January 20, 2007, 8:45pm

I'm up in the mountain again, snowshoeing this time.

This is the very beginning. I just wore the snowshoes. No snow on my shoes and pants. No sweat, no pain, no panting, no stress.

Up to this point, my knees were still OK. It's not very steep in the lower hill. Some people decided that they had enough and went back at this point. I decided I wanted to go up to see the lake...

It's just life-threatening to go up there in the lake. It's very steep and my knees simply didn't have the strength. I made it in the end, with the support and help from a person in the team.

Then, my camera battery was low when I finally went to the lake side... Poor me. So, I don't have any picture of the lake to show here. I'll upload the pictures when I get them from my friends.

This trip has confirmed what I believe. There're many things that may not be recorded. We need to experience as the first person. Reading, watching movies, doing research etc may not capture everything, sometimes not even the significant parts of others' experiences.

Going up the steep glacier valley was very difficult. I fell don't know how many times. It's like the story that a snail goes up the wall of the well 2cm, then fall down 3cm. It's very dangerous. If the other team members were not supporting me, I simply wouldn't be able to go up there at all.

I couldn't breathe for one minute. I was using a lot of energy to go up. I was feeling dizzy. The air is always thin up in the mountain. I went to 9,000-10,000 feet above sea level.

It was simply impossible to take any picture of the valley when I was going up and down. It's high and very slippery.

Just so many times when I think about doing research, there're so many reasons that the results are biased. For example, if someone wanted to study family experience when I was living with my family, I simply wouldn't participant at all. I was too busy to deal with my family every single moment.

No energy to do anything else and I wouldn't bother filling out questionnaires or doing interviews. I didn't have the energy to write blogs either. Then the study results would be biased. Probably people having extreme situations won't be able to participate in research studies.

Anyways, this is the best we can do. Record what we can record, study what we can study with the available resources. Get to the closest to what other people experience. :)