Hi all, I just got back last night from my trip to Fallen Leaf Lake and Tahoe.  Our sidescan sonar survey went perfectly *knock on wood* and so did LiDAR-ing to look at erosion caused by recent wildfires.  Fallen Leaf was a really cool place, the community itself has begun to do a fair bit of self-monitoring for the lake's clarity, pH, water height, etc, and we were able to get some help from a few members of the volunteer fire department as well as from a former U of Nevada Reno prof who lives there named John Kleppe.  Part of the survey's goal was to be able to image several trees which are standing underwater.  Kleppe has already done a fair bit work on the dendrochronology of these trees, and it seems, as our data preliminarily supports, that the trees grew up in the 200 year drought of the medieval warm period, and were subsequently preserved in the cold, anoxic lakewater once rainfall returned to the Sierras.  It seems to be a fairly controversial idea, but if we come out of it with a new climate proxy for the time period, well, that would be very very cool.  

Oh, and as for the title of this entry; we were at Kleppe's house for the first half and were camping for the second half of the trip.  One night Danny woke up to the sound of a black bear chuffing and whuffling and whatever else bears do at night, just outside his tent.  He sat up and started yelling at the bear, which took off up a tree, until he pulled his flashlight out.  That scared it even more, and it jumped down off the tree and took off.  Of course, I was sleeping out under the stars, and it just so happens that my head was about 2 feet away from where the bear jumped down.  Naturally, after being awakened in the middle of the night by his hooting and hollering, I had just looked up to see what was going on, when a huge white shape flashes past me.  It took him a few minutes to convince me that it had been a bear.  Perhaps I sleep too soundly to do well in bear country?