Glacial G&Ts

One of the traditions of AMASE (Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition) is to collect some glacier ice for gin and tonic. We pulled up anchor and moved over to a really huge glacier, where there were a lot of icebergs in the water.


I was one of those picked to go out in the lifeboat with Morten and haul small pieces out of the water and bring them back to the ship.

Fisk, fisk, fisk

The ship's crew really fed us well. It helped to enjoy fish. I was in heaven: I counted six kinds of fish at one meal: Smoked halibut, smoked salmon, crawfish (ok, not really fish, but tasty nonetheless) char, caught by Morten of the crew, both salted and baked, and haddock. You could wash it all down with cod liver oil, if you wanted, but I only did that once.

Helicopter ride

I joined the expedition late, so I was helicoptered out to the Lance. It was very exciting.

The beast:
Taking off felt really strange because the helicopter tips forward
Out over isfjorden, which is one of the largest fjords in Svalbard:

A big glacier:
Mud flats below a glacier:
The second half of the ride was above the clouds, but I got this picture just before we passed over the clouds:
We decended through the clouds once we approached the Lance. The cloud base was only 200-300 meters above sea level (lower than the mountains), so the pilots had to use radar to find a fjord to descend into. I took this picture just as we broke through the clouds:
The clouds were at the same level as snow on the mountains:
At last, the Lance:

We flew up the valley a ways to try to spot a polar bear that was near the ship the day before. No luck, though.

On deck: There was a crew filming a documentary for Norwegian television on board for the whole cruise.

Back in civilization

Since the last entry, I have been at sea on board the Lance for ten days, and now have returned home. There was no internet aboard ship, obviously, so I will go back and post pictures and thoughts from those days.

Midnight sun

Yesterday evening I managed to stay up late enough to go for a walk at midnight. Because of daylight savings time, the sun isn't at its lowest until 01:00, so I guess this post should be titled, "1 am sun"

I wandered by the old cemetery, which made news recently as it was the site of an unsuccessful and acrimonious attempt to find genetic material from the 1918 flu pandemic.


I also stopped by the old museum, where most of the interesting stuff was apparently left behind when the museum moved to its slick new digs downtown



Fossils of temperate climate plants are pretty common around here:



The paleomagnetic record here shows that this area has been migrating steadily north from the equator over the last 300 million years or so. These fossils are about 100 million years old.


I also stopped by the church, which is the northernmost church in the world

I saw some things you might expect to find in any Lutheran church


and some that seemed a little out of place:



Near the church is a 24-hour sunclock. There was a bank of clouds covering the sun at solar midnight, but I did see a shadow a bit earlier:

Oh happy day!

Well, this is seriously off topic, but it really made my morning to read that Karl Rove had quit. It's comforting to realize that abuse of power is eventually self defeating.

Longyearbyen

The largest town in the Svalbard archipelago, and my home for the next two days is Longyearbyen. It was begun as a coal mining town, and coal is still important here, although tourism seems to be the biggest industry.

Coal staging area on the airport road
Shetland ponies
The town from the glacial moraine above
The Longyear glacier:

Some Dr. Suess flowers:
The glacial outwash is pretty:

A reindeer. These are much smaller than I expected. I went for a walk up the valley this morning, and saw reindeer tracks, and then finally this guy. The tracks are about cow-sized, but the actual animal is goat-sized. No polar bear tracks though. You're supposed to bring a rifle if you go outside the settlement here. The foot of the glacier is practically in the town, though, so I didn't bother. There are places here in town that rent rifles, so if I go for a longer walk I'll probably bring one.