Out and About: Ecuador Part I

In the spring of 2012 all sorts of things happened. Julia had trouble organizing an internship in Utah. This was not ideal. She ended up eventually securing a spot back home in Michigan. Because of my responsibilities as a graduate student, this meant we wouldn't be together from May to August. Not awesome. As an aside, that sort of arrangement will never happen again, at least not if we have anything to say about it.

A consolation prize was that I had the opportunity to study abroad with my friends in Ecuador in May. This turned out to be pretty much awesome. It was an extraordinary experience. Occasionally I will have a flashback to some crazy adventure and then realize it was one of the many packed into 3.5 weeks in Ecuador. This involved hanging out with a bunch of grad and undergrad students from the U of U. I feel very fortunate. This crowd was up for just about anything and everyone was of the mind that we should take advantage of all the great opportunities for adventure the trip offered. It was easy to explore Ecuador with this wonderful group and look for trouble.

The itinerary was packed. Flew into Quito and quickly hopped in a van and headed to Mindo (worth googling and visiting).

Our hostel in Mindo. 

The porch of our hostel. It was very easy to relax
here. Photo by Brooks.

We observed meetings at an NSF-funded workshop that my advisor helped put together. It was interesting. We sat in on about 6 hours of talks by Ecuadorian and U.S. experts on mercury contamination. There is a lot of mercury contamination in Ecuador from gold mining.

We also got to do some ridiculous tourii activities in Mindo like zip lining. I should mention that two of my colleagues in the geology department are from Ecuador. One of them came along for the trip. She acted as a very patient translator and very helpful guide. This was especially valuable when choosing a company for zip lining. We made sure to go with the guys with the orange shirts. A few weeks later we were reading the news and saw that some tourists died while zip lining in Mindo when the zip line broke. Different company. One more reason to be thankful for our gracious hosts.

View from the zip line. Photo by Brooks.

After a few trips down the line they asked if we wanted to pretend to fly. I jumped at the chance and suddenly found myself at the beginning of the line. Surprisingly no one shared my enthusiasm. They must have understood the Espanol explanation of how we would be connected to the guide.

Getting set up. Photo series by Brooks.

Legs locked.

Taking off. 

Flying through the jungle!

Mindo was awesome and that was just the beginning. We headed back to Quito and flew down to Quenca. Here we met up with our driver, Fernando. He carted us around in a van for the next two weeks and contributed to the fun and laughter. We were lucky to have him as a part of the trip. In general he is a great guy and a very good driver.

Cuenca is a beautiful place. As the Incan empire expanded they conquered the Canari and built an enormous city at/near Cuenca. Eventually the Spanish set up a city as well. Then in 1822 Cuenca declared independence from Spain.

A big statue in Cuenca celebrating independence
from Spain.

We headed south out of Cuenca and into a beautiful canyon. But before getting to the coast, we a had the opportunity to tour the Quimsacocha mining project. The proposed mine site is up at about 12,000 ft on the slopes of a caldera formed by a collapsed volcano, right at the top of a watershed that provides drinking water for thousands of people. Inside the caldera is the paramo, high altitude grassland that all sorts of people are concerned about protecting.

Fernando knew a good place to have lunch. They pulled meat
off the pig and put it on our plates. It was very good.

We first stopped and met with residents of Chumblin. This was interesting. The mining company developing the project, which has since sold their stake in the project, had hired several people to simply live in Chumblin and convince the people that the mine was a good deal. They had helped women start businesses selling clothes, tea, and fruit, all of which were tremendous. But the whole thing seemed like a distraction from the water quality issues that having a mine up there would create.

Chumblin and the surrounding mountains.

We were hosted by the mining company, which was great. It was relatively cold up there and they provided us with hearty work camp food. We slept in the work camp bunkhouse. Three of us used the restroom and had our own pee flow out of the bottom of urinal and onto/around our feet. It is easy to laugh at the sounds someone makes when they realize everything going into the urinal is ending up on the floor. Since we were up towards 11,000 ft, is was windy and around 35 degrees. The bunkhouse was pretty drafty. We piled on 6-10 blankets and hoped for the best when it came to lice and other small things.

