Caves of Iceness

Tip of the day: Don't buy salopettes from Mountain Warehouse.

It's nearly a week since the last post and about the most interesting thing to have happened in the period up to last Friday was the news that we had Friday off: LIE IN!!!! And you can bet that we all made the most of it; waking up at 11:30 am has never felt so good.

However, a day off doesn't always mean a day to be lazy here in Longyearbyen, for a lot of us a day off means a chance to go and explore some more / do something interesting. I think that's perhaps the largest difference that I have noticed between living at home and living here; people crave going out and doing something interesting and I have to admit that the feeling has spread to me too. As a disclaimer I wouldn't say that I'm not someone that appreciates the outside but after the last semester in Aber it felt like I'd never see anything outside of 4 walls again.

So! We went to revisit an area that we've already been but did so in the complete darkness, the final part of the safety training; a spot between Nybyen and Longyearbreen glacier. There isn't a huge amount there but a few spots to scramble up and enjoy, including some fun spots to "bum-shovel" down. And of course take a picture:

After a bit of waddling around we headed back and watched the Rugby whilst pre-drinking for the infamous Friday Gathering. Unfortunately for Noel he had class till 4pm which meant that he wasn't able to partake in the frivolities but did however get a head start on Friday Gathering, he wasn't too chuffed at how late we were... On the plus side though there was a lovely bonfire afterwards followed by an awesome meal at a place called "Barentz" which served gorgeous burgers and fries. If you ever come here I would recommend! The night was closed when me and Noel fell asleep on each other and attracted some confused looks by the rest of the bar; home time indeed.

Saturday looked to be a great day. Noel, Heather, and myself took a small hike up to Longyearbreen glacier to re-familiarize myself with skiing. Unfortunately no one had informed any of us that the ski's supplied by student equipment hadn't been adjusted to the requested boots which means, obviously, no skiing for me. I did however play camera man for the afternoon and got some clips for the upcoming videos, so it wasn't all a loss and the other two got some skiing in anyway.

Sunday, however, now that was one heck of a day. We'd had our sights set on the ice-caves for a while now and with the ever growing amount of light around noon we figured today would be a good day to take a look. So in this short video you get to see some of the walk up and the exploration within the cave. On and there's pictures too of course!

Whilst the pictures really don't do it justice, I hope you get a feel for what it was like being in such an awesome place with such evident geology surrounding you. Noel had a bit of an issue keeping his excitement in but really, who could blame him.

Other than that, the only really big thing to happen this week was some awesome aurora right outside our windows. I promised some pictures so, here you go:

It is worth a footnote, however, that we're finally home and settled in Barrack 11, sadly leaving Barrack 3 behind and all the awesome people there too. But on the plus side, Barrack 11 was where we obtained the aurora pictures so, it's not all bad.

Time for a cuppah I think.

Photography Master. Sort of...

It's not been quite a week since the last post but there have been some pretty awesome pictures taken the last few days with the light conditions improving. I would seriously recommend that everyone reading this checks out my cohorts posts too, they've done awesomely!

SO, 

Moving on to the pictures that I've been taking the last couple of days, I've finally gotten my head around the processing that comes with the "RAW" file types that are an option on the dSLR that I was lent for this trip. So without much further ado, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

So a little explanation behind the pictures taken, starting from the top. We have the full UNIS complex, an interesting quite well designed building if you ask me. Then there are a couple of pictures of a group of reindeer that I managed to get very close to, they were just chilling outside UNIS one day and so I naturally took advantage of this and went to take a closer look. A few scenic shots of the area in and around Longyearbyen follow, giving a bit of a hint to the beauty that is quite literally on our doorsteps. The slightly yellowish tinge images are from a short walk that Noel, Heather, and I took to just get out of town for a while, cabin fever is a real thing here! The next few images are from the hike that we took yesterday, we walked up to the airport and off up a track that took us to the KSAT site past the famous seed vault (see picture with green funky lighting). In the images, they're (KSAT) denoted by the golf ball looking shelters that house the dishes used to download the data from any of the (near) polar orbiting satellites like the Solar Dynamics Observatory, an imaging craft that I have a lot of experience dealing with so it was a must that I got to see it at some point. Up here, you can just about see the sunset which, as Noel quite rightly said, is the only real light that we get here at the moment. Each day the light gets a little more and we can see a little further into the fjord each time. The cloud cover recent;y has significantly hindered this but we have time and we enjoyed ourselves which was the main thing.

