I put “easiest” in quotes because there is a back story to Mount Jackson as it relates to our 4000 footer quest. Last year, during Katy’s spring break in early March, the two of us took a trip up to Mount Jackson to make our first ever attempt at a winter 4000 foot summit. The forecast for that day last March called for partly cloudy with temperatures in the upper 20′s and a chance of flurries. Doesn’t sound too bad! We did not own snowshoes at this point so we rented our gear and headed off. When we arrived in Crawford Notch last year the snowbanks were well over 10 feet high and we had trouble even finding the trailhead on the side of the road. As you can see by the side-by-side trailhead shots from last year and this year, there was several more feet of snow on the ground at the bottom of the mountain. Regardless, we trudged our way in several feet of snow of an unbroken trail, fell into a spruce trap or two on the way up, and made our way to just below the summit cone. The final 200 meters or so of the hike up Jackson is extremely steep, and by this point we were up to about five or six feet of snow on the ground with heavy snow coming down. We weren’t quite sure where the trail went from here (since it was completely unbroken) and tried several routes up the cliff of ice and snow in front of us. After several attempts we finally turned back. It was an adventure and I enjoyed the trip, but there was a twinge of disappoint in not reaching the summit.

So this year we were back for our revenge. The forecast for this morning called for, yes, partly cloudy with temperatures in the upper 20′s and a chance of flurries. Perfect! The real barrier to our success last time, though, was not really the flurries turned blizzard, it was the sheer depth of the snow and the unbroken trail conditions that we faced. When we arrived at the trail head this morning, it was cold with a mix of sun and clouds, and of course much less snow than last year. The trail was well packed out by recent hikers but still with a decent enough depth and consistency to warrant snowshoes. We saw several groups out today, many using microspikes with a couple other snowshoers in the mix. By the time we were on the trail, it was close to 10AM.

We worked our way up at a decent pace, quickly getting into a good groove. The clouds and blue sky were swapping in and out, and we actually did get a few flurries during the hike, but it wasn’t a flurry blizzard like the last time around. There were some reasonably steep sections of the trail up Mount Jackson, but we maneuvered through them with relative ease until we reached our nemesis: the summit cone. From here we could quickly see what happened to us last year — We took a wrong turn and ended up attempting an ascent of a sheer cliff. With a packed out trail we could see that there was a wide sweep around to the right that we missed or were unable to correctly follow last time around. This time we followed the correct route, and made it up the still very challenging, but manageable final scramble to the summit. Mission Accomplished.

The summit was partially clear and afforded views in all directions. This final section of the hike was the only section that popped up above treeline and it was a noticeable difference. The wind was howling and the windchill was likely below zero. We snapped a few pictures, took in a few views, and then headed back down. We were back to the car before 2PM and headed back home after finally exacting our revenge! 28 out of 48 4k footers now complete!

On Saturday morning we woke up early, packed up our hiking gear and an overnight bag, and headed up towards the White Mountains. We chose Mount Hale for this hike for a couple reasons. One is that it’s nice and easy, a short 4.4 mile round trip hike that will give us plenty of time to enjoy the rest of our weekend doing other things. Second, it’s conveniently located only a few minutes drive from the Mount Washington Hotel, a place that Katy has always wanted to stay and what better time to stay then now? We arrived at the trailhead just after 10AM with warm temperatures and surprisingly partly sunny skies. The forecast had been calling for a chance of showers all week so I had anticipated we might be in for a wet hike, but it turned out to be dry the whole way. The hike was short and straightforward, but pretty steep and steady nonetheless. We arrived at the summit in just over an hour. There’s not much to see on the top of Mount Hale as the open summit area is completely surrounded by relatively tall trees. We ate a snack, snapped some pictures and spoke with two other peakbagging couples for a while at the peak before heading back down. The descent was also quite simple, and we were back at the car in the early afternoon and headed over to check into the hotel.

The Mount Washington Hotel is a beautiful place, and the weather actually improved and cleared out some more in time for us to explore the grounds, hang out by the pool, and then have dinner outside with views of the Presidentials. It was a short trip, but it really was nice to have a relaxing afternoon at a grandiose place such as this. It briefly brought me back to a little taste of our fantastic two weeks in Hawaii last year for our honeymoon. On Sunday morning it was foggy and rainy, but we continued our adventure seeking, going on a three hour zipline tour at the Bretton Woods ski area across the street. I had never done ziplining before, but it was a really neat experience. The course at this location had over a mile of ziplines in nine zips total with some over 150 feet off the ground. Cool!

Our recent adventure in the White Mountains barely lasted 36 hours but it felt like a vacation of much greater length. Sometimes just a taste of the perfect combination of fun and relaxation can go a long way.

On top of Mount Willey

Since we were spending the weekend with several other family members at AL and UP’s condo, I had thought we would get a few more takers to join us this time around. But alas, most were dissuaded by the early wakeup call and the hefty mileage. Only Katy, myself, and Mo were motivated enough to be out the door and heading to the trailhead in Crawford Notch at 7:45AM. By 8:30AM we were geared up and on the trail under perfectly clear skies but very crisp fall air in the mid 30′s.

