{"id":882,"date":"2011-07-24T19:01:37","date_gmt":"2011-07-25T00:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/?p=882"},"modified":"2011-07-24T21:34:37","modified_gmt":"2011-07-25T02:34:37","slug":"chile-ing-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/2011\/07\/24\/chile-ing-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Chile-ing out"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post comes on the heels of the heat wave that we’ve been suffering through (and my dreams of glaciers and mountains), here in the American Middle-West, which in itself comes in the wake of the flood<\/a>. It also comes in envy of some of the fantastic photos that Steffi has posted over the past months in this post<\/a> and others.<\/p>\n

But the real inspiration came from the laboratory. We’ve recently had several new people join the lab, something which I usually find rejuvenating. We also have a student scheduled to graduate in two days time, and she has already arranged a big party at my house<\/strong>. To pour salt on the wounds, she complains to me that some of her friends are scared of me and might not want to come! I was tempted to tell her—oh never mind–back to the point.<\/p>\n

Where was I? Oh yes, so I was recently asked what my policy is about vacations. I think that newer recruits are often surprised to hear that I am all in favor, and not just for a long weekend.<\/p>\n

One cannot do bench science by remote control, but for hard working determined researchers, there’s nothing like a real vacation to spur some creativity as well as keep the motivation high. I know this, because I myself took a 6-week break in the course of my Ph.D. for a trip to Patagonia<\/a> in S. Chile and to the beautiful Lake District north of there.<\/p>\n

We started out flying from Santiago to Puerto Natales, several thousand miles south of the capital.<\/p>\n

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a youthful me, in 1996 in Puerto Natales<\/p><\/div>\n

By the way, this photo is of course in mid-summer. This was a very colorful town, with locals happily wearing shorts and t-shirts when the weather topped 6 or 7 deg celcius. Brrr.<\/p>\n

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Puerto Natales from the hotel<\/p><\/div>\n

We did not stay there long, as our goal was to get to the magical Torres del Paine National Park: our plan was to hike the famous circuit route, generally a 7-day hike + 2-3 additional days to climb to the base camp of the “towers.”<\/p>\n

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The famous circuit route around the park- carry in and carry out<\/p><\/div>\n

While the skies poured rain on us the first days on route to the base camp (before beginning the circuit), we did get clear views of the towers:<\/p>\n

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Blood, sweat and tears to get to this photo, Torres del Paine, 1996<\/p><\/div>\n

A strange and barren windswept landscape greeted us on the circuit.<\/p>\n

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Feeling freedom and clean air<\/p><\/div>\n

This one felt big enough to make me his supper:<\/p>\n

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El condor pasa. Indeed.<\/p><\/div>\n

There were times when I wondered if we were going in the right direction, if this wasn’t a prelude to the famous Alaskan “Bridge to Nowhere”.<\/p>\n

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Bridge to Nowhere? Where have I heard that before?<\/p><\/div>\n

Perhaps this had to be the most amazing site. After getting stuck in our tents in a snowstorm and being unable to climb to the highest pass on our route, we finally made it the next day (at the time, I was thinking–I’m too old for this!). To arrive at the high point and look down on this–the Grey Glacier. Spectacular!<\/p>\n

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The masked marvel--me reaching the pass and shocked to see the frozen river a thousand meters below me.<\/p><\/div>\n

Having finally descended to the glacier level, we were astonished to see that it’s height above the water was 80-100 meters.<\/p>\n

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Grey Glacier--the blue color at the bottom is from the condensed\/packed ice<\/p><\/div>\n

While I could go on and on with many more photos from this park, and later climbing the Villarica volcano (and peering into its depths!), I will leave that for the next heat wave, if I sense any interest…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post comes on the heels of the heat wave that we’ve been suffering through (and my dreams of glaciers and mountains), here in the American Middle-West, which in itself comes in the wake of the flood. It also comes … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,1],"tags":[376,375,379,378,381,377,380],"class_list":["post-882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","category-uncategorized","tag-chile","tag-glaciers","tag-hiking","tag-peaks","tag-taking-a-break","tag-torres-del-paine","tag-vacations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}