Mon - Noon: 7 miles (1,750'). Up and down Towers. Road had been plowed to halfway, and then just as I was getting ready for the second half trudge, a chained 4 wheeler came up and set tracks for me. Great running almost the whole way. Beautiful out.

- PM: 5.5 miles. Bike paths. First double in a while. Super creaky getting started.

Tues - Noon: 7 miles (1,750'). Towers again. Conditions still good for running. Clear with a few slips to Westridge, whereafter it was post-hole time. Wore a watch for the first time in a while to get a baseline for an easy effort up Towers: 42:30 up & 25:30 down. Felt smooth and easy - just where I like it. Just as soon as things melt and firm up, I plan on taking an early season stab at the FKT & getting up in under 30 minutes.

- PM: 6.5 miles (1,200'). Reservoir Ridge with FCTR group.

Weds - Noon: 7 miles (1,750'). Towers. Conditions were slippery and the legs were heavy.

Thurs - noon: 7 miles (1,750'). Towers. Still plenty of snow, but the big melt continues.

Fri - AM: 6 miles (1,200'). In Boulder for PI-Smith team summit (more on that in a later post). Got out in the early morning for a photo shoot and casual trail run with the team and others from the Pearl Izumi office.

Sat - AM: 15 miles (5,600'). It doesn't take much to accumulate vertical in the foothills of Boulder. Everything is pretty steep and with three peaks on the day it racked up pretty quickly. Headed out with the PI team in the early AM and did a route that involved getting up Flagstaff then across to Gregory Canyon and down on Saddle Rock (I think). Then met up with Nick P shortly after at the Chautauqua TH and we re-did Gregory Canyon to the top of Green and then came down the backside to summit the next one along (Bear, I think), before careening down the front side of Bear in pretty treacherous and very slippery conditions.

Bumped into, or spotted, a bunch of Green baggers on the way - Tony K on the first go around, followed by Brandon F, Jeff Valliere and Darcy Africa (PI teammate) on the second trip up. Brandon was screaming down the hill, right near the bottom, and put the skids on to say hi. We checked in with him again near the top of Green as he was topping out on his second lap.

There's some kind of chatter on Brandon's website about a FoCo - Boulder showdown. I'm still waiting patiently for the Boulder folk to find the time in their busy schedules to commit to some races. I'll throw the Horsetooth Trail Half out there (normally early June) as a possible FoCo venue. I hear there is some kind of Basic deal in Boulder that might serve as the Boulder venue - just need that third neutral venue. Longmont got any hills?

Sun - 17 miles (4,300'). Hills at Horsetooth. H'tooth trail - Westridge - Towers up - Towers down - Towers up - Westridge - Southridge. Trails were rutted, icy and crunchy for the most part and somewhat post-holey on Westridge. Towers was mainly good, but icy and sloppy in places. Put in a moderate hard effort on the Towers up and went 34 mins from the gate at Shoreline to the very top. Felt really good today.

Total: 78 miles (19,300').

In a bid to fast-track the fitness, I ramped up the climbing this week and will look for something similar next week. Salida Marathon the week after is a solid 10-11 miles of climbing right off the bat, so I've been looking to get the legs into shape for that as well.

Had a great time in Louisville/Boulder Thurs, Fri & Sat checking in with PI-Smith teammates and the Pearl Izumi headquarters in Louisville. I have to say that I came away from the visit highly impressed with the PI operations, professionalism, creativity and energy, while also being thoroughly impressed with how seriously they take the whole running-team concept, both as a means of promoting their brand and, more importantly, as a means of improving the product they have in the marketplace. Input from the team was encouraged, listened to and taken seriously. While biking is quite obviously the cash cow for the company, they take the running side of the business equally seriously and have made huge strides in recent years in terms of the products they have out there - shoes in particular. From what we saw of the 2011 line things are only getting better.

Calf has felt close to 100% all week, although an old and nagging (but manageable) groin issue has been making its voice heard with the extra vertical. That's a trade off I'm more than happy to accept.

Tro det eller ej, men det blev lite dansande igår. Efter att ha överraskats med ytterligare ett OS-brons tog vi oss i kragen och begav oss ut på stan. Debaser Medis var vårt mål och efter tröttsamt köande kom vi slutligen ut på det där dansgolvet. Och vilket dansgolv sen! Hur bra känns det inte när tre snygga dj´s spelar massa nostalgimusik från en svunnen tid? Nästan så att man lyckades glömma trettioårskrisen som börjat komma smygande. Vad sägs om Pulp och Suede exempelvis? Inte varje dag man lyssnar på dessa gamla godingar. Och det bästa av allt är nästan att jag trots rätt många glas rödvin har mått alldeles förträffligt idag. Ett litet uns av huvudvärk men en förtidig födelsedagspresent botade denna. Nu ska jag njuta av de sista timmarna innan verkligheten knackar på dörren.

[Image: Trapped in ice].

Back in January 2008, a ship called Tara unlocked from the polar ice near Greenland; it had been frozen in the Arctic floes for a year and four months, repeating the journey of the Fram, a Norwegian ship that once drifted across the polar seas, frozen solid in the ice fields, back in 1896.

In both cases, the ships temporarily became buildings, works of architecture wed flush with the landscape surrounding them.

[Images: Photos via Jules Verne Adventures].

As reported two winters ago in the Times:

Visitors to the North Pole in the past 15 months might have happened upon a peculiar sight: a ship, high and dry on the ice pack, her masts upright against the flaming aurora borealis, her bow pointing over the ice sheet, as if sailing on a sea of snow. They might have thought it a polar mirage.

It was, however, the Tara, a mobile building of the Arctic.

In a description so strange I have trouble visualizing it, we read about a "pressure ridge" that moved toward the boat at "super-slow" speeds, threatening everyone on board with destruction:

There was another scare that winter with a “pressure ridge” caused by colliding plates of ice advancing towards the boat. “It was like a frozen wave, moving in super-slow motion—about a centimeter a second,” said [a crew member]. “At one stage we attacked it with picks and chainsaws, but there was no way we could stop it.” It leant over the boat, then suddenly it stopped by itself and “we were released from the pinch,” said [the crew member].

When landscapes attack.

