Brewing a New Hobby

You need a hobby, people are always saying.

Well, I've got a few, but the latest can seem more like a stressful part-time job. I've taken up home brewing.

The skeptic might wonder: What's stressful about making your own alcohol that you can consume whenever you want? Making beer, the naive optimist might say, is almost as good as making whoopee.

Well, unless you're on your first date or tying to score with a cheerleader who is way out of your league, it turns out making beer is much harder than having sex.

For one thing, you can get a little dirty when performing the latter. In fact, in some circles, it's required. But making beer requires a hallowed kitchen, an exorcism of every germ and bacteria within a mile radius. This is because any contamination of the beer can taint the taste. Or worse, make the entire batch moldy and useless.

I've also learned that something can go uniquely wrong each time you brew. The first time it took me an hour or more to cool the wort -- something that needs to be done quickly to avoid contamination. So, I bought the expensive, copper wort chiller. Check.

Another batch required me to throw handfuls of hops into the boiling wort every five minutes. Fine. No problem. No one tells you that's going to create a straining disaster as the hop residue coats the strainer like chia pet ground cover. Our faucet leaks more water than what was coming through the strainer. And, of course, I forgot to sanitize the backup strainer. Contamination!

Surprisingly, these mishaps didn't screw up the beer. In fact, the beer actually tastes like beer. Though at my current rate of equipment and ingredient purchase, I figure this hobby will start saving me money on actual beer purchases about the time the ozone hole over Antarctica heals.

But I guess hobbies were never meant to save money. As someone once said, "Relax and have a homebrew."














My first beer label for the Baker Brown Ale.

Torres del Paine

Finally back home in Denver with some time to catch up on the 5500 photos that I took while working in Antarctica and later traveling around Chile.

First up are some pictures from my four-day hike in Torres del Paine National Park, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve that is easily the most popular destination in Chilean Patagonia. It is touristy without being overwhelming, with no RVs or off-road driving. There are two main hikes in the park, a weeklong hump known as the circuit, which takes you around the heart of the small, but spectacular park. The other one is the "W," so named because of the sawtooth pattern you take up and down three valleys. This is the one I did.

I spent four nights in the park, carrying all my camping gear, something I've done before but not for that length of time. The first two days were difficult, starting with an uphill slog along Ascension Valley to see the famous Torres -- Towers -- themselves. Then about 10 miles to foot of the French Valley, the most exhausting day. The next two days were easier, with short treks to the camps followed by day hikes up the valleys.

The park offers a mix of free and paid camping sites, along with refugios and even hotel rooms. I free camped two nights and camped at two fee sites, which had the advantage of being equipped with food and drinks. Happy hour pisco sours were a most welcome way to wind down after a long day of walking.

The trails were mostly well marked, sometimes muddy but not impassable, and often rock strewn and dusty. I was fortunate to enjoy nearly four days of uninterrupted, blue-bird skies and nearly no wind -- a rare event in an area famously stormy and wind-blasted.

My pictures:


A chunk of ice calves off snow-covered mountain along the French Valley.


One of the free camp sites.


Gray Glacier, which is the focus of the third part of the W route.


Small islands in a glacial lake.


A rare calm day allows for awesome reflections in a lake.


A river runs through Ascension Valley.


The famous Towers of the park.

On the Road Again

The blogs have been a bit spotty lately, as I was busy getting ready to leave Palmer Station, which I did on Feb 3, followed once again by the four-day crossing of the Southern Ocean between the Antarctic Peninsula and South America. I will have more to say about my time at Palmer, along with more pics, but that will require more time than I have now at this hostel Internet cafe (where it costs about 50 cents for an hour of surfing).

We returned to Punta Arenas early on Sunday, Feb. 7. Then followed a mad dash by me to try and secure a bus the next day for Ushuaia in Argentina, which competes with PA as the southernmost city. Ushuaia is farther south but smaller, so you decide ...

Miraculously, there was one ticket still available, so I booked a round trip for about 60,000 pesos -- about $110US. It´s about a 12-hour bus ride, and after yesterday I found out why ...

I got to the bus station in plenty of time, and it turned out there were two buses going to Ushuiaia, so I showed my ticket to one guy and he told me to get on the other bus. Of course, five minutes into the trip, when this fellow was going around checking seats, he told me that I was on the wrong bus and would have to transfer at some point. They were essentially caravaning. That wasn´t a big deal, as we ended up having to take a detour on some dirt road because of some sort of protest involving burning tires piled across the road to the airport. Fisherman protesting for more money apparently.

The trip was largely uneventful but the border crossing was what I would generously describe as chaotic, and it must have taken us close to two hours to exit Chile, drive the few kilometers to the Argentine border and enter the country. It looked like Argentina would be easy, as we got in quickly and got the passports stamped. Back on the bus, they told us to get back off and run our luggage through. Apparently the x-ray machine is usually `broken,´ but according to one Spanish guy on the bus, the immigration official didn´t like the bus driver or something along those lines, so we had to go back ... funny thing is no one was making sure we went back into the building, so some people didn´t even bother. And I don´t think anyone was actually watching the machine monitor, located away from where everyone just grabbed his or her bag and walked back out.

