ARC Alumni produces radio program.

Sagehen ARC graduate Tanya Cabrera participated in the KVMR Youth Voices radio program in 2007, producing this segment on Sagehen's ARC program.

More info about the "Youth Voices" program available here.

More digging.

The break in the weather is giving us a chance to catch up with the digging. Which is a good thing since we almost lost the Leopold cabin during the storm.

Here are some pics of Jeff digging its roof off for the last time [hopefully].

And a couple shots of rafters. First is a normal one, resting nicely on the wall-top plate.

The other shot shows several rafters that slipped off the wall when the heavy load bulged the walls out. One of them even broke in half. Next stop: pancake.

Books by Sagehen researchers on Amazon.com

Here's a list of some publications available on Amazon.com about the Sagehen Basin &/or written by Sagehen researchers.

Takes a little while to load the widget--hang tight!

Local mystery solved.

This news from our winter pine marten researcher, Katie Moriarty:

Well, my curiosity is more settled and I wanted to share the wealth. I've been seeing what I thought were a lot of kill sites without any sign of struggle or fur... As it turns out, red pee in snowshoe hares (and other lagomorphs) is fairly common. Never had a rabbit as a kid, never knew...

Changes in urine color in hares seems to be linked to ingestion of conifer needles. The citric acid created contains porphyrins, which are some sort of circular carbon chain, and through digestion these combine to form heme (iron compound). Another source stated this is a symptom of excess calcium. It seems that the phenomena of red urine is temporary, lasting only a few days and does not occur uniformly across rabbits with the same diet.

Another website (probably unreliable) stated that blue urine in hares was caused by a diet of Rhamnus cathartica, European or cathartic buckthorn. The urine of domestic buckthorn eaters is initially yellow or brown, but within ten minutes of exposure to sunlight turns bright blue in the snow or on paper.

I never knew that urine naturally changed colors. I also thought it was curious that there could be photosynthetic blue urine (maybe) of all things.

Hope you have an enlightened day...

Peace, katie

Getting deep!

The storm cycle that just ended has turned this winter into a pretty big one. On top of the old, dense wet snow that is firmly stuck to our roofs, the new snow has added significantly to the load: both the weight load & the work load!


Here are some pics.


It's not the biggest year on record [Shorty had to crawl in & out the 2nd story windows one year in the 1990's], but it's definitely the deepest, densest settled snow we've seen on the ground since our arrival in 2001. We can't pack it down anymore to get it out of the way.





We're definitely getting slapped around by Mother Nature at this point.












The icedams are impressive, heavy, & beginning to force water through the roof under the eaves.


The load is bulging the walls & deforming the roof lines of the Leopold Cabin.















The highway garage is getting pushed over sideways by the load on both the roof & sidewalls.

Fortunately, the ARC kids--visiting for a reunion--helped us shovel off the garage roof & dig out the garage driveway.

Watch a video of us mountaineering on the house to do "cornice control".