[Image: Map of the Arctic ice routes that brought ships across the sea, courtesy of New Scientist].

But what interests me here is the idea that you could build one thing—a ship—that only becomes what it's really meant to be—a building—when the circumstances it's surrounded by undergo a phase change (here, water turning into ice).

The ship's hull was specifically designed for this, we read in New Scientist; it was "broad, smooth and round so that, rather than being crushed like an egg, the boat would pop up like an olive stone squeezed between finger and thumb, and sit on top of the pack ice. It also featured a lifting centerboard instead of a fixed keel, and removable propellers and rudders. These precautions worked: Tara suffered just a small dent at the stern, and another stretching a metre or so along the hull."

What might the atmospheric equivalent of this be? Perhaps a planetary probe dropped into the skies of Titan or Enceladus, awaiting some strange aerial phase change to occur on all sides?

And, speaking of other planets, could you ever encounter such extraordinary air pressure—on a gas giant, say—such that solid objects simply become trapped in place, unable to fall any further? The atmosphere beneath them is denser than the metal they are made from.

Like machine-fossils buried transparently in air—or like Arctic ships locked in ice—NASA probes would gradually decay, compressed by nothing but air, under deformational pressures lasting tens of millions of years. Aerial tectonics. Slow weather. Sky glacier.

(Enceladus link via @pruned).

-- March 5 -- Dayton, OH -- Wright State University Adventure Summit

-- March 6-7 -- Steven's Pass, WA -- Hope on the Slopes

-- March 6 -- Warrenville, IL -- Vertical Endeavors No Hold Barred

-- March 13 -- Washington, DC -- HERA Foundation Climb4Life

-- March 18 – Las Vegas, NV -- Banff Mountain Film Festival Tour

-- March 18 -- Washington, DC -- Chris Warner speaking on 8km peaks, presented by the Mountaineering Section of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club

-- March 19-21 -- Red Rocks NV -- Red Rock Rendezvous

-- March 24 -- Washington, DC -- Glen Denny speaking on Yosemite, presented by the Mountaineering Section of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club


--April 10 -- Grand Junction, CO -- "MOG" Outdoor Gear Sale & COPMOBA Bike Swap


-- April 16 -- Seattle, WA -- Snowball! NWAC Fundraiser


-- April 17 -- Central Washington University -- Ropeless Rodeo Bouldering Competition


-- April 23,24 -- Maryland/DC Area -- EarthTreks Roc Comp


-- April 24 -- Joshua Tree, CA -- Bridwell Fest at the Gordon Ranch

It was quietening down at the beach when I arrived this morning.
It was incredibly flat too, so there were alot of little surfboards bobbing up and down in the water. It was an idyllic scene and I wondered why I'd stayed away so long. I've been to the beach a few times for early morning runs the past couple of weeks. But a fit of childish pique has seen me skip Bronze Training the past week, because I was annoyed the rest of my group hadn't got it together. We were meant to be finished two weeks ago. I was meant to have moved onto other things.
But we didn't, and we haven't.
I knew I needed to train today though if I was going to do the exam next week. I'd skipped yesterday's training so I knew I needed to come today. So I was here. I was sulking.
I chatted briefly to one of the lifesavers on my part of the beach. We discussed the merits of the foam and hard board before I headed out for a paddle while waiting for some others to show up. They were late. I was mad about that too.
I was about 100 metres off shore when I heard a shout. I turned and saw the lifesaver I'd been chatting with signalling me.
I was the only one that far out. That's what I thought.
The signal was pick up swimmers though so I looked round me. About 80 metres to my left and further out was a board and I could see someone struggling to get on it.
So I paddled over as fast as I could. I can't kneel up on the board yet (don't judge me!) so I'm probably not fast enough yet. As I got closer to them I saw it was a little boy about the same age as my eldest son.
He burst into tears as I got close to him.
I was very conversational with him.
7 year olds have huge pride, even when they are crying and being dragged out to sea.
We agreed he probably needed some help to get back to shore.
We agreed that it was probably best to go back to shore now.
We also agreed that I looked like the right person to help him out of this pickle.
So I secured him and got him back into shore .
His parents met me at the shore. Mum was heavily pregnant and pretty distressed. Dad hugged his boy and told him they were going to have:" a little chat."
And me?
Well it hit me like a brickbat between the eyes that there is a reason for doing this course.
I didn't save his life. The was an IRB that was on stand by to come and pick him up if I hadn't. I'm not a hero.
But I sure as hell couldn't have done this a few weeks ago.
And I'll train as hard as I can this week in preparation for my exam next weekend because I know that doing what I did today was the best rush I've had in a while.
And right now that's a good reason to keep plugging away at this.
Lifesaving rocks!

Surprised but delighted to receive a Beautiful Blog award from the fabulous online retailer and style blogger Table Tonic over the weekend.

Best audio quality (IPlayer)

Audio

Ginz & Kool Money Kwame – Wet wipe riddim
Joy Orbison – The Shrew would have cushioned the blow – Aus Music
Starkey feat. Anneka – Stars – Planet Mu
Dead Fader – Autumn rot - 3BY3
Shortstuff – Behave – Fabric Records
Kyle Hall – You know what I feel – Hyperdub
Mimosa – Psychedelic Stereo – Muti Music
To Rococo Rot – Fridays (Shackleton’s West Green Road mix)
Scuba – Three sided shape – Hotflush Recordings
Monolake – Infinite snow – Imbalance
Cio - (Pendle Coven’s Pantone Remix) – Prologue
Deadbeat – Vampire dub – Echocord

7" single special with Steven "Sage" Hartley

The Nosebleeds - Ain't Bin to on Music School - Rabid Records
Franatic Elevators - Holding Back the Years - No Waiting
Gang of Four - Damaged Goods - Fast
Python Lee Jackson - In a Broken Dream - Young Blood International
John Lee Hooker - I'm Leaving - Stateside
Dorothy Moore - Here it is - Contempo
Betty Wright - Clean up Woman - Atlantic
Jackie Wilson - I get the sweetest feeling - Brunswick
Jackie Wilson - (Your Love keeps lifting me higher and higher) - Brunswick
Soul Vendors - Swing Easy - Coxsone
Not sensibles - Lying on the Sofa - Bent Records

I haven't purchased a pack or any single cards from a Topps Heritage product in over two years (the last one I collected was Heritage '59, in 2008). I did this for a variety of reasons, most notably because I just didn't have the income to justify collecting another new set. I also stood (and continue to stand) firmly in the belief that the Heritage brand should've ended with the Heritage '59 (2008) set, and that Topps should've rechristened the subsequent sets as "Topps Classic." In any event, I've been thinking about this year's Heritage ('61), and I think I've hit upon a way to make the brand more appealing.

The Heritage checklister has done an admirable job "updating" checklists from the original sets and filling in each spot with its twenty-first century player equivalent. They haven't gotten everything right (as an homage to 1960's card #1, Cy Young-winner Early Wynn of the White Sox, 2009's card #1 was Mark Buerhle of the White Sox; it should have been one of the reigning Cy Young winners, Cliff Lee or Tim Lincecum), but 100% accuracy is not something any card company should be expected to achieve.

But a sly wink and an inside joke to an original checklist is no longer enough to buoy a set. The company has to continue to push the envelope or else they'll begin to lose the audience, or make them cynical about the checklisting tactics used ("Thom" Glavine, anyone? How about those annoying black backs versus green backs from the Heritage '59 set?).

The next logical step is the photo homage. Not just one or two photos sprinkled over the checklist, either. If they made every photograph on every card an homage to its checklist buddy from the original set, that would be something to write home about, something that would elevate the Heritage brand out of the retro-design doldrums.

Of course, to accomplish this, the Topps photographers would have to actually study the original set and pose their subjects down to the minutest detail. They'd also have to shoot their photos with an idea of recreating the photographic standards of the 1960s. Presumably, color-correcting of this caliber is something that Adobe Photoshop could assist in accomplishing.

I've never been a huge fan of the 1961 set. I think the design is one of Topps' weakest of the decade and the era, and the photos fairly unimaginative. Really, the only great part of the set are the subsets (the Brady Bunch-esque League Leaders, the MVPs, the All-Stars, the combo cards — "Lindy Shows Larry", anyone? — the World Series cards, and the Historical Highlights), an idea that exploded in 1961 and came to dominate the Topps Sixties.

It would be great to get "Josh Shows Daisuke" in my pack of Heritage '61 and not have it be two silhouetted shots of the individuals placed near each other. I'd appreciate the homage much more if Josh Beckett was smiling awkwardly while showing Daisuke Matsuzaka how to throw a curve.

[Image: Edible Schoolyard by WORKac].

Nicola Twilley and Sarah Rich will be hosting Foodprint NYC later today at Studio-X in Manhattan (the event is free and located at 180 Varick Street, Suite 1610; here is a map).

Things kick off at 1pm, as you can see on the Foodprint Project website.

[Images: Edible Schoolyard by WORKac].

The above images, meanwhile, come from the Edible Schoolyard by WORKac. Amale Andraos, co-principal with Dan Wood in WORKac, will be speaking on a panel at 4:30pm today about her firm's work with nutritional landscapes, educational agriculture, and the future of urban food production.

Edible Schoolyard, specifically, presents "a series of interlinked sustainable systems that produce energy and heat, collect rainwater, process compost and sort waste with an off-grid infrastructure."

At the heart of the project is the Kitchen Classroom, where up to thirty students can prepare and enjoy meals together. The kitchen’s butterfly-shaped roof channels rain water for reclamation. Connected to one side is the Mobile Greenhouse, extending the growing season by covering 1600sf of soil in the colder months and sliding away in the spring, over the Kitchen Classroom. On the other side is the Systems Wall: a series of spaces that include a cistern, space for composting and waste-sorting, solar batteries, dishwashing facilities, a tool shed and a chicken coop.

The project, created in collaboration with Alice Water's Chez Panisse Foundation and P.S. 216, continues the suite of ideas WORKac first explored in their design for Public Farm 1, less a functioning farm, or even a prototype for one, than an intensely spatial art installation ornamented by edible plants.

[Image: Public Farm 1 by WORKac; photos by Raymond Adams].

Joining Amale Andraos on the panel today will be Marcelo Coelho (of "Cornucopia" fame, a 3D food-printer designed with Amit Zoran), Natalie Jeremijenko (of, among many, many other things, the Cross Species Cookbook), and Beverly Tepper (Professor of Food Science at Rutgers and director of the Sensory Evaluation Laboratory). As Edible Geography describes it, "the result will be a speculative and wide-ranging conversation about food security, sensory design, and [the panelists'] hopes and fears for the future of food in New York City."

That is only the final of four panels; read more about today's event over on the Foodprint Project website.

So I don't have a television, and don't spend a ton of time online, so I haven't watched any of the Winter Olympics. Regardless though, the Olympic spirit is in the air and I'm always down for watching people overcome incredible odds and perform amazing feats. Here is one such feat:

BLIND AND NAKED from Cedar Wright on Vimeo.

Pretty crazy huh? Moving in a somewhat similar direction, I found this clip of adaptive downhill skiing. Not only is the music killer, around 1:00 the tricks start happening. It always amazes me and what people can overcome. This guy not only "overcomes" but excels.

A huge 8.8 magnitude earthquake hit central Chile, killing at least 78 people, and triggering a tsunami which has already hit the Juan Fernandez Islands and put Easter Island and the rest of the pacific on alert. From BBC News.

President Michelle Bachelet declared a "state of catastrophe"
[...]
Tsunami warnings have been issued for Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, Central America and Pacific island nations.
[...]
She said a "wave of large proportion" had affected the Juan Fernandez island group, reaching halfway into one inhabited area. Two aid ships are reported to be on their way.

Ms Bachelet said that "high tidal waves" could also reach Easter Island soon.

And from MSNBC.com

Reuters reported that a tsunami caused by the quake caused "serious damage" to Chile's sparsely populated Juan Fernández Islands. Citing local police, CNN reported that the islands had been hit by a 40-meter (131 foot) wave.

On this week's BBC Radio 4 travel programme "Excess Baggage", John McCarthy talks to Mark Carwardine. The program is available for streaming online for 7 days, but also as an MP3 podcast.