The next morning we got a tour of the paramo and the caldera. The paramo has its own distinct type of beauty.

Looking across the caldera. Photo by Brooks.

Beautiful flowers of the paramo. 

After the tour of the proposed mine site, we packed up the van and headed down to the coast. The canyon we followed was carved by the Rio Jubones. It was spectacular. Enormous cliffs had been cut by the river, which was choked with huge boulders and miles of whitewater. I don't know enough to give it a rating but it looked pretty challenging and exhilarating. One part of the canyon was bare rock, resembling pictures I've seen of the Hindu Kush. Then suddenly we were in a jungle filled with life. In 8 short hours we went from shivering up at 11,000 ft under 6 blankets to sweating at 50 ft with the AC running on high. Ecuador is certainly a country of contrast. That night we successfully wandered lost through Machala for an hour until we found our hotel. Don't get lost in Machala, especially if your van has "TURISMO" plastered to the front of it.

After a night on the coast we headed back up into the highlands to start collecting samples. The El Oro province is known for oro. Zaruma and Portovelo are two mining towns. These towns were buzzing as the price of gold was around $1,400/oz while we were there, eventually getting as high as $1,800/oz by the end of the summer. There was a lot of excitement.

Portovelo sits in a valley along the Rio Amarillo and is characterized by poverty. The town relies on the small scale gold processing plants that use mercury amalgamation and cyanide leaching to process gold rich ore. On very small scales, a fellow will fill his truck with what he hopes is rock with lots of gold and bring it to the plant to crush it and run it down a sluice. Then the gold is mixed with mercury and stuck in an oven. The oven bakes off the mercury and what's left is some gold. On a larger scale, trucks dump rock into a crusher and the slurry is mixed with cyanide in huge vats. I don't remember what happens after this but eventually a gold rich slurry is produced that can be further processed somewhere else.

Cyanide barrels were ubiquitous. Thankfully there was no
shortage of trash cans.

All of this is happening about 100 m from a river. Huge volumes of water are required and filled with trace metals like mercury and zinc as well as cyanide. Ideally this water goes to and stays in tailings ponds. However, in Ecuador that is not always the case.

Tailings ponds are not supposed to look like this.

Usually when tailings ponds fill up it is kind of a hassle. There is nowhere to put the wastewater. But not in Ecuador. Sometimes when tailings ponds fill up, they suddenly empty over night. At the processing plants we toured, water was being pumped into a pond from the cyanide sludge process. We noticed a pipe in the middle of the tailings pond. As fast as the water was going into the pond it was draining out into the river. Other issues were related to the overuse of mercury and cyanide during processing.

The confluence of the Rio Calera (left) and Rio Amarillo
(right). One is influenced by mining activities.

Water treatment plants are often located at the top of the watershed, which made for some pleasant views and precarious sampling. Zaruma sits about 1,000 ft above the valley floor. One of our sampling objectives was to see how well water treatment plants did their job. The plant inflow was from surface water. The geology department at the U of U can do a lot of analysis that are not routine. So we had the opportunity to be helpful.

Some rebar separates a grad student from a 50 ft fall. 

Looking down on Zaruma and Portovelo. 

We also sampled the water treatment plant for Portovelo in the mountains on the other side of the valley and then up to a smaller water treatment plant in Salati.

Rio Amarillo and Portovelo from near the Portovelo
water treatment plant.

The Portovelo water treatment plant has a beautiful mascot. A baby ocelot got caught in a fence and they've kept it in a cage.

Glad to be able to see such beauty. Sad to see it stuck in a cage.

The Inca conquered the Canari in Zaruma, just as they did in Cuenca, and took control of the gold mines. Then the Spanish came along For centuries the Spanish mined the mountains near Zaruma. Eventually in the early 1900's western companies set up shop in Zaruma and set up large scale mining operations. We also toured a large scale mine in Zaruma that is pulling ore out of the heart of the mountain. The owners of the mine were kind enough to let us stay in bunks at the camp. This is where the experience became somewhat surreal.

