by Jon Ruyle
I guess I am posting this a bit after the excitement has died down, but better late than never, I guess. On Saturday night, Roger, my wife, and I went up to Fremont Peak to see the Leonids. The original plan was to spend the day and night at Cone Peak, but we scaled down our plans due to weather. We decided to show up at FP at about midnight and head up to the observatory. I forgot to call ahead for the gate combo, but I figured there would be at least one FPOA member up there who could give it to me.
When we arrived at FP around midnight, cars were ahead and behind us on the way up. We passed several on their way down. Traffic got thicker as we got close to the top, and when we got there we waited in line to find a gate and a ranger blocking the way, instructing us to turn around. I told the ranger I was a FPOA member wanting to go up to the observatory, and she asked me if I knew the combo. When I admitted that I didn't, I was told that there was no room to park by the observatory and to hurry up and turn around- I was blocking traffic.
We walked up to the observatory (*plenty* of room to park) and I found Ron Damman who gave me the combo (thanks Ron, if you read this), and we went back to the car. By this time there was gridlock and no way to get to the barrier. The ranger said that since we now had the combo she would let us in, but that there was no way we would get to the gate so we should give up. I was determined, however, and finally we made it back to and through the blockade.
Anyhow, that all kind of sucked, but once we got up there, it was just us, the meteors, and about 10,000 non-mean-ranger people. At around 1 when I started watching, it was already pretty spectacular- two or three each minute, many bright. I saw a meteor go by most of my favorite naked eye objects- one through the Pleadies, one past Jupiter, one across Orion, and a bright one left a trail by the beehive. I joked that I would keep doing ZHR counts until I got at least 10 in a minute (we all laughed at that). Then around 2 it started to really get going. We counted 7 in a minute, then 18 in a minute around 2:30, and 45 in a minute at about 3am.
It was amazing. We would start a count, and almost right away someone would say "one, two", and someone else "three four five" all maybe within five or six seconds. We had to be pretty conservative to avoid counting some of them more than once. There was no time to ask "was the one you just counted the one through the belt of Orion?", so we were forced to only count when no one else was saying anything. Often there were four or five trails visible in the sky at once, and more than once I saw three meteors in the sky at the same time. Sometimes when I was looking West, I would see several meteors in succession heading straight down almost like rain. Trails from the brightest stayed visible for minutes with the naked eye, and even longer in binoculars, which showed them to be made up of many lovely interacting tendrils- almost like veil nebulas in miniature. We kept watching until dawn, when clouds started to come in. (It turns out we were really lucky with weather, because we are told it was cloudy until midnight when we arrived. It was crystal clear from midnight until about 5 am, and then cloudy on the way home and in Capitola all day Sunday.)
It was a once in a lifetime shower- for a peak to occur during a storm year when Leo is high in the sky in the US during a new moon and under clear skies is something I may never see again.
By the time we drove home, almost everyone had left but there were still many cars parked all over and people sleeping on them. It totally lived up to the predictions and the hype. I still get a warm happy feeling thinking about it.