Meet the Russians

Hello everyone, it's Holger again!


A little later than originally anticipated, but here it is: as promised I want to talk about the trip to Barentsburg Matt and I did with the environmental management course and our meeting with the Russian Consul General. And then I'll talk a little more about other stuff we have been up to :-)
We all got snowmobiles from UNIS to drive to Barentsburg, which is about 2 hours drive away. The visibility was quite poor unfortunatelly, so we couldn't really see much of the landscape on the way. However, we arrived at Barentsburg Hotel in the early evening. A local guide showed us the mining town, it's not pretty but very fascinating. Many houses were abandoned and lay in ruines, a few have been renovated for the local population though. There are also still a lot of traces from the Soviet era such as a Lenin bust in the middle of town. In combination with the coal mining activities the whole place had certainly a "Russian feeling" to it. After the little tour around town we had a look in the museum. It was really small but they had a lot of stuffed animals and information about the history of the Russians on Svalbard and in Barentsburg in particular, which was nice. They also had the heart of a polar bear in a jar, it's as large as a childs head, absolutely massive! We spend the rest of the night in the hotel, having a few beers at the bar and playing cards. Our meeting with the Russians was sceduled for 10 to 11am the next morning. The meeting was very interesting. Everyone was really friendly and it felt pretty official, they even had a translator. First they introduced themselfs and the city to us and then we had about 45 minutes to ask questions. My favourite was "In the light of climate change, do you consider using more green energy in the future instead of coal?" The Consul General was obviously confused and just said: "Why should we? There is plenty of coal left..."
After the meeting we took the obligatory picture of the class with the consul and the translator. I think they take the same picture every year.

The way into Barentsburg, minig ain't pretty...

Some cow barns, they actually keep livestock here.

And of course comrade Lenin!

The local orthodox church at dusk

AB-203 class with the Russian Consul General (photo credits: Børge Damsgård)

The next and last excursion we did with the Environmental Management course was to SvalSat, a comercial ground station for polar orbiting satellites. They do a lot of stuff for NASA and ESA, but also work for weather forcast and so on. We didn't spend that much time there, and Matt and I have already been there with the Northern Lights course in February. They gave us the same lecture as they did then, but this time inside of one of the big satellite dish thingies. The first time I ever had a lecture at -15C, but they provided us with reindeer furs and blankets. On our way home we saw a polar fox, the first I've ever seen! :-)

A one hour lecture under the satellite dish at -15C is not an everyday thing

That's the same from the outside

The last experience I want to share with you for this time is from the trappers trail 2 weeks ago. Trappers trail is a big dog sled race from Longyearbyen to Kapp Laila over 2 days. It's also the worlds northernmost dog sled race! I volunteered myself and my snowmobile to help out, my job on the first day was to put up warning signs whereever the race track crossed main snowscooter tracks or when the terrain was narrow without space to give way to potential traffic. I also had to put up tents at Kapp Laila, take the times for the first day and prepare a small cabin. So lots of work to do, and all I got was a t-shirt. Not that I'm complaining, it's a cool t-shirt :-) It was very windy and snowing on Saturday, which made the actuall driving very difficult. We couldn't go faster than 30km/h due to whiteout, but I had to carry a heavy sledge, so that was probably good for the engine of my little 2-stroke scooter anyway.

Well, whatever, after I did all the tasks I had to do, a few other volunteers and I had some time for a nice BBQ and for the general joys of camping in the Arctic. We saw some belugas in the bay, and allegedly there were orcas as well, which I didn't see unfortunatelly. On Sunday I had to make sure all participants were leaving on time, and generally help out. After everyone else was gone we had to clean the cabin, and follow the race track home, to make sure everybody got home. All in all a very interesting experience, and the doggies are of course super cute :-) I also had a chance to chat with Christine, who was also helping with the race. For those of you who don't know her, she was a student at SAMS a couple of years ago, and now she is living on Svalbard.
One cannot just leave Svalbard, it is the call of the Arctic...

The participants are getting ready infront of the UNIS building in Longyearbyen

Our camp at Kapp Laila. The cabin was really nice but for participants and organiser only...

Easter trips and polar bears

Hi everyone! Holger here.
The days are getting very long now, it doesn´t really get dark at night anymore. On the one hand it´s nice because the lights of my scooter broke (along with the windscreen and handle heating...) and we can stay out for longer. But on the other hand the constant light messes with my sleeping rhythm.
Us biologists finally finished the last report, it was a difficult one. The data we had to use was not the best ever, because it was from a student group from last year and the fact that we had to make up a topic for the paper from the data didn´t help. Maybe it´s just me but usually scientists come up with a research question first and then go collect data, not the other way around. It was still good to practise scientific writing and the handling of data.
We were on Easter break for the last two weeks and for a change didn't have to work all day! Naturally we went on a lot of trips, I'll talk about the most exciting ones in this blog.

During the first week off, Matthew and I went to Mohnbukta at the east coast of Svalbard. Jamies scooter, the sexy cat, was still in need of some attention, so he couldn't join us. Chances to see polar bears are a lot better at the east coast, and although we didn't actually see a polar bear, we covered a lot of territory. A big glacier is going into Mohnbukta and there was enough sea ice to have lunch in front of a spectacular blue ice front! Of course we had to keep a save distance, because even in winter glaciers can calve at any given moment. On our way back we also visited Tempelfjorden and a frozen waterfall, both of which are worth a trip on its own, but we covered all of it in one day.

Lunch break on the sea ice infront of a glacier

 

Especially last week was very busy. I went to Paulabreen with a small group , which is another glacier ending in Rindersbukta, a fjord close to Svea. Svea is the smaller mining settlement about 2 hours away from Longyearbyen. It had been quite cold all week (about -20°C) so the sea ice covered all of the fjord and was safe to drive on. The original plan was to camp, but we found a half finished cabin, which nobody else was using. We had to secure the cabin first by nailing some boards over the window openings, otherwise we would have had to have a polar bear watch, there were a lot of bear-tracks all around the cabin. But with the improvements to the cabin we decided it was secure enough, and we ended up having a cosy, comfortable night. The next day we drove back over the sea ice and saw quite a few seals on the ice. And just before we reached Svea, we spoted a polar bear lying on the ice watching a seal hole! The bear didn't mind us approaching at all, so we were able to carefully drive relatively close to it (perhaps 150-200m). Of course we had to stay on our scooters and have them all faced away from the polar bear, so we could quickly drive off, if we needed to. But the bear just looked up once and ignored us for the rest of the time. We watched it for maybe 10 minutes when another tourist group came from the nearby town and drove straight towards the bear with no precaution whatsoever. Of course the bear didn't like being cornered so it run away. Luckily not through either of the two groups....

Please excuse the bad quality of the pic, I don´t have a fancy camera with good zoom. But you can clearly make out the polar bear anyway.



Polar bear!!!

 Our home for the night


 

And myself driving my snowmobile (photo credits Renee Rookus) 

The last trip I want to talk about was another cabin trip to Diabasodden. Matthew and his brother, who was here on a visit for a few days, joined the group this time. Jamie didn´t go with us again, because the sexy cat (his snowmobile) was still not ready yet. But at least he found a new gear box and brought it back from the dead. I´m sure he´ll have it running again soon! However, back to the topic. On the way to the cabin we visited the view point, a huge cliff overlooking Tempelfjorden. It was a clear day and we had an amazing view. We also stoped at the frozen water fall again, it´s always worth it! We arrived at Diabasodden quite early so I had time for a little hike up a nearby smaller cliff to take some pictures. Compared to the other cabins this one is pure luxury. It has a small sauna and plenty of space for at least 7-8 people. In the evening we heated up the sauna to 100°C, enjoyed some Scottish whisky and cooled off by jumping into the fjord and rolling in the snow! The last one was a little difficult, because the snow was very densley packed, it was more ice than snow. We had to dig a little pit first and fill it with snow. The next morning we had a nice easy walk and headed back to civilisation after lunch.   

Well, that´s it for now, I hope it wasn´t too long. The biologists are going to Barentsburgh (The Russian mining town in Svalbard) on Thursday and Friday to talk to some Russian officials about

environmental management, that´s what you will hear about next time :-)

 Diabasodden, what a beautiful place


 

The view point

The frozen waterfall, half of it collapsed in February but still impressive!

Sundogs have nothing to do with the sea, but are still quite nice to look at!

Sea ice sampling on svea

Hi everyone! This time it's Matthew writing.

In the last post, Jamie mentioned the trip to Svea where his snowmobile broke down. The snowmobile has since been towed back to Nybyen where it's patiently awaiting mechanical attention after Easter. Holger and I were actually on the sea ice in Van Miljenfjorden taking cores of the sea ice, plankton samples and CTD readings in the water column that day and Jamie had stopped to say hi before starting the fateful return journey. I'm going to tell you about that trip from my perspective...

First things first, conditions are changing in the Arctic. In all previous years the sea-ice in Van Mijenfjorden by the coal mine at Svea has been well over a metre thick, but this year it was just over the minimum safe thickness of 30cm. It was also wet ice. Slushy snow on slushy ice. Our logistical team checked conditions and confirmed that it was safe to set up our equipment on the fjord. So we headed over.

The logistics team had also seen polar bears, so we were going to have to pay particularly close attention and rotate between polar bear watch and sampling. Arctic research is important and polar bears look cuddly in photos, but neither are worth dying for - so we double checked the rifles, flare guns and binoculars. We shared out safety and lab equipment, packed the sleds, put on extra layers, dressed in snowmobile suits, face masks and helmet and headed out on an adventure.

It was a glorious day. The sun was shining and for most of the Arctic Biology students it was the first serious expedition outside the safety of the local area. We had to cross glaciers and the site was 2 hours drive away, but the conditions were good for snowmobiling. It was relatively flat and there was plenty of snow to keep the hard-working engines of our snowmobiles cool.

We took measurements, ice core samples and set up an oceanographic station to sample the 15m deep water below the ice for analysis back in the lab. Here are a few photos from the trip and a video of the descent into Svea and some of the labwork - maybe you can tell what we were measuring from the equipment?












































Link to video of the descent to Svea and labwork at UNIS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0JuIQ8LVHE

More adventures... and some studying!

Hello again, Jamie here this time.

The semester is fairly rocketing along now and the last few weeks have been very busy, with lots of lectures during the week and private trips out over the weekends. The geophysics courses I am doing are structured so that almost all the lectures are past and we are moving our attentions over to fieldwork and then report writing now that the weather and daylight is more suitable for being outside. We were out twice over the last couple of weeks digging snow pits to look at the structure of the snowpack and we were due to go out on scooters again on Monday to look at the calving front of a glacier a few hours from Longyearbyen but the trip had to be cancelled because of a lack of sea ice in the fjord that we would have to drive along combined with the fact that snow scooters sink. We are planning to be out every day from this Monday until the following Sunday completing the major part of our fieldwork for AGF-212 Snow and Ice Processes that we will write our reports for this course on.

AGF-212 class digging snow pits

The weather generally has been very mild (for the arctic) with February this year being on average 10 degrees celsius warmer than the long term average for the month. We also experienced rain on the way home from field work last week which was a good reminder of what it would be like to be back in Oban during winter!

In my own time I've been exploring further afield than was possible last semester by using my snowscooter to drive out with friends to places to hike or explore. A group of us (including me and Matt) spent a night in a cabin at Kapp Schoultz, which seemed appropriate since one of the classrooms we spend a lot of time in at UNIS is named after it. Getting to the cabin was more difficult than in previous years due to the lack of sea ice on the fjord, although this did mean that some of us could go swimming - very refreshing as there were pieces of ice from the glacier drifting past! For the sake of decency I've spared you all the photos of that...

My scooter with a sledge full of stuff on our way to the cabin

The view on a hike from the cabin on the Sunday morning before heading for home

A couple of weeks ago a group of us drove out and climbed Skolten, one of the highest hills in Nordenskioldland to see the sun for the first time.

On our way up Skolten

At the top, enjoying the sun!

Getting ready to set off back, photo credit Maiken Rian

The views were fantastic and it was amazing to see the sun back after such a long time. For almost everyone in the group it was also the first time they had seen the sun on Svalbard, so a very special moment for them. I meanwhile celebrated by singing "here comes the sun...." to myself as I reached a high enough altitude for it to crest the horizon. Luckily for all concerned I was a distance from anyone else at the time! That evening was the icebreaker party at UNIS (although the ice is already well and truly broken amongst most of the bachelors students there are a lot of new masters students) and despite spending much of the party just speaking to friends next to the fire in the cantina by the time I got back to my room at about 3 am I was quite tired. Nevertheless we were up not too late the next morning to make the most of the last day that we could drive to the far larger ice cave out on Scott Turnersbreen (a glacier about 25km from town) before the area it is in was closed off to snow scooters. Me and my crew were the only scooter ready on time however so a slightly delayed departure ensued.

Inside the Scott Turnersbreen ice cave

Last weekend a couple of friends and I managed to at the last minute (the evening before) join a group including Holger going camping in Foxdalen. Camping in Svalbard is not as simple as in other places as firstly you have to keep a polar bear watch at all times and secondly because camping on snow above permafrost means that you cannot use normal pegs - special snow pegs are required - the best method by far however is to park a sledge or snow scooter next to the tent and tie the guy lines to it. Another method is to bury objects such as jerry cans of fuel or other heavy things and again tie the guys lines to them, although in retrospect this is best done before burying the object!

Camp all set up

The following morning we were up early and packed away the camp. Holger and I used the scooters to deliver as much of the stuff as we could back to the road where the hikers were getting a taxi and, leaving our passengers from the journey there to walk with the hikers back, we went and joined other friends for a day trip to the east coast of Spitzbergen. This is quite a long day as it is about a 180km round trip. It was also quite and eventful trip: right from the start I got a phone call saying that the others would be late to our agreed meeting point as one of the other scooters had shredded its variator belt which had to be changed for the spare (that everyone must carry as this is not an uncommon problem but results in the scooter's engine not being connected to the gearbox and track). We headed back to where they were and I took the sledge that the temporarily disabled scooter had been towing to give it an easier time as it was now running on the spare belt.

We continued on eastwards through fantastic scenery and lovely weather, stopping for breaks occasionally to take photos, have a snack and discover you can drive a scooter surprisingly well with your feet if you sit on the passenger seat; sadly we were to busy to take photos of the latter endeavor!

All was going smoothly until about three quarters of the way there when the scooter in front of me stopped pretty suddenly half way up a steep slope. Some investigation pointed towards the gearbox failing as the engine was running fine but the scooter was going nowhere. We left the scooter at the side of the track and moved the people from it to the spare seats on other scooters that you always have on long trips. As it was still early in the day and the conditions were so good we decided to continue on the last few kilometres to the east coast proper and we were very glad we did. The views were amazing and from a small promontory we could see out onto the sea ice where there were two polar bears walking across!

Polar Bears!

If you are going to break down there are far worse views to have

It had taken 7 months to see them but it was definitely worth it, even if they were a very long way away. At a distance is probably the best way to see polar bears for all concerned however!

We headed back towards Longyearbyen to the stricken scooter and set up a tow, sadly after a very short distance the track seized up and so towing was impossible and it had to be left out on the glacier for the night. Three of us returned the following day with a special plastic sledge from UNIS to fit under the track and two of us shared the towing home.

Getting ready to tow the disabled scooter the next day

This meant there was a certain irony when on the next trip (a day trip to see the sea ice by Svea on Wednesday) my scooters gearbox failed rather dramatically and it had to be left behind on another glacier far from town. At least we have some practice towing now!

That's all for now, but there will doubtless be many more stories to tell in the very near future, hopefully including the phoenix-like reincarnation of my scooter.

Hello everyone!
It has been a while since we posted something. We will try to post a little more frequently in the next few weeks! I (Holger) don´t really know where to start, so maybe I´ll just start by telling you about what Matthew and I do in our biology class besides of normal lectures. Last week we had a role playing exercise, where we had to hold a summit about climate change in the Barents Sea. 6 groups had to defend their position and if possible find agreements and make deals with other parties. Matthew was part of the oil lobby whilst I represented the Russian government. Naturally we had common interests in the economical exploitation of the Barents Sea, but "unfortunately" we failed to find a strategy how to expoit the oil fields, mostly because of the strong opposition from the WWF, green energy alliance, Norwegian government and the Sami council. This exercise went on all day and we had to stay in character all the time, as the coffee break talks are often the most important part of this kind of summit. Other than that we also have lab sessions, where we dissected Arctic cod, learnt to distinguish the most common copepod species and identified common phytoplankton.

You probably also want to hear about all the things we Arctic students do outside of class!
Last week the Russian students organised the weekly "Friday Gathering" with Russian food, Russian music and LOTS of vodka. Jamie even participated in the party games they prepared. You see him on the photo getting spoon-fed with yoghurt. The fastest team wins!

A little bonfire under the Aurora borealis, just outside Brakke 13! (photo: Matthew)

Of course there is a lot more to do then partying! The winter sport season finally started as the sun is slowly comming back now. We can´t see it in Longyearbyen yet, only if we hike up the mountains, but it is bright for several hours over the day anyway. The most popular hike is up Trollsteinen or Sarkofagen, two mountains directly next to our baracks in Nybyen. Even for these relatively easy hikes safety is very important. We can´t leave town without a rifle, flare gun and avalanche equipment (shovel, avalanche probe and beacon). Most of the stuff we can borrow from the student equipment, and we can apply for a welfare rifle every week as well. However, due to a large number of new master students it is a little bit too much of a lottery wheather or not I can get a rifle and student equipment, so Matthew, Jamie and I bought our own avalanche gear.

View of Nybyen and Longyearbyen from the Larsbreen glacier on my way to Trollsteinen. 

 

 

 

 

 

View of Adventdalen from the top of Trollsteinen.

 

 

 



The view of Adventfjorden opening into Isfjorden, also from the top of Trollsteinen.







Finally all three of us also have our own snowscooters so we can finally start doing all the great trips around here! Last Monday Matt and I were planning to go to Foxdalen on my snowmobile, because Matt still hasn´t dug out his skidoo. We wanted to visit the ice caves of the Scott-Turner glacier in Foxdalen. However, this was my first snowscooter trip and it ended rather soon in the next trench, for which I totally blame my passenger (It's always the passengers fault, Matt)!! But I also didn´t cover myself in glory for I managed to flood the two stroke engine of my skidoo because I had it on full choke when I tried to restart it. Long story short, we couldn´t restart it again. Luckily Matt could take another skidoo, so after a rather embarrassing start we had an amazing trip after all!
I wouldn´t be able to describe the beauty of the caves, I'll leave you with a few pictures, see for yourself!! (thanks for your pictures Matthew!)