Goodbye sun, hello winter...

We are now past the last sunrise/set (there wasn't really much in-between) of the year and so now the best we get is a few hours half light in the middle of the day. Today is also the first day to be above freezing in a couple of weeks and so everything is incredibly slippery as the snow covering the ice on everything is melting a bit. The weather should be back to what we are used to pretty soon though. We had our final field trip of the semester on Wednesday in -16 °C, digging snow pits to look at the structure and composition of the snow pack; our transport for the day was the belt-wagon, a wonderful contraption built using the same basic principle as two tanks attached together minus armaments.

We've also been hiking in the snow a few times over the last few weeks, managing to capture the elusive creature that is all three of the SAMS students in one place, at the same time, and positioned in front of the camera (although Kendal wasn't quite on script!). See evidence below.

 

Less successful was our attempt to make it to the top of Nordenskiöldfjellet, the highest mountain in the vicinity of Longyearbyen, but we still had a fun hike in the snow which caused a few moments of people descending into an unseen dip in the topography and up to their waist in snow, much to everyone else's amusement. The reindeer have definitely fluffed up as the weather has got colder so now resemble teddy bears more and more:

I also got to fly a drone during fieldwork a few weeks ago which was lots of fun once I'd taken a minute to got the knack of it, especially since the one we used didn't have a live view camera on.

"It must be up there somewhere...."  Photo credit: Susanne Lindholm

Last weekend I volunteered to help move and set up/dismantle equipment for the Dark Season Blues, the world's northernmost blues festival, and most likely any music festival. This entailed lots of carrying and coiling, plugging and unplugging and interpreting a few instructions in Norwegian (far simpler than apologising and explaining again); it is amazing how much you can get from the odd word and pointing! The weekend was quite a lot of work and I realised how little lifting and carrying you normally do up here, despite the generally active lifestyle; I had lots of fun though and I got a crew pass for the weekend and freebies to wear. All the volunteers got free pizza and drinks this Thursday night, which made leaving for uni at 7:30 on Friday hard work!

We're hurtling at alarming speed towards the end of the semester: this week is our final week of lectures and a final midterm, report deadlines, presentations, and then final exams are in the pipeline soon. Working when it is nasty weather and dark outside is far better than when it was sunny and always light though so it isn't too bad! 

I think that's everything of note that's been happening up here really; I'm sure there will be plenty more to report back in a couple of weeks.

Jamie