Mount Tom summit

Mount Field summit

Feeding the gray jay

Ninja jump!

The Kinsman hiking crew

Since Labor Day weekend is always a popular time for hiking in the White Mountains, we were hoping to get an early start. The route we selected to climb the Kinsmans starts at the Lafayette Place campground which is also the trailhead for the loop trail up Mounts Lafayette and Lincoln, one of the most popular hikes in all of New England. The lot was filling up quickly when we arrived at 8:30AM, but we easily found a spot and were geared up and on the trail at about 8:45AM. The weather was partly cloudy and in the upper 50s at the trailhead, and the forecast looked pretty reasonable for the rest of the day with only a slight chance of a shower. We were off.

Triple Ninja jump

We arrived back at the car after our knee pounding descent at about 4:15PM, seven and a half hours total for the ten miler. Overall it was a great day and fun to bring Anne and Mo out for their first two 4000 footers! And finally, proof that Katy and I made it up North Kinsman, and South Kinsman.

Owen on the trail

Katy on the trail

Owen and Katy atop Mt. Moriah

Katy's summit ninja jump

With a busy rest of the summer ahead of us, it was good to get another mountain done. Hopefully we’ll find some time in the superior hiking months of September and October to knock off a few more!

Katy and Owen atop Mount Tecumseh

Katy on the trail

Katy's ninja pose at the summit

Fun and easy five mile hike. Perfect weather. Great company. Just what I needed.

It was very hard for me initially when Project Darkstar was canceled; it was more than just the obvious emotions that come with losing your job though. There’s one other experience from my past that I can compare it to. The circumstances were different, but the feelings and the emotions were eerily similar. For four years while at RPI, I was a member of the track and field team. It was more than just an extra-curricular for me, though, it was my primary focus. I was a highly competitive, contributing member of the team, and was one of the team captains in my final season. Each of the four years that I was there, we won the NYSCTC outdoor state track and field championships; I felt like I was part of something great. The 2005 ECAC championships was my final track meet in my collegiate career. Even though I knew going into it that the meet would be my last, I was not prepared for the emotions that I would feel afterwards. For four years I was part of something great, and just like that it was over. I still remember lying in bed that night, surprised at my own tears.

With Project Darkstar, I also felt like I was part of something great. Not only was it a great project, not only were we driving towards a goal that had never been achieved before, but we were also a great team. There were such a unique set of personalities on that team that all meshed together to form a sum greater than its parts. Not only that, but we were nestled inside of Sun Labs, which is probably one of the smartest collection of people you’ll ever find. The way that it was all torn away from us, so harshly and abruptly, and when we were so close to our goal, is what made it so difficult. Once again, I had established my place in something that was great, and just like that it was over.

It’s time to move on, now, though. If I’ve learned anything from my past it’s that there’s always something great waiting in my future. I’ve accepted a new position as a software engineer at Nokia and am actually very excited to begin work on Monday. I’ll be working on some scalable caching and indexing infrastructure for their service platforms, and am looking forward to a new and interesting challenge. I also plan to continue working on Project Darkstar’s successor, RedDwarf Server in my own personal free time. I obviously expect my available time to devote to that effort to be considerably more limited than it has been, however.

Things are looking up, and I’m looking forward to my next great thing.

I must have come across and handled this issue before, but at least on my Ubuntu installation, PDF documents generated by sequential latex, dvips, and ps2pdf commands default to A4 size paper. In order to get the correct US style letter paper, I have to explicitly use the “-t letter” option in dvips. After rooting around a bit, the command “texconfig paper letter” has changed my default system paper size for dvips, dvipdf, xdvi, and hopefully I’ll never make this mistake again!

P.S. Metric system? One day we will give in to your logical structure and simple unit conversion. Clearly, though, that day is not today.

I must say that the shock and disbelief of learning that you’ve been laid off is a predictably emotional time. Of course I didn’t think it would happen to me, but it did: proof that job security is all but an illusion. They say losing your job is like dealing with any other type of loss, which is absolutely true. Knowing this doesn’t make it any easier though. Despite this difficult situation, however, I have received nothing but support from my family, friends, colleagues and even people who were previously just casual acquaintances. Thank you to everyone who has been there so far; I know for a fact I’ll come out the other side of this a strong person.

As for my future, and the future of Project Darkstar? Well both are uncertain. I have already started ramping up and preparing for a full scale job search in the hope that I will find something even better than the best job I’ve ever had. In terms of Project Darkstar, a core group of former members of the team have already started exploring alternative ways to keep the project going. This includes both potential for-profit and volunteer efforts to carry out the original mission objectives laid out years ago. At the very least, after getting myself organized, I personally intend to continue working on the project on a part-time basis during my job search and hopefully beyond. More details to come…