Summary of the week: fox, juggling, sun, etc.

2009-08-11 16:45:20.000 – Scott Wehrwein,  Summit Intern

Pic not related

As a very busy and shortstaffed week comes to a close, I thought I’d spend a few minutes to mention some recent happenings on the summit.

On my previous shift, I saw a lot of the fox who frequents the summit. He (she?) tends to come up in the afternoon and scavenge for food left by visitors to the summit, and perhaps even be given food by some people. Unfortunately, as a result, this fox has gotten accustomed to being around people and begun to associate them with food. On Saturday, we had the submarine door open for ventilation and the fox actually stepped inside. Seeing it cold and shivering in the rain made it easy to see why people would feed it. While the incident provided some good photo opportunities, it also demonstrated that we need to be careful about leaving the door open.

Thursday, which happened to be a nice calm day with only intermittent fog, one of my friends showed up on the summit with juggling clubs so we got the chance to pass clubs out on the observation deck, and I even made sure we got on the webcam. In general, we’ve seen the sun more than usual this week. Saturday morning through Sunday morning was a good time to be on the summit, especially if you like sunrises and sunsets. I’ve been waiting all summer for a sunset that impresses me, and I’ve finally got two nice sunrises and a great sunset to add to my collection. Also on Saturday evening, visibility was 130 miles and we could see Mount Whiteface just to the right of Camel’s Hump.

Speaking of being here Saturday and Sunday, an EduTrip that included my dad and brother was lucky enough to be here for Saturday’s sunset. So with my mom and other brother volunteering, my entire family was here for a while, and now with only 5 people on the summit, members of my family outnumber the others.

For most of yesterday the weather remained almost exactly the same, with visibility at 0 miles and temperature and wind speeds fluctuating very little, so I got lots of good practice doing fog observations, and even conducted one or two without supervision when Stacey’s pesky inability to be in two places at once became an issue.

It’s been an exhausting week so I’m glad to be heading down tomorrow, but I’m at least as happy knowing that I still have one more week to spend up here.

Scott Wehrwein,  Summit Intern