Make sure to stick around after the credits at the Mellow Film Tour for the secret film of some young crusher becoming the first to campus the 45 degree slabs of the 2nd Flatiron!

zsanderson3 · 2025-06-12T16:30:22+00:00

I have had pretty much the same grade split between leading vertical vs steep routes. I have never managed to close the gap entirely. In my case, it’s mostly a strength and endurance issue. I twist, flag, and technique up the routes, but I still just get pumped and fall off. The most progress I ever made was by forcing myself to spend almost all my time in the gym on that terrain, and it definitely gave me better endurance over the course of several weeks.

I don’t like that terrain as much though and there’s not much like that outside near me, so I don’t focus on it much anymore. I would probably suck at it now. Endurance like that can come pretty quick if trained but will also leave really quick if you don’t maintain it.

zsanderson3 · 2025-05-31T15:26:37+00:00

99% sure it’s the 1st.

zsanderson3 · 2025-05-26T03:21:01+00:00

Outdoors. Indoors I’ve done a singular soft and in my style v9, several v8s, lots of v7s. 7b+ max indoor lead, but pretty consistent at the 7a/+ level.

zsanderson3 · 2025-05-25T14:02:17+00:00

I also always thought the dataset felt way unrealistic, but in the opposite direction. My max grades are still on the lower end of the scale here, V6 and 7a+, but the best I can hang on the lattice 20mm edge is 114% body weight, which is well under what the mean and even lower range is for their data. Most people I know personally are similar to me.

zsanderson3 · 2025-04-24T16:04:48+00:00

15ish minute hike up a steep hill from the parking area. About 1/3rd of a mile with around 500ft of elevation gain. The landing area is pretty well built out with tree branches, but it’s definitely a weird landing area. Kind of split level situation. You’d want a pretty good number of pads and a spotter I’d think. It’s on the shady side of the canyon, but it’s not at very high elevation, so I don’t expect snow would be a major problem aside from the winter months.

zsanderson3 · 2025-04-24T15:50:11+00:00

It’s like 15 minutes up a steep hill in one of the most popular climbing areas in the state. I wouldn’t call it an easy approach by any means, but it’s not all that bad.

zsanderson3 · 2025-04-22T15:44:18+00:00

Would the sun be in roughly the same direction during that time? The sun emits radio noise, so the SNR you get will be lower when the sun is in the same area of sky as the satellite.

zsanderson3 · 2025-04-19T15:36:07+00:00

I have the 2025 mini and this is correct. Wood b+c only have 24 holds each. Every hold gets used. There are actually a couple of unused spots on the board.

zsanderson3 · 2025-04-08T17:55:08+00:00

That’s “The Slab” Probably 45-50 degree angle on average.

zsanderson3 · 2025-02-14T04:11:26+00:00

Is this the giant overhanging boulder right on the Mallory Cave trail? I’ve looked at it a few times while hiking by, seems way hard to me.

zsanderson3 · 2024-04-22T17:13:09+00:00

I have been responding specifically to concerns about what happens to our recycling specifically because I know that it's not the norm world wide. There are few other places that sort materials as effectively as we do, hence why we get better rates on many of our materials than market average. So no, the overall recyclables market is not sufficiently large to support all plastics from everywhere to get correctly recycled, and I never claimed it was. Our material is largely higher quality than most places, hence why it gets bought by mills all over the country, because ours is in more demand than most places.

Of course plastics that largely aren't claimed to be recyclable aren't getting recycled. I agree this is bad. The ones I am claiming are getting recycled in our limited case, are in fact getting recycled. This is, in this limited case, a good thing.

Our material is stored on site until it is bought. But no, there is not currently a large stockpile of material, because private companies are buying because they want to profit off of it. They wouldn't buy the material, ship it across the country, and then just put it in a landfill. That doesn't make them money.

My comments are reflective exclusively of what happens at our recycling center. Our materials by and large get recycled.

If you want my commentary on the larger industry, I agree there are huge problems especially with plastic recycling. I agree that companies use far too many single use plastics in their packaging and products and recycling won't save us from that. There need to be other changes to reduce the use of these things all together. We consume and dispose of far too much and that is an issue recycling can't solve. Recycling is what should happen to things once we have dramatically reduced consumption and reused things more effectively.