Damn was it tiring though, the hike lasted about 8 hours in total and we covered about 22km. Ordinarily this wouldn't be such a great feat but the snow made it particularly difficult to travel. It was an annoying level of deep and kept collapsing under our weight so most of our energy went into staying up right. The use of the newly coined "butt shovels" at the end made everything that we had just experienced more than worth it. Dropping about 450m using nothing more than a plastic bin lid (may as well have been) was so fun, nearly killed myself mind you but thankfully I had a Kieran in the way to catch me.

And finally there's the picture of the Reindeer that took a particular interest in me, likely because I was getting a little too close for comfort but for a few minutes we just sat there and stared at each other, each acknowledging that neither of us meant any harm. It was really really nice, serene perhaps.

So that's it from me at the moment, I'm sure if there's anything else interesting to happen this week, I'll let you know but right now we're all prepping for the first set of field work that starts next week at the Kjell Henrickson Observatory (KHO), now that will be an adventure.

Time for a cuppah I think.

The Crew

Tip of the day: Jeans are underrated.

It's bounded about a lot here amongst the group but it's really difficult to imagine that it's only been 3 full weeks since we arrived and met the people that we now can't imagine not seeing when we rock up to UNIS for a day of lectures.

Kieran has described a few of the ones that we've adopted and done a rather good job, but just to fill in around the obvious, we have:


Noel
Age: 21
Major: Geology and Physical Geography at Bates College

This guy is your typical redneck hillbilly, prone to outbursts of "YES SIR-IE" and as you can see from the accompanying picture, sports a rather fabulous goatie which only adds to his already incredible demeanor. Also the orange staff he is holding contains a rifle so naturally he's an American but by this point that's already a given. Joking aside, he's a great addition to the group and was likely the first person that both Lucy and myself met as he was originally in the room opposite Lucy in Barrack 3, from that point onwards and as has been with the majority of our friends, we've bonded over the pure fact that we're different to each other culturally and the sort of funnies that can arise from this are never ending it seems... He's a hiker and a general outdoors-ie orientated person, so much so that we were privy to pictures of his butt-cheeks from a nude photo shoot he did with his climbing group back in Maine, naturally I couldn't sit straight and a fun, additional for-no-extra-charge fact, his beard trimmer is completely out of this world. If I was to sum Noel up in a short phrase: "Honorable, hilarious, and genuinely interesting"

Heather

Age: 21

Major: Physics at Bowdoin College

The second American of the group bringing our total to 1 and a half Americans. Viscous doesn't quite describer her adequately as both me and Kieran found out in the first week; it seems she's somewhat adversely affected by short people jokes. Ooops. A few dozen bruises later she seems to have calmed down a bit. Nonetheless I had the (ehhh) luxury of being in a group with Heather in the safety training week so take full responsibility for having introduced her to the rest of the Aber group. I know. I'm sorry guys. Similarly outdoors-ie as with Noel, funnily enough they go to college maybe 30 minutes away from one another back in Maine and had never bumped into each other, anyway they're now inseparable and natter on about climbing and hiking all day long; it's somewhat surreal hearing all these phrases from American films being used and realising it's actually how these weirdos speak. I'm likely going to regret these comments but only time will tell. If I was to sum Heather up the same way: "A small (had to), goofy yet grounded, inspiration."

Peita

Age: 31
Major: Marine Biology

Our resident Australian (Someone has to be, right?), still seems taken back each and every time banter is thrown her way, though she's slowly getting on form and figuring out some decent retorts. She's the groups mother and we make it ever evident whenever we can, usually but shouting "MOTHER" in a high pitched voice coined by Bryan (Ryan) and gleefully prancing in her general direction, inventive right? That aside, she's a very early riser and puts us all to shame, we can barely get out of bed for 8am and by that time she's climbed to the north pole and back. Sort of... Either that or she's cooked up a storm in the kitchen and the smell has been enough to raise us from the dead, I don't know how she does it but she manages to make the simplest collection of foods smell and taste so damn good! If I was to sum Peita up: "Easy-going, caring, and wholly driven"

To sum us all up though, this one is more than apt:

There's so much more to these people than I've detailed here, unsurprisingly. The most important part is that they're each awesome in their own right and I'm 90% sure none of us could imagine what life would be like here without each other. #Soppy

Anywho, currently working on another post that'll be up shortly that documents, mostly, the recent snaps that have been taken and also a little about the first real excursion we did as a group!

