Trav's Travels: New Job at Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, CO

So I got a random email one day from my friend and former colleague Carolyn, who had received an email from Jamee (Palmer Station science manager) about a job in Crested Butte. I assumed it was a seasonal job, and I didn't even know if I was qualified, but I had reached out anyways. Turns out it was an 18 month contract with pretty decent pay and living in a cool place. But there were a lot of unusual things about the job (schedule, living situation), so it was a very tough decision whether to take it or not. Elisha and I definitely struggled with decision, kept going back and forth. Plus it would mean the super difficult action of telling my boss Ryan and colleagues (Sky and Brianna) at Arizona Game and Fish that I was quitting after only 1 year. In the end, after much back and forth, many yes's and no's, while in Mexico we decided to take the job and leave Phoenix and Arizona Game and Fish.

The new job is a contract job working for Hamelmann communications. They are contracted out by the Los Alamos National Laboratory's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) group, which is part of the US Department of Energy. The ARM group has several permanent research facilities set up across the globe (Alaska and the Azores for example) and then several mobile facilities (known as AMF--ARM Mobile Facilities). These sites contain a whole myriad of instruments that measure various properties of the atmosphere and climate. You have your standard MET (meteorological) instruments (temperature, humidity, windspeed, direction, precipitation), your gas monitoring instruments (for CO2, water vapor, Ozone, and CFS-Chlorofluorocarbons), your particle and aerosol measuring instruments (measuring dust, carbon (like soot), and other particulate), and then a whole suite of radiometers, which measure the radiation from both the sun (direct and scattered) and from the ground: this radiation can be solar or thermal. Also, they have instruments studying the upper atmospheric winds, the clouds, and the various water derived particles and gasses (like ice crystals, water vapor, water droplets). All of these things are important for the earth's energy (heat) budget.

And scientists are using these measurements to improve on their earth system models, including climate change. We know, for example, that CO2 causes a warming of the planet due to its greenhouse gas effect, but in order to make as perfect as a model as possible, you need to include EVERYTHING that affects the earth's energy budget. So things like water vapor are important b/c water vapor can act as a greenhouse gas and can also disperse and reflect solar radiation, so it plays an important role. The earth's own, upwelling radiation plays a role as does the solar radiation reflected from ground. Of course the albedo effect of snow in this area plays a big role.

Long story short, we have good climate models, but they can be better, so the purpose of all of these instruments is to narrow down and improve on these climate models by using some of these less studied atmospheric measurements. We know really well how things like CO2 affects climate, but we know less about other less studied factors.

The cool thing is that all the data we collect is totally open sourced. Any scientist (and ANY person) can access the data and can thus analyze it for themselves. This not only creates total transparency but allows a huge range of researchers around the globe to be able to use this great data to work on climate models and other research. For the mobile facilities, which are usually at a site for 1-2 years, researchers write proposals describing why they would like the mobile facility in area X. If that researcher's proposal is accepted, the mobile facility is moved there. But the data collected in the spot doesn't just help that researcher, other researchers have total access to the data. So it's really cool.

The mobile facility (SAIL: Surface Atmospheric Integrated Laboratory) here in Crested Butte is being used by the proposing scientist to study the hydrology of the area and how it relates to the changing climate. A really good and short description of the campaign can be read here: https://sail.lbl.gov/about/

And here is a really good article by the Crested Butte News that probably explains it all better than I can

https://crestedbuttenews.com/2021/03/major-atmospheric-study-to-be-conducted-in-valley/

The SAIL project has two locations. The main site is in Gothic: a ghost town turned research station (RMBL: Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory). Gothic is 8 miles from the town of Crested Butte and 5.5 miles from Mount Crested Butte. During the winter, it is 3.8 miles from the end of the paved road. The other location is up on Crested Butte Mountain Resort and can be accessed by taking a couple of ski lifts and skiing to it.

There are 3 of us: the head technician (Wess from Alaska), James (from the east coast somewhere), and me. Though James just got accepted to grad school at Dartmouth so is leaving soon. We work a rotating schedule where we spend 4 weeks up at Gothic and 2 weeks in Crested Butte. They provide us with a nice cabin in Gothic, which has 2 rooms. So 2 techs are up there. Then they have a trailer house for us in Gunnison for when we're doing the Crested Butte portion. Since Elisha and I are renting a place in Mount Crested Butte, I'll just stay there.

In the winter, the road to Gothic is for non-motorized traffic only, but we have a special permit to get one snowmobile resupply per week. Otherwise, what I have been doing is just skiing in and out and pulling a sled behind me. The 3.8 miles takes me about 1 hour, plus or minus 15 minutes depending on how heavy my load is and how deep the snow is. Also, when conditions are right, they have given us a pedal assist fat tire bike, which is faster.

Due to the lack of resupply and also the chance that we could get snowed in without resupply or travel to and from Crested Butte due to high avalanche danger, we try to have about 4 weeks of food supply with us in the cabin.

There are 3 other people that live in Gothic over the winter: 2 winter caretakers for RMBL (Ben and Frank), and the famous billy barr (though he hasn't been there this spring because he's getting a total hip replacement. You can watch a video to learn about billy barr here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0JHpGst84U&t=16s (Denver 9 news)

and here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L72G8TLtTCk&t=74s (National Geographic)

In the summer, Gothic will be bustling with researchers from undergrads to grad student to professors. Gothic is a collection of old and cool looking mountain cabins from a bygone era. There are also a couple high tech lab buildings that they have designed in a way to match the ghost town/mining town architecture. 2 little creeks converge in the town and if you were to continue on the road up and out of Gothic you would go over the 4WD schofield pass to Marble (and the Aspen area). Although it's at least a 5 hour drive, we are only about 18 miles as the crows flies to where we lived in Snowmass a couple of years ago.

Besides Frank and Ben, we have a couple of neighbors. A mama moose and her yearling calf are seen almost every day in the area. There are also 2 foxes: Red Lady:...named after the Red Lady bowl) and Red Flyer (named after the sled). that we also see almost daily. And with spring coming, we've seen a couple marmots coming out of their hibernation under the cabins.

We have an incredible view of Gothic Mountain from our dining table out a big window. The cabin is a two story cabin with 2 bedrooms upstairs reached by a spiraling staircase and modest kitchen, dining table, and small loveseat downstairs. We have a nice deck and a covered back porch. This year they added a flush toilet and shower so we don't have to use the outhouse. The whole Gothic area is a wintry wonderland right now and is surrounded by high peaks. The Gothic area itself has a mix of wildflower meadows, Aspen forests, and conifer forests. If you follow one of the streams up you reach a waterfall and much further up an alpine lake. Gothic sits at 9,525 above sea level.

Elisha will be living in Mount Crested Butte. We are renting a room in a nice ski condo with a gal named Hillary. She's been in the CB area for a while, but she recently broke up with her long-time boyfriend so she had to move out. She also has an old dog named Driggs. She's originally from Florida, but has been in the Colorado Rockies for quite awhile, including Aspen. The condo is very nice, decorated like a ski chalet, and it has very nice views of the snow-capped peaks. It's within easy walking distance of the ski resort and it's an easy walk to my brother and Mary's place as well. And we can see their house from our deck. The condo is 3 floors. The basement has a garage and storage and laundry. The middle floor has a nice living room, small kitchen, our room, and a bathroom. The upstairs is where Hillary's room is, as well as a guestroom and bathroom.

During the summer I plan to live with Elisha in Crested Butte, but during the winters, one thing that was going to be tough would be being away from her for such long periods. But I think I've worked out that I can ski into town after work and then back the next night, or even early in the morning the next day if I don't have the early balloon launch