Zoologist and conservationist Mark Carwardine talks to John McCarthy about his life travelling to film, photograph and write about creatures which inhabit the deepest oceans or the dustiest plains. In 1990 he went in search of animals nearing extinction with Douglas Adams and more recently with Stephen Fry and, as an occasional leader of wildlife expeditions, he shares his thoughts on the ethics of animal tourism, ecology and the environment.

• Our annual marriage saver trip to Bali sans kids - coming up in May - my happy place.
  Eating - especially Asian and sandwiches
• Reading - anything newspapers, magazines, takeout menus, books, blogs, cookbooks
• My morning coffee being bought to me in bed each day (from the cafe) by Mr Woog.
• Spray and Wipe
• Soft sand running.
• When the kids bring the Guinea pig into my bed every morning @ 7am on the dot and we all have a snuggle - until the cat comes in then the whole thing turns to shit.
• Pizza Olla
• Thinking about how thin I am going to get when my friend has her baby.

Things that do not delight me include:

• When Mr Woog gets up to get my coffee every morning he ALWAYS wakes me up
• Anchovies, mayonnaise, fishy fish like salmon, blue cheese and custard.
• Daily grind and routines - am a frustrated "am not going to work" mother biding her time to get back into the publishing business (but not at a particular establishment the rhymes with McSnore Hill)
• The "ladies" who "serve" you at Country Road in Mosman. Boycott! Boycott!! Boycott!!
• The seven thousand men who tried to sell me dodgy insulation - piss off.
• Bigots, snobs, homophobes, racists, stingy and rude people - so the entire on-air presenting team from Channel 9 and the NSW Government.
• The tool that parks across my driveway each morning - I hate you so much ZEH 387.
• The fact that George Michael did not sing Wake me up before you Go Go last night at his concert.
• Trying to get a cab after a concert.
• Saying "Yes that would be GREAT!" Automatically to everything then bitching and moaning to all and sundry about it. I think they call it spreading yourself too thin - so at least I am thin one one sense.
• The fact that I still do not have a security door and the kids recently invited 2 Mormons in, gave them a complete tour of the house then opened the bathroom door while I was taking a slash and announcing that our friends were here.

I hope Ms Green - that this has given you some insight into how Woogworld operates. Now am off for a soak in the tub in a quiet house while I can.

ox

[Image: From Wired Science's photo gallery, "Stunning Views of Glaciers Seen From Space"].

In light of this week's ongoing conversation, I thought I'd take a quick look at how to build a glacier.

The "art of glacier growing," as New Scientist calls it, is "also known as glacial grafting." It has been "practiced for centuries in the mountains of the Hindu Kush and Karakorum ranges," and it was never about science fiction: "It was developed as a way to improve water supplies to villages in valleys where glacial meltwater tended to run out before the end of the growing season."

The artificial glacier, then, is simply a traditional landscape-architectural technique that manipulates and amplifies pre-existing natural processes. It is vernacular hydrology writ large.

[Image: From Wired Science's photo gallery, "Stunning Views of Glaciers Seen From Space"].

So how do you build an artificial glacier?

First, you need a site, and that site should be mountainous; altitudes higher than 4,500 meters are thermally preferable. From New Scientist:

Once the site is selected, ice is brought to rocky areas where there are small boulders about 25 centimeters across. The rocks protect the ice from sunlight, and often have ice trapped in the gaps between them. This seems to be critical to a successful "planting."

Also critical is the glacier's "gender." Yes, glaciers "have a gender": "A 'male' glacier is one that is covered in stones and soil and moves slowly or not at all. A 'female' one is whiter, and grows more quickly, yielding more water."

After [glacier-growing mountain villagers] have added female to the male ice (traditionally by importing 12 man-loads or about 300 kilograms of the stuff), they cover the area with charcoal, sawdust, wheat husk, nutshells or pieces of cloth to insulate it. Gourds of water placed among the ice and rocks are also critical to a glacier’s chances of forming, according to [artificial-glacier expert, Ingvar Tveiten]. As the glacier grows and squeezes the gourds, they burst, spreading water on the surrounding ice, which then freezes.

Awesomely, the glacier then exhibits complex internal ventilation:

Any snowmelt trapped in the budding glacier also freezes, adding more ice. Pockets of cold air moving between the rocks and ice keep the glacier cool. When the mass of rock and ice is heavy enough, it begins to creep downhill, forming a self-sustaining glacier within four years or so.

Of course, "what’s produced is hardly a glacier in the proper sense," we're reminded, "but growing and flowing areas of ice many tens of meters long have been reported at the sites of earlier grafts."

Let me repeat that: to call these artificial glaciers is a poetic over-statement, as they are much more realistically described as artificially maintained deposits of snow—what I have elsewhere called non-electrical ice reserves. But the thermally self-sustaining nature of these deposits nonetheless makes them susceptible to glaciological analysis.

[Image: From Wired Science's photo gallery, "Stunning Views of Glaciers Seen From Space"].

But there are also other, equally lo-fi techniques of glacier-growing.

Elsewhere, we read that "a good artificial glacier costs $50,000," even though "the materials are simple: dirt, pipes, rocks—and runoff from real glaciers high above." Importantly, then, but quite obviously, a controlled act of artificial glaciation can only be achieved in regions where there is already water available; you can't simply snap your fingers and "build a glacier" in a Tucson parking lot.

In any case, this second technique "is remarkably simple":

Water from an existing stream is diverted using iron pipes to a comparably shady part of the valley and here the water is allowed to flow out onto an inclined mountainside. At regular intervals along the slope of the mountain, small embankments of stone are made which impede the flow of water making shallow pools. At the start of winter, water is allowed to flow into this `masonry contraption' and as the winter temperatures are constantly falling the water freezes forming a thick sheet of ice looking almost like a thin, long glacier.

All this is done before the onset of winter. During the winter, as temperatures fall steadily, the water collected in the small pools freezes. Once this cycle has been repeated over many weeks, a thick sheet of ice forms, resembling a long, thin glacier.