Stay tuned!

Time for a cuppah I think.

Light is on the Horizon!

Hei!

In a bid to appear less vague I'm taking a leaf out of Lucy's book and editing the blog post bit by bit to ensure maximum information! Let's see how this one goes.

Alright so today (Sunday 24th), a few of us decided that we'd make the most out of the fact that it's the first weekend we've had in about 5 months where we haven't had some form of work that we've needed to do. Thus we strapped on our shoes and grabbed our cameras and went on the hunt for the famous Polar Bear sign at the edge of town. The overriding theme you'll see is that the sun is slowly peeping over the horizon and giving us some gorgeous lighting conditions!

On the way we got up to various shenanigans such as playing on a somewhat dilapidated swing set and attempting to climb a near vertical ice sheet. We saw some beautiful silhouettes cast by the rising sun in the south, some reindeer grazing peacefully with what seemed to be no cares in the world, and the governors house overlooking the town and making sure all is right in this remote haven. It's a special place here and I'm not sure quite how to describe and explain it all without dragging each and every one of you up here to see for yourselves.

After much dawdling and photo taking we finally arrived at the Polar Bear sign and took some more photos (surprising huh?). We got a short glance out across the open fjord and beyond and everything was still for a few moments as each of us took in a little bit of where we were and that just infront of where we stood was a place completely inhospitable to human life, yet we were stood there nonetheless.

For those wondering what the Polar Bear sign is:

Which loosely translates to "Applies to all of Svalbard". i.e. watch your back, there's likely a Polar Bear behind you.

Moving on to Monday it seemed like it was going to be a relatively uneventful day till I received an email from the gentleman that I'm applying to for a PhD and he thought a skype chat was a great idea to clear up any final pieces of information and to also get a chance to talk properly. I met David Long when I visited MSSL (Mullard Space Science Laboratories) at the end of November and had a chance to talk then but at that point it wasn't clear who was going to be the project supervisor.

FYI, I got the email in the middle of the first class of the day and nearly jumped out of it, sitting still was not an easy task. SO we skyped and it was great and he was encouraging, of course the system requires that all applicants are given full consideration before the 5th of February and then we move into interviews and the like, so I can't imagine there will be much more said about anything before that point. Nonetheless, it's encouraging! I can't describe how much I want to do my PhD there!!!!

Tuesday! The weather was on a whole other level today, gusts and snow blindness like nothing we've seen before with little snow twisters occasionally attempting to take us on a journey. Somewhat fun though! For a moment you get a real hint to what it must have been like back when Longyearbyen wasn't so civilised, when there was just a thin wall between you and the harshness of the Arctic and people likely dressed in less suitable clothing than us. It's somewhat of a far cry from the clear conditions of the previous night in which Lloyd, Ryan, and Kieran nabbed some fantastic star shots so go and take a look at them on their pages! Unfortunately no pictures here of either the stars or the crazy weather conditions though if I thought I'd have been able to hold onto the camera or the floor without being swept off into the abyss then I would have had something to show you!

In other news the building is making a weird creaking noise with each gust of wind and it sounds like something's about to be not so attached. I hope I won't have to move again... On that note too, we might be able to move into 11 at the start of next week! *win*

So Wednesday and Thursday passed without much of the interesting other than we finally have one of the Welfare rifles and equipment to go along with it; HIKE TIME!!!! I think we have plans to go up one of the plateau mountains and take some pictures of the town / sun / sky (if it isn't cloudy like it has been for the last few days), others are planning on going Skiiing at some point and a few other hikes have been discussed, personally I'm just glad to be getting out of town and back to exploring! More pictures too, so check back at the next post.

Also I experienced my first Norwegian class and learnt how to say a few phrases, repeat after me:

Jeg heter - I am called
Jeg kommer fra - I come from
Jeg er - I am
Engelsk - English

Though these phrases I'm sure Google is capable of translating, and the pronunciation you can figure out yourself and try it on me when I get back, good luck ;D

Right now, Kieran is on his way over to teach me about Age of Empires 2 so, gotta dash!

Time for a cuppah I think.