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Monday, 12 July 2010

Treasure Hunt: Roanoke

Filed under: Hiking,Running,Virginia — Tags: Adventure Race, Orienteering, Roanoke — George Privon @ 21:12

I am not quite as sore today as I probably should be, having spent 2 hours running around a forest in the heat yesterday.. I (along with Aleya and Patrick) participated in Treasure Hunt: Roanoke (hosted by Gear Junkie). It was a 2 hour orienteering/adventure race with prizes!

I have friends who have done such things before (Alison). I have done orienteering, and I have raced, but never both together. I must say I’d love to do it again.

The four of us (Aleya, Patrick, Butter and I) set out on the course just after 10:45, working as a team to pick off as many checkpoints as we could. We made a beeline for the nearest worthwhile checkpoint, trusting a compass bearing to get us close enough to a landmark that we could find the flag. This often involved running down steep hills through fairly dense trees, over streams, and across small meadows. I can’t tell you how many spiders and dead flies I pulled off myself after running through huge spider webs.

Butter performed like a champ, running along with us and catching quick breaks when we punched our scorecards at the flags. By the end of the two hours, she was dragging a bit (so were we!), but she finished strong.

In the end we accumulated points for 11 of the 15 stations. Unfortunately we mis-judged the time it would take to get back to the finish line and came in about 6 minutes late (receiving a corresponding penalty). No matter, it was a great time.

The icing on the cake was the gear giveaway. There was a tent full of tents, sleeping bags, knives, backpacks and almost any other kind of gear you could imagine! Every participant would take one piece of gear home. We lined up in order of points and every 30 seconds another person was let into the tent. We finished about mid-pack in the points and still managed to walk away with decent giveaways.

I would love to do another similar type race in the future, even without the gear giveaway!

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Saturday, 20 March 2010

Hiking the Channels

Filed under: Hiking,Virginia — Tags: Channels — George Privon @ 21:14

This morning I joined my parents, Granddad, and the Eastman Hiking Club on a day hike to The Channels. The hike was a relatively straightforward 3 mile trip in, mostly uphill along fire-roads. We had excellent weather, just the right temperature and a bit of a breeze that seemed to come up whenever you were hiking fast enough to need one.

There were a fair number of downed trees along the way. We cleared the few we could, then scrambled, climbed, or ducked around the others. We topped out below a tall fire tower with a decrepit one room shack nearby. A couple of the folks climbed up the tower stairs to enjoy the view and we continued on to the top of the channels.

Large sandstone blocks, the channels are deep (20+ ft.) crevices between the blocks which are weathered joints in the sandstone. You can walk around on top, hopping from block to block. Or you can walk around between the blocks with an experience that may resemble the width of medieval European streets.

We spent an hour or two on top, eating lunch, exploring, and soaking up the sunshine. The hike back down went quickly, assisted by gravity. A very cool hike and destination, certainly a place I will visit again.

More pictures are are available here: Hiking to the channels on flickr

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Thursday, 18 March 2010

Charlottesville storm wrap up

Filed under: Virginia — Tags: Charlottesville, Snow — George Privon @ 02:38

Now that things seem to have safely warmed up, I can post a plot I made of snow depth vs time for the three big snowstorms we had here in Charlottesville. Two of the measurement sets (Dec and Jan) were taken by me while the third (Feb) was taken by Anya Bilous. The data are shown as points (with estimates of the errors) and simple linear fits were made for each storm.

From looking at the graph, it is apparent that the storms varied in both length and snowfall intensity. Not really too surprising, but interesting to see. For those of you interested in the numbers, the average snowfall rates are given below. The links for each date go to a pdf with an individual plot for that particular storm (with “absolute” time) and a short comparison to the previous storm(s).

18-19 December 2009: 0.8 in. per hour
30 January 2010: 0.6 in. per hour
06-07 February 2010: 0.4 in per hour

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Saturday, 19 December 2009

Aftermath of the storm and an inspiring encounter

Filed under: Photography,Skiing,Virginia — Tags: Canon 20D, Charlottesville — George Privon @ 23:35

I again took the opportunity to do some skiing around my part of town this evening. There was a bit of light snow as I started, but it quickly stopped. I started by skiing up the hill again…

Getting a bit further up the hill I saw a second car stuck on the hill. I had actually encountered this car (and the occupants!) the previous night as they worked to free their vehicle. I was unable to help, and it unfortunately appears they were ultimately unsuccessful.

The combination of snow and odd lighting made for some eerie scenes. As I took this picture a driver backed their car out of the subdivision after making it haflway down the hill, only to be stymied by a stuck car left in the middle of the road.

After I skiied up the hill the road opened before me on the ridgeline. This normally busy road was completely quiet. Just the occasional “whoomp” as my skis settled into the twenty inches of powder…

I continued skiing down the road, aiming to make it at least to the grocery store a mile from my house.

The traffic light ahead of me eternally green, waiting for me to ski through the intersection underneath it.

After over an hour and a half of skiing and shooting, I arrived at the parking lot of the grocery store. Despite the early hour (20:30), all the stores were closed and the parking lot populated with an assortment of cars left to sit until the snow is cleared.

After standing underneath the bright lights, I turned around and began skiing back. I soon encountered a couple walking along the road. They explained their car was stuck, but they lived close and were enjoying the walk through the snow.

A few minutes further and along came another couple, walking down the middle of this normally busy road. “Hello.. are you stuck as well?”
“Nope.” (smiles), “We are just walking to visit a friend.”

We continued on separate ways, walking to visit a friend, and skiing down the icy center of the road leading home…

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Time Lapse Shoveling (video)

Filed under: Virginia — Tags: Charlottesville, Snow — George Privon @ 14:19

The storm is still raging here in Central Va. I’m hearing news that trees are down and that some folks have lost power. I woke up this morning and measured about 18″ of snow in my driveway. I spent half an hour shoveling around my car and another 0.5″ fell in that time: