Ok, as promised i'm posting some details of the safety course as they are more interesting than the previous post! the less i say about monday the better, we all got dressed up in virtually all the outdoor clothing we own in preparation for a day outdoors (and this week its been around 30 below 0!) and we spent the whole day in a lecture room listening to the governer of UNIS talking about the place, the Sysselmannen's cheif of police and cheif of environment (Sysselman being the governer of Svalbard) talking about administration and the environment and one of the crew of the rescue helicopter based here in Longyearbyen talking about first aid; slowly. As I said, the less i talk about these the better, so I'll leave it there.

The rest of the week so far has been much more exciting. We have been put into groups of around 12 and we rotate around 8 different activites, two per day. I knew about half of the people in my group at the beginning, so it was nice to see some familiar faces (albeit only having met them in the previous few days) and to be able to meet some more new people. I'm starting to remember people's names now, but theres quite a few people who I am sure have introduced themselves to me, which I can't remember!

On Tuesday morning we learnt the procedure used to rescue someone who has fallen into a crevasse or meltwater channel of a glacier (glaciers cover 60% of Svalbard if I'm not mistaken, so I guess its important) from a guy who is part of the local glacier rescue crew. This involves a lot of knot tying (or seemed to) so we spent quite a while practising Viking knots and french knots and double 8 knots etc. etc. I was able to do them all at the time, but I'm not sure how competent I would be in a few months time, panicing, on a glacier, in the cold, with gloves on. I guess the lesson was to not get yourself into that situation and if you do, phone the professionals. That lesson concluded by simulating, in teams of four, tying ropes and pulleys and harnesses etc. to someone to lower them into a crevasse to rescue someone. Our substitute for a crevasse was a balcony on the top floor! We managed to tie everything correctly, winch the guy down from the balcony and then pull him back up again successfully, so i guess we passed that part!

That afternoon we learnt about the danger of avalanches and how to rescue someone buried under the snow. this lesson was even more about prevention being better than cure, because unless you get someone out within about 20 minutes, there chance of surviving drops rapidly. We used beacons that can be set to transmit (for when walking) and search (for if looking for someone) to locate a beacon buried in the snow, and used search poles to probe the snow for resistence, and then shovels to dig! On tuesday night a group of us from my barrack went to the sports centre to play snow rugby, which is exactly as it sounds, 'touch' rugby at minus 30 in the snow. Its the first time i've ever managed to play a sport wearing two fleeces and thermals!

Wednesday morning, I'm aching all over! I had to have a long hot shower last night because my midrift was really cold! this morning we did navigation and communications, where we learnt to use global positioning systems and upload routes to follow onto them, learnt to use satellite phones and the radio protocol on the island. we then did this for a short trip between UNIS, the radisson hotel and back, using the gps, and making calls on the radio and satellite phone.

In the afternoon we had the polar bear safety course, in other words; rifle training. We shot in the prone position and kneeling, learnt about rifle maintainence, shot flare guns (used to attempt to scare off polar bears, shooting them being a last resort) and discussed behaviour of the group when conducting field work, if a polar bear is present. Apparently, if a polar bear charges at us we must shoot at about 100m, but the only polar bear ever shot by a UNIS student was shot at 1.5m! It gave us all an appreciation of why we must always carry a rifle when we leave Longyearbyen.

That night I went to bed early, because I've had to be up at 6 every morning. I finished reading the copy of Dan Brown's 'Angels and Demons' that I found lying around in the barrack, which should please those who have said I should read some fiction! Up again at 6 this morning, I've had First Aid with the aforementioned helicopter rescue guy, which included performing CPR on one of those dummies. This afternoon was probably the least exciting of the course, the Health Safety and Logistics tour, which was a lecture showing us the various forms we need to fill in to do anything, followed by a tour of the labs with the lab coordinator, and a tour of the building with the study coordinator. The building is really nice, all copper and wood and windows, and the labs are really modern and put Aberystwyth's to shame! however, it sounds like us Geophysicists (what i'm having to call myself up here instead of an Astrophysicist) will spend most of our time in lectures. We do have some field work at the EISCAT radar site/Adventdalen Auroral station, but most other course seems to include a cruise! Ah well...

Thanks for reading

Ash