Got in around 930 p.m. in rain and light fog. The drive was beautiful for the last couple hours and actually reminded me of Colorado, esp. Lake Dillon, with mountains rising steeply up around a lake. The rest of the trip was more like eight hours driving through the foothills around Golden. Instead of wild deer or elk running acorss the road there were wild llama. And many, many kilometers of sheep farms, which eventually gave way to cattle ranches in Argentina, famous for it beef (and love thereof).

Going to try and do a little boat tour today on the Beagle Channel. First impression is that Ushuaia is a pretty touristy town, with two Irish pubs and lots of outdoor gear shops. Still, a nice break from the Ice and windy, dusty PA. The town sits right on the harbor and then climbs up away from the water like San Francisco. It is the main jumping off point for tour cruises to Antarctica, and ran into one boat crew last night, including a woman who has been to both Palmer and McMurdo stations as an expedition leader. The latter is particularly interesting since there´s really only one ship, the Russian Kapitan Klebnikov, that actually makes it to McM. I think she´s also friends with a guy I worked with at South Pole in the summer.

It´s a small world here at the bottom of the world.

Whale Watching

Yesterday was my second to last full day at Palmer Station. Technically, it was a day off because we worked on Sunday, but had a lot of work to do to get ready. I initially turned down an opportunity to go see humpback whales playing near the station, but when a second boat was organized, I decided to jump in, figuring by the time we go there the show would be over.

Thankfully I was wrong.

For about two hours we puttered around three humpbacks, which put on a quite a feeding display for us. There were even doing something called bubble feeding. Here's the wikipedia definition:

"A group of whales swims in a shrinking circle blowing bubbles below a school of prey in our case it was krill]. The shrinking ring of bubbles encircles the school and confines it in an ever-smaller cylinder. The whales then suddenly swim upward through the 'net,' mouths agape, swallowing thousands of prey in one gulp."

At one point we drove through a pink cloud on the water -- a cloud of whale poo, colored that way because of the pink krill (small crustaceans) that they eat.

A few pics and hilarious video (and, no, that's not me screaming like a little girl).


Mt. William on whale watching day. It's about 5,000 feet high.


The original whale tail.


Taking a gulp of krill.



We had lost sight of the whales and were stopped, when suddenly all these bubbles appeared around the boat.

Only One Week Left

It's hard to believe my time in Antarctica and at Palmer Station is coming to an end. Only about a week before I get back on the ARSV Laurence M. Gould for the four-day voyage back across the Southern Ocean to Chile. I feel like there is so much left to do -- probably because there is! I've got a list going but it's growing longer faster than I can cut it down.

I must say the 40 people who I have been working and living with here for the past few weeks are some great folks. Everyone has been extremely accommodating and patient. It's obvious to me they love their jobs and this program. I've joked that I wouldn't mind relocating my office here next season, and the longer I'm here, the more I seriously think how great that would be.

A few random photos from the last few days:

Glacier SAR team conducting training exercise.

One of the smaller cruise ships visiting Palmer Station.

Wildlife on Humble Island near Palmer.

The science team here researching a wingless fly called Belgica antarctica.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Birding at Palmer Station

I went birding with the research team that monitors the various seabird populations near Palmer Station, from Adelie penguins to giant petrels. The expedition leader here is Donna Fraser, who has been coming down to the Ice for years. She became fascinated with the giant petrels, a large scavenger that nests throughout the islands here, and went on her own quest to study the bird population. Through patient observation and perseverance, she was able to habituate the birds to her presence on Humble Island, where the team currently monitors 27 nests. They measure the bills of the chicks and weigh them every couple of days or so, and also place transmitters on the adults to track their foraging patters.

I went with the team yesterday to watch them at work. They spend long hours hiking and climbing around the islands to survey the nests, some of which can only be reached by a hard scramble up nearly sheer rock faces. The treks are made even harder because they try to avoid trampling the moss on the island, so you're rock hopping most of the time, watching your feet on the ankle-twisting rocks while trying to avoid stumbling on the nests, which seem to appear suddenly despite the large size of the birds. I was pretty spent by the end of the day, particularly after our final climb up a cliff on DeLaca Island to check on just one nest.




A giant petrel nesting, with Palmer Station in background.

Not long before this chick is done nesting.

Surveying a nest.


Elephant seals in a messy, smelly wallow.

Cormorants and their brown chicks.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Another Penguin Video

Everyone loves penguins, right? So here's a little better video, I think, of the penguin colony on Torgersen Island, which is only a few minutes' ride from Palmer Station on Anvers Island, in the northern part of the Antarctic Peninsula.

No music this time, just the braying of the penguins and my own rather anemic interjections ... one qualifier, however: I mention that the colony has shrunk due to climate change but I don't offer any explanation in the video.

The short story: The ambient temperature has warmed significantly. In addition, the deep ocean water that comes up on the shelf is also much warmer. The changes have reduced the duration of sea ice in the region, which is not only a key habitat for the penguins during the winter but also for its main prey, the shrimp-like krill. All this means that chick survival and recruitment to these colonies has been drastically reduced.

I'll have more on this story when I go out with the seabird researchers next week.



There's also some new articles on The Antarctic Sun Web site, including a couple on different aspects of this trip.

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