because, according to Claire McCaskill (D-MO), the climate bill is "really big, really, really hard, and is going to make a lot of people mad." In India, climate loan sharks flourish as droughts and failed crops worsen the cycle of poverty. The country of Tuvalu is drowning and its people migrating to New Zealand.

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

A survey delving into the past 30 years in sub-Saharan Africa reveals that temperature changes match up with a significant increase in the likelihood of civil war. Both the 1994 Rwandan civil war and the 2000s Darfur conflict are generally seen to be wars for scarce resources. The Pentagon begins to war game the implications of climate change including famine, rising sea levels, and natural resource competition.

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

When it comes to the stability of one of the world's most volatile regions, it's the fate of the Himalayan glaciers that should be keeping us awake at night. Although India and Pakistan have entered into a treaty regarding use of waters flowing from Himalayan glaciers, the treaty's success depends on the maintenance of a status quo that will be disrupted as the world warms. The Himalayan glaciers supply water to a billion people in India, Pakistan, and western China; a billion people with nuclear weapons; a billion people with nuclear weapons who do not have a history of getting along. Scientists originally predicted that they would largely melt by 2035, but their melt has accelerated. Meanwhile, California's water woes are just the beginning for the United States as water becomes the new oil.

The best lack all conviction,

Climate science is not and never will be settled, the RealClimate editors say, while acknowledging that naysayers such as Wall Street Journal editors will seize upon smidgens of uncertainty. Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) wants to consider other options besides the cap and trade bill approved by the House, and leftists attempt to resurrect the idea of a carbon tax.

while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Hacked Emails give Inhofe fuel for climate change debate. Four Republicans (Representatives Sensenbrenner and Issa and Senators Barasso and Vitter) have demanded that the Environmental Protection Agency cease all work on greenhouse gases. Sarah Palin uses Facebook to demand that President Obama investigate the "snake oil science" of climate instead of going to Copenhagen. Representatives Joe Barton and Greg Walden call for hearings on NASA scientists.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Pope tells Copenhagen participants to respect God's creation and promote development while respecting human dignity and the common good.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

Copenhagen's green credentials obscure unpleasant facts, such as Denmark's continued reliance on coal-fired plants, Danish society's highly consumerist society, and its beef habit (in 2002, the average Dane consumed a whopping 321 pounds of meat -- nearly a pound a day. For Americans, the figure was 275 pounds).

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

Australia faces collapse caused by desertification. Wildfires in February 2009 (late summer) killed hundreds, and November 2009 (spring) broke so many records "that for a lot of places, even average conditions for the rest of the month will be easily enough to break existing records," says a climatologist. A new dust bowl has emerged in California's Fresno County.

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Climate drama climax looks elusive: "Too little time and too little agreement, however, especially between rich and poor countries, mean the 192-nation Copenhagen conference is likely to produce, at best, a framework — a basis for continuing talks and signing internationally binding final agreements next year." Carbon pledges made to date will stoke potentially catastrophic 3.5 degrees Celsius warming by century's end, warns the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and energy specialists Ecofys. The pledges on the table will not halt emissions growth before 2040, let alone by 2015 as indicated by the IPCC. Negotiators at Copenhagen face deep sets of fault lines, including rich vs poor nations, developed vs developing countries, Poland and Estonia vs the rest of the EU, island nations vs time, OPEC vs clean technology, and urgency vs inertia.

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle

The earth is the hottest it's been in 2,000 years, the National Academy of Sciences reported in 2006. More recently, a paper authored by Northern Arizona University professors found the warmest temperatures in 2,000 years at a time when the Arctic would be cooling if not for greenhouse gas emissions overpowering natural climate patterns.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Is a revelation at hand for an inherently cautious group? Will bickering nations unite against a common enemy? Or will things fall apart as the Earth cannot hold its people?

Hike On! On a clear day, can you see Four Corners?

The great national parks of the Southwest overwhelm visitors with a sense of space. The air is limitless, dazzling, so crystalline clear it pierces the lungs and the soul. On the rim of the Grand Canyon, you imagine you can see forever -- an average of 106 miles, and up to 160 miles on clearest days. Bryce Canyon, with its aptly named Farview Point, offers panoramic views of three states, visibility up to 200 miles, and "dark skies" night astronomy programs in which visitors can see up to 7500 stars. Red sandstone of Delicate Arch, in Arches National Park, frames a perfect blue sky.

Unless the haze obstructs the view.

One purpose of the Clean Air Act is "to preserve, protect, and enhance the air quality in national parks." Most national parks, wilderness areas, and certain national forests and national wildlife refuges are labeled Class I, giving the involved federal agency some obligation to prevent significant deterioration of air quality caused by outside sources within 300 kilometers.

An entire federal program, Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments, or IMPROVE, is dedicated to monitoring and protecting air quality in the national parks and wilderness areas. Many parks have webcams, showing not only a view of the park but also air quality, such as the informative Grand Canyon webcam. (True confession -- I use the Yosemite webcam page as a mental health break.)

The NPS' most recent 2008 report on air quality in parks shows that ozone levels at Great Basin (NV) and Mesa Verde (CO), both remote parks far from any large population center, are surprisingly high and are of particular concern.

The Bush administration proposed weakening the Class I rules by permitting coal plants and other haze-creators to be placed closer to national parks. The National Parks Conservation Association identified ten parks most threatened by coal plants in Dark Horizons (33 pg pdf), including Capitol Reef (UT), Great Basin, Mesa Verde, and Zion (UT) National Parks. Ultimately the Bush administration backed down.

Two notorious sources of haze in the Southwest are the Four Corners and Black Mesa coal plants.

The Four Corners plant, located west of Farmington, NM burns 10 million tons of coal every year. It's the largest single source of air pollution in the state of New Mexico, according to the Arizona Public Service's monitoring reports. And the NPS has found that Four Corners has the greatest visibility impact on Class I national parks of any coal plant in the country. The coal plant particularly threatens clean, clear air at Arches, Canyonlands, and Mesa Verde national parks. Last month, a coalition of environmental groups petitioned the DOI and USDA to declare that the Four Corners plant is violating the Clean Air Act by polluting the air at sixteen Class I national parks.

The Black Mesa power plant complex, no stranger to controversy, was set up with apparent sweetheart deals on Hopi and Navajo land in the 1960s. The complex consists of two separate strip mining operations: Black Mesa and Kayenta. Black Mesa was shut down in 2005 rather than comply with environmental regulations, while Kayenta kept going. As part of the Bush administration midnight anti-environmental regulations in December 2008, a permit to combine the two (effectively reopening Black Mesa) for the life of the mine was approved. However, in January 2010, an administrative law judge rescinded the permit, sending the reopening of Black Mesa back to the drawing board for a new environmental impact statement. Chalk this victory up for the good guys. (Note: the Black Mesa story has layers of tragedy, exploitation, and environmental injustice going far beyond haze over the Grand Canyon. Black Mesa Indigenous Support and similar websites have more information than can be covered in this diary.)

The casual national park visitor's view over the Grand Canyon is certainly not the only reason to shut down places like Four Corners and Black Mesa. However, it's another harm instigated by the burning of fossil fuels, another reason to convince your nonpolitical friends that we need to move to clean energy, and another reason why carbon pollution should not continue unchecked.

Welcome

Speaking for our lands, public and otherwise, the creatures that live on them, and the politics of same. Also, chickens.