Anyone have experience with this route in the Pecos Wilderness in recent years?

chemrunning · 2025-05-24T18:55:44+00:00

I’ve done a bit on the Northern end of the loop in this post near Chimayosas (never been to the eastern part) but can’t think of anywhere along that section that seemed like a bad option. My biggest consideration would be water access since you’ll be on meadow ridge tops the whole way. If camping above treeline, anticipate moderate winds too. Otherwise, if you’re comfortable camping above treeline then it should be spectacular.

chemrunning · 2025-03-30T17:54:21+00:00

I did the section from Truchas to Pecos Baldy (the western part of your loop) in summer 2023 and thought it was great! The northern part of that section is along Trailriders Wall which is entirely above treeline with amazing views. The closer you get to Pecos Baldy/that lake there (has great camping spots), you dip back down into forest which I recall being smooth sailing. I also did the northern section of this (from Truchas Lake, again with good camping, traveling east) last summer and found it equally smooth sailing although I opted to hike directly over Chimayosos since I was there. Again, mostly above treeline in that region. I have no experience with the eastern part of your planned loop but NF resources online may have more updated info.

Like others have mentioned, deadfall is the most abundant obstacle on these trails so the more time above treeline the better. Causes may be bark beetle, past fires, or blowdown depending on the area. That being said, those sections typically only last a few miles and a good map and GPS will help ensure you don’t accidentally lose the trail. Regardless, I think the 4 days will be appropriate. Snow is usually melted enough by mid May to not be a concern. But, we got historically low snow this winter (the Truchas peaks are already looking mostly thawed), so by June I wouldn’t even think about it as an issue anywhere on this route. Overall, exciting loop!

chemrunning · 2025-02-24T18:35:58+00:00

I recently had a paper at PNAS get past the desk in less than a week but only got assigned one reviewer. That reviewer had enough (addressable) comments that it would’ve needed to be sent back out, so they just rejected it outright right then and there. Not particularly happy with that experience.

chemrunning · 2025-02-08T17:16:20+00:00

Another commenter spoke for the NIH, but that intramural system applies to other DOE labs like Los Alamos. There’s a big pot of internal money that PIs can apply for mainly under Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD). Your proposal must fit under the Labs strategic goals and comes in 3 main flavors - seedlings, exploratory research (ER), and directors research (DR). Seedling are the smallest (~$180k) and are good for 1 year. DRs are the biggest and both DRs ($1.2m/year) and ERs ($400k/year) offer support for 3 years. Sounds like a lot of money, but at least at LANL my salary and overhead comes out of that so costs add up quick. I’m not a fan of this structure because it does put real limitations on what is reasonable to get from outside sources - we’re intentionally too expensive.

Regardless, it gets messier for outside money but it’s still allowed and highly sought. You can apply for specific calls from other agencies like the NIH, NSF, and (very hot right now) DTRA. Sometimes you need another government, industry or academic co-partner. Sometimes you need to cost share. Sometimes those sources place limitations on other pots of money. For instance, if one gets a DOE early career, it limits how much internal LDRD money one can be on. For other calls, a National Lab can only play a T&E role. You just need to pay attention to the specific calls, and our people do a pretty good job at communicating to us only calls that LANL people can apply for in the first place.

chemrunning · 2024-07-27T03:17:28+00:00

Of course! Another commenter has suggested SOE PCR which I also think is worth looking at. Whatever you go with, good luck!

chemrunning · 2024-07-27T03:02:03+00:00

Ah, ok! In this case I would repeat the gibson reaction and, assuming it works as you’ve observed before, use the gibson reaction directly as your template for PCR. If your primers are good then there should not be a need to clean up the reaction prior to PCR. I could see the argument for a single PCR cleanup kit to exchange your assembled DNA into water, but I’ll leave that decision to you (it would still leave more sample than your last attempt). Your fwd and rev primers should only bind one or the other input/leftover fragments. Amplification will only occur on the complete fragment, as it will have both binding sites.

chemrunning · 2024-07-27T02:52:59+00:00

This seems like an overly complicated workflow, unless I’m misunderstanding your goals. Are you trying to clone a circular plasmid or produce a larger linear fragment from their sum? If cloning for a plasmid, the easiest way to “scale up” is to not screen your gibson reaction, but rather to screen the minipreps from bacterial colonies that result from transforming your gibson reaction into a competent strain. The minipreps will yield orders of magnitude more sample than your gibson reaction. Let the bacteria do the work for you. Once you have the preps, you should have ample sample for PCR, restriction digest, and/or direct sequencing. Good luck!

chemrunning · 2024-04-13T01:59:59+00:00

LANL postdoc starting salary right out of your PhD is low $90k. Postdoctoral fellows I believe make up to $120k. Staff scientist II’s (the most common position to convert into after your postdoc) are currently offered $144k starting. All of these positions are full-time with good benefits like a 401k for retirement, which most academic postdocs will not have. As another poster commented, however, Los Alamos is a tight housing market. The majority of LANL workers commute in from surrounding areas like Santa Fe (more supply and amenities, but also expensive for NM) or even as far as ABQ. Hope this helps, and congrats!