Sodirec appears to be doing a very good job of responsible mining in Zaruma. The tailings ponds we toured were double lined and they processed the water before sending it back to the river, removing toxic trace elements. In the middle of our tour we realized that the owner of the mine was tagging along. The same guy that has body guards sporting hand guns, german shepherds that he trains to protect is family, and a gate with armed guards around his house. And we were hanging out with him.

Our hosts at Sodirec were extraordinarily generous. After the tour of the processing plan, they invited us to tour the mine. We were given brand new pants, shirts, and rubber boots and broken up into two groups. My group went with the head geologist who had been working in the mine for decades and the other group went with the owner of the mine. We proceeded to go on a tour that I don't believe would be allowed anywhere in the United States. We climbed down the same ladders and ropes the workers used and followed the vein of ore down into the second to lowest level of the mine. I don't remember exactly how far we climbed down but I remember the estimate being 600 ft. At that point we had been two hours in the earth and it was pretty hot. Some members of the group asked to head out before we reached the lowest level where they were actively filling trolley cars with ore to bring to the surface.

I think our guide would have shown us every inch of the place. He talked about the ore vein like it was a beloved friend and explained why some tunnels were cut off and others were pushed through. There were faults throughout the mine and they had to determine where the vein had been shifted to. There were huge crystals of fool's gold laying in the tunnels. We crawled out of the tunnels exhausted and exhilarated. The other crew had made it all the way to where they were drilling holes in rock and blasting it out. Some of the students drilled holes themselves. The tour felt similar to watching the Fellowship of the Ring move through the mines of Moria. However in our underground adventure the ceilings were much lower, our guide was a cheerful geologist rather than Gandalf, and orcs were not of great concern. I could certainly identify with the fear of being lost. All I knew is that I needed to go back up to get out but there were way too many left/right decisions on the way back to feel comfortable.

Then spontaneously we were invited up to the owner's home that night to have dinner and socialize. We had fancy food of all all sorts prepared by the chef from our host's favorite restaurant. It was the type of meal that cost more than my monthly rent. What was going on? Then the owner of the mine offered to open up the liquor cabinet and told all of us to have at it. I am not a whiskey connoisseur but I was informed that some prized whiskey with a green label was pulled out as well as something even more high class. Soon most of the crew was pretty drunk. We, the students, were in awe of what had transpired over the last 6 hours.

A few of us desired to go to sleep but others wanted to bask in the glory of this amazing liquor cabinet. The tired group was finally able to arrange a ride back to the bunkhouse but not before we schemed with Fernando to tell the security guards at the gate to give the drunk kids coming down the hill a hard time before letting them in.

I was amazed by the past day. I never expected to find myself in the middle of a mountain wandering around in a mine, then follow it up with the type of party at the type of villa we had just enjoyed. A few hours after drifting off to sleep, the rest of the group kicked the front door off its hinges and started rehashing the day's events through song, dance, and shouting. When they got to the topic of the gate, they realized that it was extremely important to immediately tell the rest of us, half-asleep in the other room behind closed doors, that we must let the guards know we were a part of the group from Utah or else they would be really suspicious and not let us in. So they smashed our door open and let us know. They must have forgotten that we had fallen asleep two hours ago. Undergrads.

Then two nights later another extraordinary party happened again at the mine owners villa, except with less drunkenness. We ate a meal prepared by the same chef except this time it was every type of fancy seafood I have ever heard of. The meal appeared to cost more than I could sell my car for. But what do I know? I grew up on a farm in Wisconsin and I am content with Ramen for two meals a day.

What a trip. I can only judge from Hollywood and documentaries, but I felt like I was at the compound a drug lord. I don't remember being in such close quarters with a person who appeared to have the influence and wealth that he had. No offense to our hosts, but the handguns, guard dogs, armed guards, fences, gates, personal chefs, and general opulence made me feel like I was in a movie. And someone was about to make a poorly timed joke and be put to death as an example to us all. Even so, it was still an extraordinarily fun and exciting experience.

