Brooks Groves

I was born in Sonora, California and grew up in Groveland — a small mountain town at the western edge of Yosemite, elevation 2,800 feet, population not many. My parents were Forest Rangers, which meant I grew up around the Evergreen Lodge and Mather, CA, with the whole of the Sierra Nevada as a backyard. I learned to swim in the Tuolumne River — Rainbow Pools specifically, a classic California swim hole carved into the granite just downstream, the kind of place that only makes sense to people who grew up near one. I hiked Yosemite before I knew what hiking was. Every summer when Tioga Pass opened, the world got bigger — over the pass and down to Mono Lake, that strange alkaline otherworld on the east side.

The Sierra Nevada shaped how I see the world: as terrain first, elevation second, everything else a distant third. Then came a detour to the Texas Hill Country — Brenham, Blinn College, a different kind of landscape entirely — trying to figure it all out deep in the heart of Texas before heading back west to Nevada and eventually north to Seattle.

After studying molecular biology and desert ecology at the University of Nevada, Reno — lichenology, bryology, C4 photosynthesis, the cryptobiotic world living on rock faces across the Great Basin — I spent time at the University of Cape Town working with Doug Rawlings on bioleaching and acidophilic microorganisms. Then graduate work in astrobiology at the University of Washington, studying sea ice bacteria and extremophile microbiology. That ended abruptly when the WTO Riots hit Seattle in November 1999 and I had to defer and go to work full time. Then I ended up in the Westin, where I spent 21 years as bell captain at the Westin — one of the largest hotels in the Pacific Northwest. That job taught me more about human nature than any classroom. I watched the city change from the inside of a revolving door: the dot-com boom, 9/11, the slow recovery, the tech explosion. I met several sitting presidents, dozens of world leaders, Hall of Fame athletes, and Snoop Dogg — more than a few times. I wrote most of it down.

In 2017 I went back to school at the University of Washington and completed a certificate in Geographic Information Science and Cartography. I've been at Zillow since 2019 — first as a GIS Technician, now as a GIS Analyst and data scientist — building spatial pipelines, analyzing market data, and finding patterns in the geography of real estate.

Outside of work I build open-source dashboards and data tools: streamflow monitors, snowpack trackers, wildfire response analyses, Mariners analytics. I run, swim, and ride. I geocache. I watch too much pro cycling. I read constantly and write when I can.

This site is the place where all of it lives — the technical work, the writing, the data, the mountains.