No snow work last week, but to back track a bittle (that’s not a typo, it’s a combo of bit and little). We did kick the Dungeness’s ass a few weeks ago. Dwight said “we will make it if we have to hike from Slab Camp!” and guess what we did. We did just that. We drove until we were scraping in more than one place, then rolled down onto a clear spot…little did we expect getting stuck on bare ground, but we did. The come along got its first work out and it makes me wish we had more tow straps for events like that, it was way easier than pushing and digging to get it out.

We did a momentous hike up the trail from slab camp with some nice views. When we made it up to the top of Deer Ridge it started to snow, it was very wet nasty snow. Because of the warming we have had recently, snowshoes were a must after the set of benches on the ridge. It was more like walking in frozen yogurt, but we got to the top and did our work. For some reason it felt really cold up there, but the met station said it was just below freezing. Well the met station might be wrong, apparently sometime in April it went kablooey on us, the RH sensor read a consistent -200%. So we were met with a boisterous error light flashing in our faces. We reset the met station and how our RH sensor doesn’t even show up. Of course, the expensive piece of technology fails on the most remote location. We did dig a snow pit and collect some samples for bacteria analysis...as boring as that sounds, it is pretty interesting. Just a side note for all of you who go up to Deer Ridge. It is faster to take the trail down than the road...by far.

Not all technology is worth bitching about. Dwight and I finally got to go to the WAURISA (GIS) conference in Seattle. After a little planning fiasco, I was able to sneak in and spend my birthday in a workshop about project management for GIS, skills I probably won’t need until I am about 35. Hopefully I can use what I learned to appeal to someone who is 35+ and has something I want. Above all, the food was the best part of the conference, while we were there we had Mexican, Thai, and sushi…as well as realizing the beauty behind top shelf tequila, and not in a “get crunk” kind of way.

At the conference there were some interesting ideas presented, met some pretty good contacts and presented the wildfire work. I took second in the student presentation…once again the UW grad students took top honors. I kind of look forward to going into a masters program so I can beat undergrads. All in all I learned quite a bit and had a good time…next conference, San Diego...maybe?