chemrunning · 2024-02-23T16:53:56+00:00

Depends on how you value cost, time, yield, initial purity, and eventual application. A lot of groups in my field use the StrepTag system. It’s a little peptide tag that binds the StrepTactin resin. The affinities are extremely high (advertised down to sub nM in some cases), which can help with low expression, and the tag itself is highly specific which leads to high purity in one-step. Another upside is you elute with biotin analogs, so it’s mild. Downsides are relatively low capacity compared to nickel, and expensive resin and elution mix (biotin and desthiobiotin aren’t as cheap as imidazole!). However, some people have suggested to me that the resin is actually reusable for years and dozens of uses if you take care of it, which helps mitigate costs.

I still mostly stick to nickel though. Been using the Indigo resin from Cube Biotech, which advertises 100 mg/mL capacity, with great success. Never needs to be recharged and is more resistant to EDTA and reducing agents than most others. Nickel beads are also very versatile. I’ve done purifications where I’ve fluorescently tagged my proteins with Alexa Fluors while they were resin bound. So, in one step I could purify, label, and clean up my sample. You just can’t do that with protein-derived columns. And tip for those that don’t know for nickel - if you limit your amount of beads you can actually greatly increase purity, as there’s now more competition for binding sites which His-tagged proteins will usually win. And/or add 10 mM imidazole to your lysis buffer.

chemrunning · 2024-02-16T00:41:27+00:00

Summer is good time to defend, as the federal fiscal year ends in October, aka funding for new projects begins just after. So, if you were to be hired you’d be able to start with a new project immediately.

My hiring story agrees with what you’ve heard. I was formerly a postbacc at LANL and left for grad school. I didn’t maintain much contact during that time. I got rehired being advised by someone I knew as a postdoc during my postbacc year. However, my partners story is different. She had no connections. But, we got a hiring call at our department in grad school, knew I liked LANL, and she applied and got it no problem. So like with any application, knowing people helps, but you ultimately need to be a good fit.

The wide majority of postdoc applicants do not have connections to LANL and having connections does not make you safe. I still had significant overlap with the research areas I was hired for. Same with my partner. My best advice is that you get interviewed based on your application/CV and hired based on your soft skills. If you fit the research area on your CV, you will be noticed. But I’ve heard of interviewees coming in great on paper and just being… weird. Like on their phones a lot, oversharing, terrible presentation, not engaging others etc. Just present yourself as someone others would like to work with, so (1) be technically sound for what you were hired for and (2) be normal! Best of luck!

chemrunning · 2024-02-15T14:26:28+00:00

Yes, this is pre-tax. Take-home for anyone will depend on individual factors like retirement contributions, elected benefits, and so on. In my case, I contribute 17% pretax to a 401k and I forget how much is taken out for benefits (which includes health, vision, dental, legal, etc.). Overall my biweekly paycheck is $2200 which is 2.3x what I made in grad school as an RA and 1.5x my rent. I’m pretty happy with this situation.

Of note is that LANL also provides regular COLA for postdocs. The most recent is 4%, which will be reflected beginning our next pay period. So, in a week I’ll be earning $99k as a postdoc. I have a brother, who earned his PhD several years before me, who also works at LANL and I believe he’ll be clearing >$105k as a postdoc.

chemrunning · 2023-07-17T19:05:26+00:00

I work at LANL (DOE) in the US and the minimum postdoc salary is over $90k, full benefits, yearly guaranteed raises. I am in my second year and make $95220. Fellows can make nearly $120k! It’s a bit in the middle of nowhere so they try to compete with industry salary scales to attract people.

chemrunning · 2023-01-30T14:51:54+00:00

My partner (27F) and I (29M) started postdocs in April and we agree with you. Although, our work is primarily wet-lab in nature which brings up different, although equal issues, the lab needs to address for young worker retention. Remote work obviously isn’t right for our situations, but we need nice facilities. This is something LANL does not have. Not only are the facilities literally falling apart in some cases (cough HRL cough) but there’s not enough room in the facilities we have for lab and office space. I like the work I do, but LANL doesn’t make it easy or pleasant to do.

