I grew up near Denver Colorado and did as much as I could to spend my summers and winters outdoors. The thing I love most of all about Colorado is skiing. I can snowboard as well, although everybody knows that skiing is the superior sport. In the summer, I do a lot of hiking and camping, and very recently I have gotten into rock climbing and mountaineering. I have been an avid dirt biker as well. I was never much into track riding, and I mostly did trail riding up in summit county, but I have done quite a few hare scrambles and poker runs as well. I went to the University of Colorado for Astrophysics. When I moved to Arizona for grad school, I named my dog after Boulder, the town where CU is located. Arizona has a surprising amount of good hiking and camping, although the snow is no match for CO.
Skiing
Antarctica- The Fun Parts!
Colorado Trail
I hiked the Colorado Trail in the summer between my dissertation and starting my post-doc at UCSB. The Colorado Trail is 486 miles long, starting ~5 minutes away from my parents house in SW Littleton and ending in Durango. The average elevation is 11,000 ft, and the high point is 13,200 ft. I began on June 12th, 2018 from the Indian Peaks alternate TH (the Waterton Canyon TH was closed) and finished on July 19. I took two 'zeros' on the trail, one with Garrett in Gunnison for 4th of July and one with Garrett, Theresa, and Paul a few days later. My trail name is Snowbasket because I started hiking with my mom's snowshoeing poles rather than Trekking poles. This was one of the most rewarding accomplishments I have achieved so far, and highly recommend it or a similar trail journay for anyone considering it.
Mountaineering in my Grandparent's Footsteps
My grandparents were farmers in rural Iowa, but hat didn't stop them from climbing (amongst many others) the Tetons, the Matterhorn, Malte Brun in New Zealand, the Bugaboos in Canada, and Mt. Pisco in Peru, including a first ascent of the Black Aguille in the Sawtooth Range in Idaho. They were part of the Iowa Mountaineers, a notorious group at the time. My goal is to climb those peaks and learn more about my grandparents in the process.
Boulder the Dog
Video about STO-1
Here is a video made during the first campaign of the Stratospheric Terahertz Observatory (STO-1) mission. This was made during the 2011/2012 Antarctic field campaign, which was before I started graduate school and was part of the STO program. However, the scientific foundation behind both missions is the same, and this video gives a good overview of both STO and Antarctic ballooning programs in general. It gives you a good taste of what life is like in McMurdo too!