By the next day I found myself wondering if I’d just gotten to heaven without having to die first. This is intense land, much akin to parts of northern New Mexico, but higher and more extreme, with intense sun and intense storms. Breathtakingly beautiful in its starkness.
Looking southwest from where I’ll be living. That’s the crest of the Sierras in the distance.
The facilities are pretty nice, with turned-log structures brought in about twenty years ago to replace the post-WWII buildings here previously. The facility was first begun in 1950, to study high-elevation effects of cosmic rays, and has been a accessible high-elevation since, run through the University of California system as one of many field research stations.
Current research projects appear to primarily relate to climate change – one group of four grad-student women is studying an endemic beetle species for temperature effects, and this coming week the worldwide “Gloria” project will bring botanists from all over the West for their second five-year study From Wikipedia: “The Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA) involves a set of pristine sites set aside and monitored to observe the migration of plant species due to climate change. Established in 2001, the program has grown to more than 30 sites around the world, from the poles to the tropics.”
Everyone here is better educated than I am, sometimes the authors of the definitive texts or guidebooks in their specialized fields, so it makes for some fascinating interactions and conversations.
The main dining and meeting rooms at Crooked Creek Station, with laboratory rooms on the right. A 9kW PV array sits on the upper roof.
The interior of the lodge tells stories from decades of history.
I’m here to add about nine kilowatts of roof-mounted PV modules to the existing twelve kilowatt array, which Jeremiah installed last year and has proven insufficient at times. This facility had utility power over miles of lines until lightning took out a transformer in 2012. With an $80,000 transformer replacement cost, off grid solar looked pretty good. But the buildings were never set up to be electrically efficient, and with commercial refrigeration and research laboratory facilities the base load on the PV system seldom drops below three kilowatts. A big diesel generator makes up the rest, and it runs at least once every day.
On this project I’m Jeremiah’s crew, as he once owned a PV installation business, all mainstream roof-mounted grid-tied installations. He knows this aspect better than I do. When this is done I’ll relocate further up the mountain, to Barcroft Hut at 12,570′, and install a couple of more familiar smaller off grid systems, one for a small observatory above Barcroft and one for the Summit Hut at the top of the mountain.
The employee dorm room corner where I have set up camp for now. Only one other employee, Tim, the main cook, lives here during the summer season. The rooms are comfortable, but none have any heat, and at 10,000′ the mornings are cold even in late July.