Vacation

Oh yes, I've been on vacation. Since my parents were here this vacation was a bit slower and involved less beer than usual. Some impressions:

* The service staff in Banff seems to consist to 50% of Australians left over from the ski season.

* The road between Lake Louise and Jasper has to qualify to the top ten list of the world's most beautiful highways.

* It is almost possible to get tired of waterfalls and canyons.

* It is understandable that some hockey players are sceptic towards living in Edmonton.

* Animal sightings: deer, elk, mountain goats, bald eagle and an awful lot of squirrels.


More photos at Picasa.

Hello global warming

It's been sunny and around 30 degrees C for about 3-4 weeks now. Apparently unusually warm, unusually long for Calgary. In Sweden it's been raining since May.

View

View from the kitchen window.

Freak of the Week?

Saw a dude with a helmet on at the gym today. That was a first...

Mountain of the Week - Sentinel Pass and Wasatch Pass

Okay, mountain of the week should really be pass of the week and was more of a hike than a scramble. A fantastic hike, I might add. We started at Moraine Lake (which is depicted on the backside of Canada's old 20 dollar bills) close to Lake Louise. The first three k:s are not very exciting, switchbacks through pine trees, but then you reach Larch Valley full of larch trees, meadows and wild flowers. Around you you have the ten peaks and the majestic Mount Temple, the highest mountain in the region with its 3544 m. We went over Sentinel Pass (2606 m), between Pinnacle Peak and Temple, and into Paradise Valley. Sentinel Pass got its name from the high pointy rock formations.


Paradise Valley lives up to its name. Surronded by mighty mountains where you can hear avalanches roar down the mountain sides, forest covered slopes and meadows in the valley with small streams, it is an impressive valley.


After a few kilometers in the valley it's time for the next pass, Wasatch Pass. You work your way up boulder fields, scree and steep snow slopes to reach the top and catch a glimpse of Eiffel Lake. After the descent to Eiffel Lake there is easy hiking for about 6 km back to Moraine Lake. The trip was in total about 17 km and 1200 m total elevation gain. Anyone visiting the area around Lake Louise shouldn't miss Larch Valley and Paradise Valley. No bears this week, we had to be satisfied with chipmunks, a deer and a porcupine.


Picasa.

Super-K

Cool pictures from Super-Kamiokande (after the repair).



Via Dark Roasted Blend.

Canada Day

Canada's national day today. It's 140 years since Canada became independent from Great Britain. As an independent nation Canada is not very old...

Mountain of the Week - Mt Kidd North

No more 85-year olds or women with bionic feet, this week's mountain was a real scramble with an elevation gain of 1350 m over 11 km and the highest point at 2950 m. I was tired when I reached the summit. Walking up scree sucks, it's two steps forward and one back. Walking down scree is much better, you're basically gliding down the mountain. An even more entertaining way of getting down the mountain is glissading, which means that you find a snow covered slope, sit down on your bum and slide.

The weather was so-so, during the day. It was raining during the night which made me worry that there would be new snow on the mountain. You do want snow because it is easier kick stepping up snow covered slopes rather than walking up scree but new snow lays itself in a layer on top of the old one and it can easily cause small avalanches leading to accidents. Luckily there was no new snow and it didn't start to rain until we returned to the parking lot after nine hours. However, the mountain was covered in mist most of the time which made the navigation a bit tricky. The guide book said "after the ridge you will see an obvious gully to follow to the top". We saw nothing, but our organizers got us to the summit even if we did take a bit of a detour.


This day 85 year old Ed wasn't on the trip but instead we had a 66 year old crazy Iranian. He is fitter than most of us but has a tendency to wander off on his own and get lost. Once they had to call in the rangers (or Bush Police as he called them) to find him. They found him on the highway trying to hitchhike back to Calgary.


The bear of the week was on the roadside when we went past in the car. Someone yelled "oh, a bear" and this time I actually saw something black by the road.

Tesla music

More on the subject of tesla coils. Check out Steve Ward's Singing Tesla Coil. Coooool.

Stolen from A World of Abstinence.

Mountain of the Week - w 23

This week's mountain is Eagle Hill and Deer Ridge in the Sibbald Creel area. After seeing photos from last week's hike my Chinese room mate wanted to join me. Even though he is used to mountains from his province in China I didn't want to lure him into something too difficult (his outdoor gear consisted of runners and an umbrella). We ended up doing a fairly easy hike of 16 km and 400 m elevation. Mostly forest landscape but once we reached the highest point we got a nice view of the valley. Close to the start of the hike I almost got eaten by a bear.
OK, I didn't almost get eaten but I almost saw a bear, i.e. some of the others in the group saw a bear.

