New Year
Other people are saying what they did last night. As for myself, a friend of mine pulled a few strings and got permission for seven of us to go up Sugarloaf Mountain after hours last night. We parked there around 22:00 and made our way up the road (had to walk since the gate was closed) to the east view where we stopped for a little while. Around 23:10 we attempted to find trails in the dark and made our way up to the summit, such as it was.
We looked around for a bit. I had brought along a pair of binoculars, anticipating the lowered light pollution out there, so I retrieved a sky map from my iPhone (hush) and managed to sight Comet 8P/Tuttle. We tracked down the rock formation our ersatz leader was looking for near the formal summit (with the survey marker and all) with a few minutes to go before midnight, at which point we broke out the moderately-priced, domestically-produced sparkling wine and checked our cell phones to note it was still not quite 00:01. Just in time.
We braced ourselves against the wind for the next hour. Much of that I spent talking to an old friend of mine (friendship is old, not the friend) trying to convince her to look through John Baez’ quantum gravity seminar notes and research along Urs Schreiber’s lines. Eventually we were getting rather cold, and we made our way back down the west side of the mountain (we took the stairs this time).
There will eventually be pictures, but I took almost none of them so I have to wait until I get them from those who did.
[UPDATE]: As promised, I have a couple pictures. First, one of the drop-offs we found near the top.
And secondly.. yes, I do have a little Cap’n in me!
