Re: A northern palace

"J.Pascal" <julie@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jul 2, 7:26 am, Eric Ammadon <email_a...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"J.Pascal" <ju...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 1, 7:17 am, Eric Ammadon <email_a...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Peter Knutsen <pe...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Eric Ammadon wrote:
Altitude also affects weather, and how liveable a climate is.

Good point! There's no altitude whatsoever in Denmark, so it tends not
to be on my mind.

Since I'm at nearly 2 miles up, it's on my mind quite a lot. <g>

--
   http://fictionfromnobody.blogspot.com

Where are you that you can get 2 miles up?  

Colorado Rockies.  We're at a little over 10,000 feet here.

 We're just under 7k
feet.   The tip top of the peak here is two miles high, easily, but
the air is THIN up there.

Bah, lowlanders! <g>

Heh. Not so much. I thought it must be Colorado, (Montana was
actually shockingly lower)

Montana is not much above sea level for the most part, at least as I
remember.

but while the mountains are very high
people don't live on the tops. I couldn't find the town elevations
that were way up.

We don't live in a town. We are entirely off grid in every sense, we
make our own electricty, our water is trucked in, etc. We're a tad
below treeline, I think treeline is around 12000 more or less.

I suppose I should have checked Aspen... but it
looks like that's just under 8k.

Ha! Maybe I found you. A friend of mine is moving to CO and says
their house is at 9800. So... over *there*... on *that* side. ;-)

I think there are a lot of places at our altitude or higher, all over
the Rockies, but people generally don't live there. People like
towns.

For all the hoopla Denver goes on with about being a Mile High...
Albuquerque actually has the same elevation.

Denver goes on about what it has to go on about, which is not a lot in
my opinion. As I remember the land is quite different in Albuquerque
as far as climate and vegetation go, but it's been years.

Curiously, and in case anyone wants to use elevation in a story, 8k
seems to be the point where many people (not all) have a physical
reaction to the elevation. I don't feel ill from it, like some, but
we've got one trail we hike that transitions from below to above and I
swear I can tell when we hit the up-side 8000 feet.

Seems like there's an ear-pop at around 8000.

You get used to it.  I'm a smoker, but I don't touch regular
cigarettes, I only smoke strong pipe tobacco and lots of it.  One
would think that I'd be constantly wheezing up here.  And after a few
hours of carrying logs around, or shovelling snow, or digging a large
hole, often I do find that I'm breathing hard and covered with sweat.

 Can you even cook pasta?   I have the
worst time with pasta.   Boils forever.

The wife has been adjusting her recipes for a number of years now. <g>

We buy our groceries at around 7,000 feet and bring them home.  The
potato-chip bags look like overfilled balloons.  The instant coffee
seal, the aluminum-looking thing under the cap, you have to prick it
with a sharp point and quickly, if you just push it in with a thumb
there's coffee everywhere.  We're (poor, poor us) forced(!) to eat a
bit of ice-cream when we bring home a new carton because it's done
growed on the way up the hill and the lid's been pushed nearly off.

All recipes including marshmallow creme have been discarded because
you simply do *not* want to open a can of that stuff up here where
propane appliances are de-rated by around 30%, because once you open
it the stuff is everywhere and sticky as hell.

We get the balloon chips, too. For a while one manufacturer of our
favorite kettle cooked Jalapeno chips was regularly experiencing seam
failure.

I actually bought marshmallow creme the other day and opened it. It
didn't
go all over, but it did sort of... grow.

Increase that growing to just a little past uncontrollable. <g>

And it is very interesting that at this altitude, I can measure a
low-temperature difference of several degrees depending on the phase
of the moon.  There's enough light/heat reflected during the full moon
to make a difference during winter.  Under another 2 miles of
air-ocean you couldn't detect that sort of thing.

Though it is somewhat odd the first few times you find yourself out
shovelling snow in bright sunlight at 5F wearing only a sweatshirt,
you get used to it.  Or you move back to the lowlands of Denver or
somewhere.

The night sky here, and the quiet, they make it worth while. <g>

We're certainly high enough that the air holds no heat (and very
little cold)

If you pay attention to the measurements you'll observe that it seems
related to humidity. After a heavy snowfall the low temp is colder
than hell compared to a few days before or after but it doesn't feel
that cold, and just before a heavy snow it feels cold but doesn't
measure as cold as it feels.

so we get the stark effect of sunlight like that even when the
temperature is
very low. A full moon is bright enough to read by but I've not
noticed
radiant heat from it. Wow.

Because we're totally offgrid there are a lot of measurements that I
need to keep track of. Moon phase affects radiation and it also
affects humidity just like it affects the wetter tides at sea level.

We do get the night skies, though... like
looking
at them will suck you right up into the stars.

-Julie

Yep, the milky way is right there in plain sight, the black places are
absolutely black, and there are stars everywhere. Shame I'm not the
least interested in astronomy, but they all look the same to me; I can
appreciate the beauty of it though, and that's enough.

Funny thing, I'm a desert rat by nature and would as soon live in
Death Valley as anywhere on the planet that I know of. So it goes.

--
http://fictionfromnobody.blogspot.com
.

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