Again: resembling a long, thin glacier. We're not talking about monumental, mountain-crushing tectonic formations (yet)—even if I do feel compelled to wax speculative here and suggest that, if these structures do indeed begin "to creep downhill, forming a self-sustaining glacier within four years or so," then it is not at all unrealistic to assume that, given the right thermal circumstances and the necessary amount of snowfall, you could kick-start glaciation on a macro-scale. This might only mean on the scale of one valley—and not, say, the entire northern hemisphere—but it is an amazing idea that architects could set massive, self-sustaining, tectonically complex structures of ice into motion.

After all, glaciers are very long events, as mammoth memorably put it.

[Image: From Wired Science's photo gallery, "Stunning Views of Glaciers Seen From Space"].

To reiterate the simplicity of this latter design process, I want to quote artificial-glacier expert Chawang Norphel, from an interview he did with the IPS:

Glacier melt at different altitudes is diverted to the shaded side of the hill, facing the north, where the winter sun is blocked by a ridge or a mountain slope. At the start of winter (November), the diverted water is made to flow onto the sloping hill face through appropriately designed distribution channels or outlets.

At regular intervals stone embankments are built, which impede the flow of water, making shallow pools. In the distributing chambers, 1.5-inch diameter G pipes are installed after every five feet for proper distribution of water.

Water flows in small quantities and at low velocity through the G pipes, and freezes instantly. The process of ice formation continues for three to four winter months and a huge reserve of ice accumulates on the mountain slope, aptly termed “artificial glacier.”

I emphasize this for two reasons: 1) It's extraordinarily easy to dismiss the idea of building "artificial glaciers" simply on the basis of the phrase alone. That is, the very phrase "artificial glaciers" sounds pseudo-scientific, impossibly complex, and disastrously fossil-fuel dependent. However, it's actually a remarkably straight-forward design process, involving thermal site-specificity and vernacular building materials. 2) The idea of "artificial glaciers" also reeks of space-operatic self-indulgence, but the fundamental purpose of these structures is to create a reliable freshwater reservoir (or ice reserve) for rural communities.

We're not talking about nuclear-powered snow-blowers built and operated by Darth Vader, in other words; we're talking about rural Himalayan villagers who have learned to reorganize their region's existing snowpack so as to make it thermally self-sustaining.

Or, as Norphel himself phrases it, "Apart from solving the irrigation problem, the artificial glaciers help in the recharging of ground water and rejuvenation of springs. They enable farmers to harvest two crops in a year, help in developing pastures for cattle rearing and reducing water sharing disputes among the farmers."

[Image: From Wired Science's photo gallery, "Stunning Views of Glaciers Seen From Space"].

Having said that, the design possibilities become truly amazing when you scale this up, from a vernacular aid project to the level of carefully-maintained industrial infrastructure, and when you consider a wide range of alternative reasons for stockpiling ice (and, of course, things go bonkers if you let yourself consider genuinely and deliberately sci-fi-inflected ideas, such as maintaining artificial glaciers at the lunar south pole or using artificial glaciation as a Martian terraforming technique).

In any and all cases here, this makes artificial glaciers a fascinating topic for an architectural design studio—at least in my opinion—and the resulting conversations (and even open disagreements) about this topic have been very much worth the time already.

#glacierislandstorm

Crayon Fields from Melbourne makes seriously lushy and wushy romantic stuff from the midst of urb-tropical landscapes.



They've got a new video out for "Graceless" that manages to capture the feeling of their last year's "All the Pleasures of the World" album's aesthetics gracefully, and  combined with the previous videos it's like a moving painting.



What's there not to love?

This week I've found myself doing alot of snapping and shouting. I blame the weather in part. It's been 40 degrees plus recently. I blame stress. In addition to worrying about Mr Large and his literacy "issues" we've discovered his teacher is taking leave, effective almost immediately. I feel sad for her and really, really stinking upset for my son who thinks she's wonderful. It's the week before my Bronze Medallion exams, FINALLY next week I'll get the exams out of the way and hopefully (fingers tightly crossed) pass them. I screwed up the courage to sign up for a course to improve my writing, and now it's almost here I'm terrified they will tell me my writing is AWFUL. And mother in law's birthday is coming up and apparently I have to organise to go out for a meal with them. On Sunday. Great.
So I haven't been a very nice person in general.
And then yesterday I had a lightbulb moment and I had this incredibly random thought.
What if I died, and my husband remarried and I was watching down from heaven, and saw his new wife treating my children and him, the way I am treating them?
I would want to kill her.
Or maim her at the very least.
Now apart from being a random idea, and for those of you who don't believe in the ever after, telling me I'm stupid beyond words, I think my point has merit.
And since then I've thought twice before snapping, or yelling.
I even told my husband to have a great time at his poker night.
I smiled at my children when they wanted to read the same story for the 7th time. And read it, with accents and everything.
And when Mr Small could not stop sobbing, because he loves his daddy and if daddy doesnt put him to bed the world will end or something.
Well I ignored my fatigue and the fact that I REALLY wanted to watch the latest episode of "Greys Anatomy" and we snuggled.
Until he did this.
And I loved every second of it.
I thought the "upstairs me" would approve.

In 2003, I climbed Chair Peak for the first time.

A post on Cascadeclimbers.com made it sound as if the route was in excellent condition. I had been ice climbing a lot that winter and wanted to up the ante...so I decided to solo the route.

I arrived early in the morning, skied in and sent the route. Of course that all sounds very simple. The reality is that the route wasn't in very good shape. In fact, one might say it was in quite poor shape. There was a lot of steep unconsolidated snow on the line and the crux moves demanded mixed climbing above a five-hundred foot void.

In other words, the climb was mildly terrifying.

And I was tremendously proud of my solo accomplishment...

In the seven years since that ascent, things have changed. I've become a father. And this particular life-changing experience has made me quite a bit more conservative in my personal climbing. It's now hard for me to justify soloing to myself. That's not to say that I think soloing is a universally bad thing. It's just not right for me anymore.

I'm still proud of that 2003 ascent. So when former AAI guide Gene Pires sent out an email in an attempt to find a partner for a Chair Peak trip, I eagerly accepted. I've always wanted to go back to that mountain with a partner in the hopes of finding better conditions...and perhaps reliving some of fun of that solo without reliving the danger.

I've been climbing on and off with Gene since we met in college in the early nineties. He's always been a reliable partner who is more than ready to joke about pretty much anything. He also has a toddler that is about the same age as my daughter. In other words, half the day was spent talking about climbing and the other half was spent talking about potty training. It was a lot of fun to spend the day with an old friend.