After three nights of this extraordinary lifestyle we headed for our next sampling objective. We transitioned from the highlands to the scorching heat and humidity of the jungle and banana plantations. It was still beautiful though.

An estuary to the Pacific near Tenguel. The last sample
location of the trip. Spectacular photo by Brooks.

This time we would sample surface water and groundwater near the coast. We were also able to get our hands on some seafood at a local restaurant to analyze for mercury. Some local fisherman also contributed to the study.

Turns out that fish has a $%^!-ton of mercury in it. Also, we
concluded that swimming in the river is not good for a
person's general health. Photo by Brooks.

There was a general consensus that we should wrap things up and head back to the highlands. Part of the urgency was related to the hotel we stayed at while on the coast. If the walls could talk, whatever innocence I have now would have been lost.

The glory days of the hotel involved managers/executives from mines up in the mountains coming down to the coast with cash in hand and a desire spend it all in one place. The entire property had a tall wall complete with shards of glass embedded in cement on the top. A menacing guard tower sat next to the gate. Though they were no longer in use, there were two pools, a dance floor and bar on the roof, and a large stage and bar in behind the hotel. I got the impression that at this hotel the beer flowed like wine and beautiful women instinctively flocked like the salmon of Capistrano. And cocaine, there was probably cocaine too.

Instead of talking, the walls harbored enormous spiders that were very difficult to squash. Two members of the party encountered especially large spiders in their room as soon as they walked in. Neither were particularly skittish guys as we had plenty of experience with small creeping things in the past two weeks. However their eyes were full of fear and their demeanor vastly altered after their encounters. We all ended up sleeping in one room so we could fight the bugs together. It sounds funny but 7 grown men decided it was best to all be in the same room so we would have better chances of living through the night. Despite the heat, one of the guys traumatized by their mother-of-all-spiders encounter decided to sleep in long sleeves tucked into socks on his hands and feet and a bug net for his head and shoulders. The AC was on as often as the power stayed on in hopes of putting the spiders into hibernation. It worked. Nobody died. This was not a great place to stay, but it added to the surreality of the trip and it was piles of fun.

After 2 days of sampling wells and rivers, we wrapped things up, about 1.5 days early. Most everyone was tired from sampling in the sun all day, exhausted from managing the terrifying sense of imminent death from spider bites, or overwhelmed by the diesel fuel that had been poured all over our rooms to try to kill the sources of our fear.

We said goodbye to Fernando in Santa Rosa and hopped on a plane headed for Quito. Strangely enough, this is where the trip hit high gear. I was about to become even more amazed and in awe of Ecuador's natural beauty over the next 5 days.

Another Round of Grad School Vacations in Utah

Lost some chronology in the blog. Here's what we did for Christmas and spring breaks the first year of grad school.

Christmas break started with some house sitting and friends visiting town. An inversion made the air quality in the Salt Lake valley less than ideal. So we hiked up around Black Mountain. Clouds looked pretty neat.

Wasatch winter.

This is a good way to watch the sun go down.

When friends left town Julia and I had several days to ourselves before house sitting ended. We went skiing and played Scrabble.

This was a particularly good game. 

Then we headed to Zion for the first time. Time for a running camp. We started off with 14 miles on the La Verkin Creek Trail.

We ought to go camping here some day.

The lack of precipitation throughout Utah in general made it possible to run just about any trail in Zion.

Julia was pretty excited about this run/hiking in Zion thing.

That night we camped at what has become one of our favorite campsites. Little stream, far enough off the beaten path to be relatively quiet, free. Next day we had a lazy morning and then headed up the West Rim Trail for a 14 mile tour of Angel's Landing, the west rim proper, and some beautiful emerald pools.

Dynamite was probably pretty handy when
this trail was getting put in.