Home sweet home

The New York Times visits Göteborg. Not a fantastic article but still...

Alice and Bob are getting farther apart

A new length record for quantum communication is reported by New Scientist and Nature Physics. The record is 144 km and the signal was sent by free space link.

Via Abstinence Kid.

Thunderstruck

It's been nice and warm (25 ^oC) in Calgary for a couple of days and therefore yesterdays lightning/rain storm was not unexpected. But what a storm it was! It was a magnificent lightshow that me and J watched from the open garage door while drinking brandy. Some pictures from the Calgary Herald are available here.

Mountain of the Week

This week's mountain was Heart Mountain, an easy scramble. About 10 km round trip, 875 m elevation gain and the highest peak is at 2135 m. A very nice trip with quite steep hiking in the begining up to the first summit, two-three easy ridge walks with nice views and then an easy descent. Brilliant wheather and no hurting IT bands made the day even better. I was sweating buckets though, and since I didn't bring enough water I had to rehydrate with two pints at the pub when we got back. As one of the girls cut her knee on a sharp rock and got a fairly deep wound I also realised that one should not only carry a first aid kit, one should also know what's in it and how to use the stuff...

Black holes is da shit?

Two PRL:s within four months is something that Campanelli et al seems to have achieved. They have developed a new computational algorithm for gravitation and have used it to perform simulations of two black holes merging Phys Rev Lett 96 (2007) 111101. The paper (or its animations?) were noticed by Physics News Graphic which I found via Dark Roasted Blend.

This weeks Physical Review Focus mentions two papers looking very similar to Campanelli's, and indeed, one of the papers have basically the same authors as the article mentioned above. It is not unusual that one project renders several similar papers. Usually one writes a short paper briefly describing the finding and then complements with longer, more detailed papers. Two PRL:s though is very well done. My gravitation and cosmology and my knowledge of computer algorithms is a bit rusty but I suspect that the authors got some extra attention since they produced some cool pictures and animations. The research is probably top class (they did get it in to PRL) but if you want to make your voice heard in the scientific noise it doesn't hurt to have some fancy graphic.

Birthday present

Got $1100 back on my taxes. Nice. On the other hand it means that the Canadian government has borrowed $1100 from me without interest but I prefer to look upon it as bonus money.

Time goes by...

So, one year older again. This time I have become a bit wiser, or at least richer in experience. I still claim though, that surviving one more isn't that big of an achievement. This does not mean it's not a reason to celebrate, I'm just saying that there are bigger achievements more worthy of celebration that tend to occur more often than birthdays.

I'm slowly, but reluctantly, starting to accept that I'm not 25 anymore. Despite of that, a small part of me was still happy when I had to show ID at the liqour store the other month.

Castle Mountain

This week's hike went to Castle Mountain Lookout in Banff. This time we didn't only have 85 year old Ed in his runners with us but also a girl with a bionic foot.

What's next?

Ha Ling Peak

On Saturday it's above 20 degrees and one gets sunburned whilst sitting on the deck drinking beer. On Sunday, when [cmh] is going hiking, it's 7 degrees and raining. Despite the grumpy weather it turned out to be a good day arranged by the Calgary Outdoor Club. The destination was Ha Ling Peak in Canmore, a peak which looks very impressive from the highway but the backside offers an easy scramble, i.e. steep hiking. On the way up it was not raining but on the other hand there was a fog that robbed us of the view. On the way down it started snowing and we got lost. After quite a bit of walking in knee deep snow some coward pulled out a GPS and got us back on the trail.

Ha Ling Peak got its present name in 1997 when it was changed from Chinamans Peak to the more politically correct Ha Ling Peak. Ha Ling was a cook in Canmore that made a bet that he could reach the summit and be back in Canmore within 10 hours. As proof that he had really reached the top he placed a flag there. We actually only had to climb 734 m to reach the top from the parking lot. Still, one gets 2407 m above sea level which actually is higher than Kebnekaise, the highest point in Sweden.

One other noteworthy thing is that our organizer was 85 years old and did the scramble in runners.

Big in Peru

The amazing goal that IFK Göteborg's midfielder Andres Vásquez scored this Monday was for a while the most popular video on YouTube. However, the coolest video about this goal comes from Peruvian television (Andres is, despite his thick Göteborg accent, born i Peru).