We made the approach on snowshoes and climbed the route in good style, swapping pitches to the top. We found excellent conditions. The line was "in-shape" and was composed of a mix of water ice and neve. The route varied in angle from fifty to seventy degrees with occasional spots of thin ice over rock. There was almost no comparison to the way the route was in 2003. Back then it felt extremely insecure. On our recent ascent, with the exception of a handful of thin moves, it was an absolutely delightful climb.

Alpine climbs can change dramatically from one day to the next, especially alpine ice climbs. People don't change as fast, but inevitably they change too. I'm a very different person than I was seven years ago and it was good to look at the mountain with the eyes of a father looking to get out with a partner, instead of with the eyes of a hungry alpinist trying to define himself...

--Jason D. Martin

... For a London based publisher. Have a closer look on Flickr.

Eftersom temperaturen stigit och det ser rejält grått och tråkigt ut när jag kikar ut genom fönstret förbereder jag mig på ett tungt pass. Snömoddig fartlek. Fart och fart, tar jag mig framåt är jag glad. Följande gator ska passeras:

The other day I took my students up to the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory for an afternoon of tours through the awe-inspiring Core Lab and for a visit with the Borehole Group; we stopped in at the Lamont-Doherty seismic research station along the way, where we watched our technician-guide create artificial earthquakes with a wooden mallet so that we could watch his digital equipment go to work. It was a great day.

[Images: Inside the Core Lab at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory].

While we were in the Core Lab, however (photographs of which you see above), our guide mentioned that many of the older core samples—where a coring device is dropped all the way to the seabed in order to take a large cylindrical sample of geological material back to the surface for archiving and analysis—were taken not from ships but from icebergs.

These mobile islands of ice would be temporarily repurposed, turned into science labs at sea. Researchers would simply ride them till they melted, often quite far south into the waters of the North Atlantic.

I had forgotten about this. Oddly, I have been meaning to post about an old ice island called Drift Station Bravo, used for exactly these sorts of purposes, since the earliest days of BLDGBLOG (in fact, I mentioned Drift Station Bravo in a very old interview with Ballardian).

In light of the Glacier/Island/Storm studio, then, and after our inspiring tour of Lamont-Doherty, I thought I'd briefly recount this awesome story.

[Image: Drift Station Bravo postage cancellation mark, via Polar Philately].

As explained by the Polar Philately page, Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher, commander of an Air Force weather squadron stationed in the Arctic, discovered "a large tabular iceberg... that had broken off the Arctic ice shelf... [and] gone adrift."

This island of solid ice was soon "codenamed T-1, taken from its original radar designation as a target." Future "ice islands" were codenamed T-2 and T-3.

On March 19, 1952, the U.S. Air Force led by Colonel Fletcher and some scientists landed on this ice island [T-3] in a C-47 aircraft, setting up a weather observation station. Fletcher established a research station that was manned at this big ice sheet for roughly the next 25 years, despite a grim quote given by the head of the Alaska Air Command at the time, a General Old, who was quoted in a Life magazine article of the time as saying "I don't see how any man can live on this thing."

These details seem worth repeating: Fletcher's weather station was operated on a repurposed but naturally occuring ice island for 25 years.

Fletcher's Ice Island, and the research station that was located on it, rotated in circles in the Arctic Ocean, floating aimlessly along in the Arctic currents in a clockwise direction. The station was inhabited mainly by scientists along with a few military crewmen and was resupplied during its existence primarily by military planes operating from Barrow, Alaska.

Even better, the island—later renamed "Drift Station Bravo"—was inhabited long enough that it actually got its own postal network.

[Image: Letters postmarked from Drift Station Bravo, via Polar Philately].

Again, from the Polar Philately website:

During the period of active habitation, T-3 covers [basically postage stamps] were serviced, each stamped with a variety of hand-stamped cachets and markings, dated, and often marked with a manuscript notation of the geographic position of the drifting station on that particular day of ops. The T-3/Bravo covers were often cancelled at Barrow or at a USAF base in Alaska, and then placed in the mailstream.

The envelope, in other words, was stamped with the latitude and longitude of the iceberg at the moment of that letter's departure.

[Image: A postal marking from Drift Station Bravo, via Polar Philately].

Over on InfraNet Lab, we read that ice "has been a strategic building material in the Arctic for the construction of roads, airstrips, housing, and, in the last few decades, as temporary drilling platforms to explore for oil."

Ice islands are formed by spraying ice into cold air (below 20 degrees F), and layering the ice until it reaches a thickened state. These islands are either grounded at the bottom of the sea floor or are floating structures in deeper waters. Fabricated in just two months, these islands provide enough stability to support exploratory drilling tools including the rig and attendant equipment.

One of many amazing things about Drift Station Bravo, however, is that it was an administratively claimed piece of naturally existing, mobile territory. It wasn't created in any genuine architectural sense, simply redirected, named, and given its own postal identity.

Given this act of territorial appropriation, and bearing in mind the island's fundamental state of mobility, what are the implications for its maritime jurisdiction, as Enrique Ramirez explores over on a456?

[Image: A letter from Drift Station Bravo, via Polar Philately].

This becomes a question of immediate geopolitical concern when we consider the fact that Drift Station Bravo and its ilk were actually created in a Sputnik-like reaction to the Soviet's own very active ice island program. The Soviets "already operated six drifting ice camps of this kind," we read in a documentary transcript, downloadable as a 27kb PDF, but, "owing to the particular strategic importance and sensitivity of the Arctic Basin, little information from these early Soviet stations had reached the West."

That same transcript goes on to explain exactly how the U.S managed to architecturally colonize these nomadic ice worlds. Like a vision straight out of Archigram, military civilization on the ice established itself as follows:

...a ski-equipped C-47 landed on the ice and deployed the first team of workers. It included an Air Force Major as camp commander and several soldiers with technical skills who had volunteered for 6 months duty on the ice, plus four of the typical tough and versatile Alaskan construction workers.

Modular buildings, called Jamesway huts, camp supplies, fuels, two small World War II Studebaker tractors, called Weasel, and a small bulldozer, were dropped by parachutes.