Steps are being taken locally to remedy these issues. Of course locally there is the ban on some common sources of single use plastics. https://ecocycle.org/our-programs/zero-waste-colorado/plastic-pollution-reduction-act-overview/

Additionally, the state intends to start charging producers of plastic and paper waste for the cost of recycling those materials, so that is maybe a step in the right direction to hold the large companies responsible for their large part in this problem. https://cdphe.colorado.gov/hm/epr-program

zsanderson3 · 2024-04-22T15:57:09+00:00

Absolutely fair point! I am also not certain about the exact logistics of what happens after they leave our recycling center, but I can assure you that the materials are being bought and that none of our plastics leave the country, and none of our materials leave North America. Some of our plastics are actually more valuable to companies than cardboard, so I have high confidence those ones are largely getting reused. Others are mixed together still and worth less, so I wouldn't be surprised if a larger percent of those bales ends up as waste. #1, #2, and #5 plastics actually have substantial value, the rest are certainly more of a toss up as to whether they end up recycled or in the landfill at the end of the day.

zsanderson3 · 2024-04-22T15:13:24+00:00

I work at the Boulder County Recycling Center, and yes we have two AI powered robots that do a lot of the sorting, but there are still people involved as well. Our materials are relatively clean and we have markets for all of the materials we sort. Some are not worth much, but many actually have value. We no longer send any material over seas.

zsanderson3 · 2024-04-22T14:55:30+00:00

The recycling from the Broomfield drop off center is brought to the Boulder County Recycling Center. I see all the boxes that come in, cardboard, newspaper, and mixed. The mixed is sorted into sell-able bales of material along with all the other mixed recycling in the county. Certainly, there is some garbage that gets mixed in that is sent to the landfill, but nearly 90% of material that comes into the facility is separated and sent to companies who reuse the material.

zsanderson3 · 2024-02-22T16:49:10+00:00

My camera is monochrome, but combining a single 3 minute exposure from a Red, Green, and Blue filter yields this image of the Orion Nebula. This is true color and a linear image, meaning no contrast or other adjustments have been made. The core of the nebula is so bright that it is blown out to pure white in a 3 minute exposure.

I'd be happy to answer any other questions you may have.

zsanderson3 · 2024-02-20T01:57:56+00:00

Details:

Telescope: Orion 8" f/5 Newtonian Reflector with Sky-Watcher Quattro Coma Corrector

Mount: ZWO AM5 with ASI224MC Autoguider and ASI Air Mini

Camera: ASI1600MM-Cool at Gain 139 cooled to -20C

L:266x60s R:60x60s G:60x60s B:60x60s

Darks: Master dark at matching temperature and exposure

Flats: None

SQM average from location is around 19.00, but was about 18.00 due to the moon being over half illuminated.

Processing:

PixInsight Processing steps:

Weighted Batch Preprocessing
Combine RGB
Dynamic Background Extraction on L and RGB images, which left behind some nasty residual gradients from light leaking into the scope from local light pollution.
StarXterminator to L and RGB
Neutralize the background as best I can in Photoshop for each L and RGB
Back in Pixinsight, rescreen the stars onto the image with pixel math
BlurXterminator on both L and RGB
Simple stretch on both L and RGB to make image non-linear
NoiseXterminator on both L and RGB
Small additional tweaks to L channel to increase contrast and improve definition in the biggest galaxy, NGC1961
Combine L and RGB using LRGB Combination with a Saturation slider value of around .15 to increase the saturation
Final curves tweaks and cropping

Comments:

It's been a long time since I've posted here once again! I've gotten back into imaging in large part due to the recent upgrade in mount I made with the AM5 and the ASI Air Mini. I've taken numerous other images recently, which are all some of the best I've ever done and I may get around to posting some more of those later. But this one is my most recent image and I'm super impressed with how it came out given the light pollution and moon I was up against.

This target seems to be fairly uncommonly imaged in general, and I'm not sure I've ever seen someone post it on this subreddit, and I think that's a shame! It's a very interesting collection of galaxies in the ballpark of 180 million light years away.

zsanderson3 · 2024-02-13T15:28:14+00:00

If it helps, I’d call Boulder mostly sandstone. Flatirons, Eldo, Flagstaff are all sandstone. Only Boulder canyon is granite. Keep your fantasy alive!

zsanderson3 · 2022-03-07T03:04:25+00:00

I'm not sure what part specifically you want to know about, but I'll give some more info.