We wandered up to Angel's landing. Julia was a little hesitant. Not really excited about the exposure but she made it.

Worth the trip? Me thinks yes.

Back down. Thankful for the protection.

After getting off Angel's Landing we followed a beautiful trail that wound through some pretty cool sedimentary rock and up to the west rim of Zion Canyon.

Getting to the rim proper. 

It was a type of beautiful we'd never seen before. Very pleasant.

Someone returned that jacket to REI saying that it was
"too bright."

On the way back we checked out Emerald Pools.

After another great night of stars and rest we wandered another 14 miles up the east rim of Zion Canyon and over to Cable Mountain. Pretty neat view of Angel's Landing and the ridge we had been on the day before.

Whoa.

I love this part of the East Rim Trail.

Full moon in Zion Canyon.

The next day was our departure day. So we tracked down some slick rock trails on Gooseberry Mesa to loosen up the legs for the drive back. This was our first attempt at slick rock. Pretty interesting. Glad it was beginnerish. Regardless of how often we got off to push, it was fun.

Also when we rested, we got to look back at
the entrance to Zion Canyon.

Eventually came Spring Break. In between was skiing, some downhill and a lot of nordork. Both fun. Unfortunately in late January I hurt my butt which ended up making my knee hurt. I thought it had something to do with adductors but that was the best explanation Julia could come up with. (That was a joke). Bummer. We still were able to do all sorts of fun things.

In February one of Julia's nordork friends (who introduced us to the term "nordork") mentioned how much fun she had at something called the Equinox Ski Marathon. The idea is to see how far you or your team can ski or snow bike or run in 12 or 24 hours. Sounds fun so we signed up and started getting ready for it. Found a beautiful place to train for it up on the Mirror Lake Highway in the Uintas.

But my butt kept hurting my knee so I couldn't get after it the way I hoped. But we decided to make the most of spring break by biking ourselves silly in the Moab area. We got to go to places I had seen pictures of for years and dreamed of visiting. It was good.

Dead Horse Point!

Looking the other way at Dead Horse Point.

My dad joined us for the first 1.5 days of the trip south and dropped us off at the end of the road in Arches NP. Not before being a ridiculous tourist with us though and checking out an arch or two.

This looks a lot more like a delicate arch than a landscape one. 

We wandered 30 miles around the park and back to the entrance.

Yes! Bike above head!

Unsatisfied and still with daylight we switched over to mountain bikes and checked out Gemini Bridges. This 13 miles was a little slow. Sand and fatigue do that I guess.

Gemini Bridges Road is not smooth. Still fun.

Julia wasn't real impressed with our destination.
"That's cool. I'm hungry."

My dad had kindly sprung for two nights at a campsite just outside the entrance to Canyonlands and the Island in the Sky district. The next morning we were in the park and ready to see how many lookouts we could enjoy up there. 35 miles later we had seen quite a bit. And it was good.

Grand View Point! Bike above head!

Big place. Henry Mountains in the distance.

We stopped by the Green River Overlook to be mocked by the Maze District for our inability to get more than 2 miles from the car without turning around. We could see about 5 landmarks that I had excitedly planned to visit back on fall break. Blast.

We will visit Millard Canyon one day.

We brought some shoes along to be able to check out Upheaval Dome. Way back when I was trying to get freshmen students to enjoy earth science I stumbled across this strange hole in the middle of the desert in satellite photos. Turns out there is evidence for the great big hole being a result of both an impact crater and a salt dome. Neat.

Only seen in satellite photos prior. Now in real life!

Back to the car we relaxed with a beautiful view of the La Sal Mountains and the Schafer Trail, the road that can mark the beginning/end of a spectacular mountain bike adventure along the White Rim road.

Lunch tasted good here.

Yup. Adventuring in Utah with my wife is pretty dang good.

Next we headed for a free camp site up Kane Springs Canyon. This was a great place to spend time. Very quiet. On the way we saw a guy and gal pounding it up a relatively large uphill out of the canyon. Both had packrafts strapped to the bikes. Hmmm. Bikerafting. That sounds like a great idea.