I could quote the entire PDF, in fact, as it is easily one of the most fascinating things I've read, but a particularly eye-popping detail comes when we read that these researchers deliberately generated earthquakes in the iceberg they lived on: "we generated tiny earthquakes in the ice. The propagation of the compressional waves generated in this way are used to study the elastic properties of the ice."

The story expands rapidly from here. In an article originally published in the September-October 1966 issue of Air University Review, we read that competitive Soviet drift stations apparently discovered a "second magnetic north pole... located near 80° N and 178° W, with magnetic medians extending across the Arctic Ocean," and that sulfuric gas fumes from a badly timed undersea volcanic eruption killed at least one unlucky crew member.

The whole thing amazes me, in fact. I don't know why I've been sitting on this story for so long, but it's nice, finally, to put something up about Drift Station Bravo. How many other icebergs actually had their own postal codes?

(I owe a huge thanks to the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory staff for taking my students around their facilities—we had a great time. Thanks!)

[Image: "Drawing shows ice island, frozen by liquid air, proposed by German scientist as a floating harbor and landing field"; via InfraNet Lab].

InfraNet Lab's new post on artificial ice islands—and the architectural use of ice as a building material for things like roads, drilling platforms, remote airstrips, and more—is absolutely fascinating and a must-read. Don't miss it.

More on ice islands coming soon!

By way of a quick update, several fantastic new posts have joined this week's ongoing series of linked conversations, part of the Glacier/Island/Storm studio at Columbia's GSAPP.

[Image: Map showing a straight baseline separating internal waters from zones of maritime jurisdiction; via a456].

Here is a complete list so far, featuring the most recent posts and going backward in temporal order from there [note: this list has been updated as of February 26]. By all means, feel free to jump in with comments on any of them:

—Nick Sowers of UC-Berkeley/Archinect School Blog Project on "Super/Typhoon/Wall"

—Stephen Becker and Rob Holmes of mammoth on "saharan miami," "translation, machines, and embassies," and "islands draw the clouds, and glaciers are wind-catchers"

— Mason White, Maya Przybylski, Neeraj Bhatia, and Lola Sheppard of InfraNet Lab on "Particulate Swarms"

—David Gissen of HTC Experiments on "A contribution, a mini-review, a plug"

—Enrique Ramirez of a456 on "Baselines Straight and Normal"

—InfraNet Lab on "Islands of Speculation/Speculation on Islands: Spray Ice" (nice comments on this one)


[Video: #climatedata by by Michael Schieben; via Serial Consign].

—Greg J. Smith of Serial Consign on "Glacier/Island/Storm: Three Tangents" (interesting comments developing here)

—mammoth on "Thilafushi" and "The North American Storm Control Authority" (enthusiastic comments thread on the latter link)

—Tim Maly of Quiet Babylon on "Islands in the Net" (interesting comments also developing here)

—Nicola Twilley of Edible Geography on "The Ice Program" (great comments here, too!)

—mammoth on "A Glacier is a Very Long Event" (another interesting comment thread)

—InfraNet Lab on "LandFab, or Manufacturing Terrain"

—Nick Sowers on "Design to Fail"

Finally, I was excited to see that Ethel Baraona Pohl and César Reyes Nájera have jumped into the conversation, adding their own thoughts over at dpr-barcelona; and Alexander Trevi of Pruned has also supplied a Glacier/Island/Storm-themed guide to his own archives in this hashtag switchboard. And that's in addition to some ongoing posts here on BLDGBLOG.

It's been a great week for new content, I think, and all of the above are worth reading in full.

[Image: Photo by Andy Marshall of Foto Facade from his awesome Flickr set Beverley Minster Hoodmould Carvings].

Continuing, briefly, with the ideas presented in the previous post, I wanted to add two more things:

1) Could ancient astronomical events also have been recorded in architectural ornament (not just in paintings or poetry)? In other words, somewhere beneath the overgrown vines of some Indiana Jones-like complex in the Cambodian rain forest—or carved into the solid rock of a minor cathedral near Dijon—is a bas-relief depicting a star gone nova six hundred years ago. This astral disaster left no other record than that. Previously unknown celestial events could thus be pieced together through stone carvings found as far apart as a village church in Russia and a temple on the Deccan Plateau—or even stars in stained glass windows. So is there an architectural equivalent to the appearance of Halley's Comet's in the Bayeux Tapestry? A previously unknown meteor shower historically recorded in a chapel's stone vault?

2) What about epidemiological history as recorded in architectural ornament? Of course, there are already dozens of examples of medical historians determining, through close readings and reinterpretations of literary document, that such and such a king or character must have been suffering from syphilis or a brain tumor or lead-induced dementia. But I'm specifically interested here in how medical symptoms might have taken on ornamental form. Perhaps, in the writhing Gothic forms of church facades—in those old carved faces depicting humans hybridized with angels and demons, plants and animals, minerals and gods—we might yet discover the symptomological clues of some horrifying medieval plague or outbreak. You travel to a remote mountain village in Macedonia to study vernacular church-building traditions only to find a shunned building on the edge of town whose ornamentation borders on the grotesque—and you soon realize that you've discovered not just an architectural masterpiece but evidence of a forgotten disease, similar to Ebola, that had otherwise gone unrecorded. At the very least, this would make for an awesome potboiler or short novel, that I would absolutely love to write (attention, publishers!).

My point, though, is to ask if there are any real-world examples of architectural ornament in which something like an unknown astronomical event, or a disease forgotten by the modern world (weird bodies on a stone frieze in northern India). If so, how might these strange carving be subject to the same type of analysis as explored in the previous post?

I sense a new historical field here—called ornamental forensics—just waiting to happen.

Till min stora förvåning var tåget bara knappa tjugo minuter försenat in på Stockholms central imorse. En bra start på en bra helg! Dagen har som vanligt vid mina storstadsvistelser gått i ett nafs, men det är intressant att se hur mycket man faktiskt hinner med när man har vilodag:

♥ En trevlig lunch och pratstund med Sofie
♥ En tur runt på diverse löp- och sportaffärer för en byteslös jakt på ytterligare ett par kompressionsstrumpor.
♥ En obligatorisk sväng in på HM vilket resulterade i (ytterligare) ett par nya skor. 150kr är ett bra pris!
♥ En mysig fika, uppdatering och helgplanering med bästa Ellen.
♥ En stunds bloggläsande, bloggande och facebookande.