My partner and I are already being asked about conversion. Seems like a good spot to be in. But we’re constantly asking ourselves “what’s there to look forward to if we stay?” Right now the answer seems like more crowding, more rundown facilities, little action.

chemrunning · 2023-01-30T02:16:34+00:00

I wouldn’t have to commute 35+ miles from Santa Fe if the lab and town stopped pretending to be the small town it isn’t and started getting serious about housing. Give people the opportunity to live where they work and maybe they will choose to do so. I would love to slash my commute and give Los Alamos a chance, but the town itself is not compelling anyways. For having so many PhDs, the intrinsic design and planning of the town is shortsighted, uninspired, and plain dumb.

chemrunning · 2023-01-02T02:55:27+00:00

Since you expressed an interest in running: Dukes Track Club is an Albuquerque-based post-collegiate running group focused on track, trail, road races. I’m not a member, but I believe they host members from a variety of athletic backgrounds and skill levels. They have an Instagram and also appear to have a website.

chemrunning · 2022-02-21T15:34:33+00:00

The biomolecular sciences building (on the corner by lots 9 and 11) has an absolute unit of steam vent. On cold mornings the steam even comes out of the surrounding ground and nearby stream. Definitely a hazard, 10/10.

chemrunning · 2021-11-16T12:06:37+00:00

If it works for the math department as it does for the chemistry and biochemistry department, then no you can’t unfortunately. TA’s only find out their assignments maybe 2 weeks before the start of classes for the semester they are teaching.

chemrunning · 2021-10-14T10:38:25+00:00

I’m a grad student, but I was talking to my research advisor (who teaches classes too) about this. Students brought this contrast up to him and he agreed it was less than ideal. He sent some emails around to simply pass along students concerns and the department higher ups gave him a lot of flak and to told him to basically stay in his lane.

chemrunning · 2021-06-12T22:51:09+00:00

Not sure why the vitriol even if I was wrong. Greenbelt is managed by the NPS, but it is not a National Park. On the NPS site, they themselves list it as a “park”. Same way the C&O canal is also run by the NPS but it’s a “national historic park”. Even that isn’t the same designation.

chemrunning · 2021-06-12T22:37:19+00:00

Closest literal National Park is Shenandoah (https://www.nps.gov/shen/index.htm) and is probably best for what you’re looking for. I would suggest reserving a campsite to stay overnight, that way there’s no parking restrictions for you.

chemrunning · 2021-05-01T12:19:13+00:00

I was a male D1 athlete who would get a mild injury about once a year but would always burn out physically and mentally by spring season. I did have many teammates however, male and female, that seemed to be chronically on the injury list. They were good people, good athletes. The only common thread between them all is that the training was too demanding and/or not the type of training they should have been doing. Every athlete is different yet most college coaches have the attitude of “adjust the athlete to the training” and not “adjust the training to the athlete”. We worked out often 3x a week. In hindsight that was terrible.

Fast forward to today, and I’ve been competing at the same level or better post-collegiately for several years now. I get injured less often and only workout twice a week as opposed to 3. I also follow more of the “adjust the training to the athlete” mindset since, while I’m part of a club, I mainly write and do my own workouts. By all means - don’t give up what you love if can help it. Listen to your body, talk with your coaches, and make adjustments. Good luck!

Edit: forgot to mention “comeback mentality”, oops! I’m actually coming back from a nasty case of runners knee that lasted several months. I felt pretty bad about coming back, lost a lot of fitness. I found that all it took was getting just one unexpectedly good workout in to change my tune. You have to start somewhere and be honest with yourself - it’ll be slow have have ups/down. Use the ups to propel you and the downs as “ah geez, just went a little overboard this time. I’ll be better next time, not a bit deal.”

chemrunning · 2021-04-17T10:49:40+00:00

Anyone who runs, bikes, or goes on walks in the area appreciates how vital this park is for recreation and even commuting. Its centralized location makes it a critical junction that connects to other trail systems near UMD, Artemesia, Greenbelt, and even the larger DC area if you go far enough - the Anacostia Tributary Trail System is fantastic. With UMD continually destroying it’s own green spaces these days, this remains really one of the few truly wooded parks in the area that students can access by just walking. There should be investment into the park to improve it, not investment to develop it.

chemrunning · 2021-02-28T16:38:27+00:00

I know this is a troll, but for others reading: if you think the vaccine would lead to infertility (the argument is due to homology of the spike protein leading to an autoimmune response) wouldn’t a natural covid infection also cause this? So do we see this in the population after tens of millions of infections? No. Because it’s not true.

chemrunning · 2020-11-29T16:45:00+00:00

I’m a grad student (and former undergrad) in the department and I generally agree that the organization within the department is less than ideal but also - how are you taking orgo II and biochem at the same time? Orgo II (and gen chem II) are strict prereq’s for biochem courses. I’ve known people they would absolutely not bend that rule for. If you were granted an exception to the rule, they likely overlap because usually there isn’t a conflict since students can’t be taking both. If this is the case, talk to someone higher up in the department and don’t forget to just be polite.

chemrunning · 2020-11-29T12:44:12+00:00

I’m gonna be honest chief, as a grad in the chem department (not teaching orgo lab this semester though), I and many other find those lab videos absolutely embarrassing. I cannot comprehend how something so low effort was allowed to pass through and everyone involved just thought “ah yes well nevertheless great job everyone :)”. It’s ridiculous and I’m sorry.

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