"Hey, car up...er...down."
"Whatever. Don't drive off the cliff."

First attempt at ramen cooked on a fire. 

The next day we decided to see how far we could go heading north out of Moab along the Colorado River. Turns out it's beautiful up there.

Following the river.

A big pillar above Castle Valley.

The La Sal's behind the castle of Castle Valley.

Quit taking pictures. Let's rock this downhill
and go eat.

After a good 45 miles we were back in the car and headed back up Kane Springs Canyon. We were treated to another wonderful evening.

Living the life.

Looking towards Hurrah Pass. 

The next day was a spin and drive home. This time we headed out for 30 miles of flat, this time heading south along the Colorado.

Jughandle Arch or something like that.

Soon after spring break we were heading to West Yellowstone for the Equinox Ski Challenge. I was signed up for the 24 hour race and Julia for the 12 hour. This was a wonderful experience. There were about 70 racers or so, some individual, some in teams. The race was cheap if you signed up to volunteer for 2 hours. So that's what we did. Plus we got a bunch a free stickers like these.

Blue Moon Bears; Mimi Matsuda

Aurora Bearealis; Mimi Matsuda

Bison by Ski; Mimi Matsuda

The idea is to see how many laps can be done before the bell rings. There was a day nordic course, night nordic course, and snow bike course. I didn't think my butt/knee would be happy with skate skiing for 24 hours so I brought classic skis and rented a fat tire bike.

The gun went off and everyone took off entirely too fast. We rocked the first lap and Julia decided to take a short break. Many people had mentioned how temperatures were likely to get in the 40's in the afternoon so I thought I'd get while the getting was good. There would be plenty of time to rest when the trails turned soft. So on the second lap I went fast. Really fast. I was having one heck of a time until I lost control going around a corner and fell. Hard. I made a sound I hadn't heard since high school football. About 40 minutes into a 24 hour race I cracked my ribs pretty good. There were two of them on the bottom that didn't care much for getting poked.

Crud. Well, I paid money for this dang race and I am definitely going to try hard. Unfortunately deep breaths and double poling hurt a lot. I could avoid double poling but not deep breaths so much. No classic skiing today.

The weather was very nice. Kind of too nice. By noonish the trails were pretty mushy. But everyone pressed on. At one point Julia got to take a run with a spare fat tire bike with me. We took one lap and switched back to skis. Lots of getting off to push.

On the drive up I bought a pie to supplement the chips, caffeine gels, other stuff that was provided at the race. Good thing too.

Secret weapon: peach pie.

I skied until darkish and switched to the bike for the evening. This was probably not the best approach if I was going for the gold. The trails were pretty quick for skiing. Oh well. Biking didn't hurt as much. Also I had an iPod set up with some pretty inspiring music.

So I hopped on the bike and got after it for a while. Julia was stuck volunteering for me. She kindly recorded laps for folks until late into the night. Just so I could flail around the course all night. Around 2 or 3 AM I finished off the pie and took a 20 minute break in front of a big raging bonfire. Did I mention that this was a really fun race to be a part of?

Around 5 in the morning I took another break, changed back into ski boots, and tried to get as many laps in as possible before the cut off. I was happy to still be in motion. Thanks Vitamin I.

Not too many pictures of this adventure. We were either in motion, asleep, or Julia was volunteering 4 hours to cover for me. Julia did grab a picture at the end.

Announcer guy: "And here comes #23...uh...Joel Pierson!...
He looks pretty tired..."

When I came down to it Julia traveled 106.4 km in 12 hours and I got to 237.7 km in 24 hours. I almost beat a guy who looked to be pushing into his 60's pretty soon. Don't know exactly what I did to those two ribs but getting into bed hurt for a while. It was worth it.

The Equinox Ski challenge was cancelled in 2013 unfortunately. Sign me up for 2014. Hope I don't eat $%^* and get beat by an octogenarian.