Nu är det dags för tacos, OS och mys. Hoppas även du har haft en innehållsrik dag!

Northwest:

--Three experienced cross-country skiers who were buried after an avalanche near Clearwater, B.C., last Wednesday were able to escape, but one of them later died in hospital after a long journey back to town. RCMP said the men were in an area known as "the frowbowl," which is located on the north side of Raft Peak near Clearwater, when the avalanche occurred at around 10:30 a.m. One of the men was able to keep the fingers of one hand above the surface of the snow. He started moving them to begin the slow process of digging himself out. To read more, click here.

--AAI Guide Forest McBrian recently completed the infamous Pickets Traverse in the Cascades on skis. Forest and his partner skied from Stetattle ridge to Hannegan Pass through both the southern and northern Pickets. He said that it was probably "like the Haute Route was 10,000 years ago." To read more, click here and here.

--When the two attackers accosted him on a snowy cross-country ski trail, demanding his car keys, Kevin Tracey thought it would be a simple robbery. He handed over his keys and then his backpack, thinking the men would be satisfied and go away. But, as he recounted Monday to a jury, the next moments turned into a horrifying ordeal of being brutally clubbed, strangled and left to die in the woods near Dougan Falls on the Washougal River. To read more, click here and here and here.

Sierra:

--AAI guide Kristen Looper was featured on page 16 in Climbing magazine's "Photo of the Month." Kristen is leading Space Truckin' (5.10a) in the Desolation Wilderness near Lake Tahoe.

--Yosemite National Park is initiating public scoping for the Curry Village Rockfall Hazard Zone Structures Project. Compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) will be coordinated through development of an environmental assessment (EA). The public scoping period for the EA will open on Thursday, February 25, 2010 and will extend through Wednesday, April 7, 2010. To read more, click here.

--Prior to the regular Mammoth Town Council meeting on Feb. 17, the Council met with the Airport Commission and discussed everything from the summer air service expected to kick off April 11 to the 10,000 enplanements necessary for the Town to be able to put in for its $1 million incentive. According to the Chair of Airport Commission, Pam Murphy, summer air service will run one flight per day to and from Los Angeles. The service, at this time, is expected to run from April 11 (starting directly after winter service ends) through the end of September. It will then shut down for a few weeks and re-open right before Thanksgiving. To read more, click here.

Desert Southwest:

--A citizens advisory panel Thursday approved increasing entrance fees at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. The new fee schedule, which charges motorists $7 per vehicle for a daily pass on the scenic drive and $3 for bicyclists and pedestrians, could take effect as soon as March 1 if the recommendation gets final approval from Bureau of Land Management State Director Ron Wenker. A daily vehicle pass has been $5 since the user fee program was launched in 1997. Pedestrians, such as hikers and joggers, and bicyclists have been allowed to enter the park free. Visitors who hold $20 annual passes will be allowed to use them through their expiration dates. The new fee schedule sets the price of an "annual support pass" at $30. To read more, click here.

--Despite the recession, or perhaps because of it, 286 million visitors flocked to national parks last year, an increase of 10 million people. Utah's national park units attracted just over 9 million visitors during the year, up by 300,000. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar speculated Tuesday that the increases may have come because families on tight budgets view parks as bargains, parks offered free visitation on three weekends, and parks attracted extra attention because of President Barack Obama's visit to the Grand Canyon and Ken Burns's documentary on the history of parks. To read more, click here.

Alaska:

--Bradford Washburn will be inducted into the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame on February 25. Washburn, who died in 2007 at the age of 96, was the pioneering mountaineer, photographer, mapmaker, and museum director for whom the American Mountaineering Museum in Colorado is named. To read more, click here.

Notes from All Over:

--An avalanche crashed down on a village in northwestern Pakistan, burying houses and leaving more than 50 people dead or missing, officials said last week. Rescuer teams digging into the snow and rubble almost a full day after Wednesday night's avalanche had recovered 38 bodies and had little hope that 14 people still missing would be found alive, local government Aminul Haq told Dunya television. To read more, click here.

--An avalanche killed a backcountry skier in Grand Teton National Park on Sunday morning. Wray Landon, Brady Johnston and Nathan Brown just summited the South Teton (12,514') via the Northwest Couloir. They skied a few hundred vertical feet down the Southeast Face when the snow fractured, caught Landon in a slide, and carried him over a 1,500' cliff. To read more, click here.

--A Colorado skier was missing after an avalanche occurred Tuesday afternoon near one of the Aspen area's most popular backcountry huts. Eight skiers were in the group when the avalanche happened around 4 p.m. near the Lindley Hut outside Ashcroft. The skiers, all locals, are very experienced in the backcountry, said Renee Rayton, Pitkin County Sheriff's deputy. To read more, click here.

--The International Olympic Committee has opened the door to the possibility of sport climbing as an Olympic event in 2020. On February 12th, the IOC formerly recognized the International Federation of Sport Climbing as the governing body for the sport. This particular step is one of the most important in the development of a new Olympic event. The IFSC is now frantically working to have climbing included in the 2020 summer games. To read more, click here and here.

--On Monday a nearly century old rule was changed. People are now allowed to carry loaded handguns, rifles and shotguns in national parks and wildlife refuges, as long as the state in which the park is located allows guns. The controversial rule change was part of a bill which congress passed in May. The rule's passage was a bitter defeat for gun-control advocates, and for others who worry that loaded guns will bring about more violence in now-peaceful places. To read more, click here. To read our opinion blog on this, click here.

--The Obama Administration is currently considering the creation of 14 new national monuments in nine states. The monuments will include sensitive areas like the Ceder Mesa and the San Rafael Swell in Utah. Conservative law-makers are up-in-arms about the possibility that more areas will be included on protected lists. To read more, click here.


--The Pitkin County Open Space and Trails Board in Colorado has placed a temporary ban on bolting and drilling by rock climbers on county land. The moratorium will stay in place until they can develop a “comprehensive climbing management plan,” said open space ranger John Armstrong. To read more, click here.