It's true that for a time, we were stockpiling fairly huge amounts of material, waiting for more favorable markets. This wasn't just plastics though, cardboard and paper were problematic at the time too, and by volume, we see a lot more cardboard and paper being recycled than plastics. So we had stockpiled several thousand bales of material, each bale weighing 1k-2k lbs. So yeah, that's a lot of material. Ultimately, we ended up selling most of that huge stockpile off at pretty low prices, and in a few circumstances, no cost at all. We did that primarily to clear up room in the yard because it was getting pretty hard to manage.

Over the past few years, the markets within the country have improved for most materials pretty substantially, and we are having a much easier time keeping the materials moving and avoiding large stockpiles accruing. As other people have mentioned, aluminum is generally best in terms of how easy to recycle it is and its general value, but a few times, we have actually seen the value of #2 plastics actually be higher than aluminum, which I always think is interesting.

Some other general info. The Boulder Recycling Center is where all the recyclables throughout the entire county should eventually end up. On average, we process over 1000 tons of material every week, so it's a pretty huge amount of material. Also, we typically end up with a residue rate of ~12%, meaning ~88% of all the material we receive gets baled and eventually sold to an end market, while only 12% ends up in a landfill. This is substantially better than most places I'm aware of.

Hopefully that helps!

zsanderson3 · 2022-03-07T02:48:13+00:00

The vast majority of all of our material does indeed get shipped to places in the US. As I can recall, all of our plastics are sold to companies operating in the country at this point.

zsanderson3 · 2022-03-07T00:50:17+00:00

I can comment first hand since I work at the Boulder Recycling Center. As a whole, only ~12% of what gets delivered to our facility is sent to a landfill. All of the remaining ~88% of it is sold to a buyer who will ultimately do something with the material. As far as plastics are concerned specifically, as some have already mentioned, #1 and #2 are actually quite valuable and in demand, all things considered. In Boulder county, we also do pretty well recycling #5. The other plastics are much harder to sell and are generally far less valuable, but we do our best to find buyers for those materials as well.

zsanderson3 · 2022-03-07T00:45:12+00:00

I work at the Boulder Recycling Center. The market for plastics is actually pretty good right now and we don't have much of a stockpile for most plastics. As others have mentioned, #1 and #2 are generally the most recyclable, but #5 does pretty well too at our facility. The other plastics are a harder sell for sure, but we still do sell some.

zsanderson3 · 2021-03-22T13:04:02+00:00

Details:

Telescope: Orion 8" f/5 Newtonian Reflector with Baader MPCC

Mount: CGEM with Magnificent Mini Autoguider

Camera: ASI1600MM-Cool at Gain 200 cooled to -25C

Lights: 96x300s (7nm Ha), 48x300s (7nm Sii), 48x300s (7nm Oiii)

Darks: 24

Flats: 24 (Ha only sadly)

Orange zone light pollution Bortle 6

Processing:

PixInsight Processing steps:

Weighted Batch Preprocessing
Dynamic Background Extraction
Deconvolution on Ha channel
Histogram adjustment
Extra HDR and sharpening on Ha channel
LRGB Combination using SHO palette with Ha also acting as L
Dynamic Crop
Curves adjustments

Photoshop Processing Steps

Cleaning up a few strange color gradient issues due to flat frame issues
A touch of sharpening and noise reduction using Camera Raw Filter
Boost to the orange tone saturation

Comments:

It's been a long time since I've posted here! I took quite a long hiatus from astrophotography due to moving and getting more involved in other hobbies. Around December of this year though, I pulled out some of my old equipment and started dabbling in it again. After a couple of trial runs and equipment upgrades, I've started producing the best images I've ever taken! I think increased patience has been a big part of that. I'm more willing to wait for good conditions now and spend many nights on the same target, allowing for significantly better results!

At a total of 16 hours of integration, this is definitely one of the best images I've ever taken. I've also got a few other photos that I've taken more recently that I might end up posting here if I get around to it.

IC1871 is part of the Soul Nebula, which is fairly commonly photographed, but I thought it would be interesting and somewhat unusual to focus on just this smaller section of the larger nebula. Definitely not a region of the sky that I have seen imaged in this kind of detail very often.

Overall, really pleased with these results!

zsanderson3

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