Drinking Jenga, Arctic BBQ, High School Musical and the last Auroras?

Hello there! i've been a proper little tourist this week and walked down to the Polar bear sign down by the docks, with my tripod on my back to take the customary picture of me standing by the sign. Apparently Polar Bears "concern all (Gjelder hele)" of Svalbard. other than that its been work as usual, learning about reconnection of the Interplanetary magnetic field with the geomagnetic field and the large scale structure of the Earth's magnetosphere, as well as discussing our up coming trip to Eiscat Svalbard radar with our lecturer.

On thursday night a contingent of barrack 9 ventured to barrack 4 (my favourite watering hole!) to put James' drinking Jenga through its paces. this was followed by another heavy night at friday gathering. which brings us to the weekend.

Sunday started with Dayles idea to go skiing as it was such a lovely day, but there were very few skis and even fewer boots left, so whats the next best thing to do on a sunny day in the Arctic?...ARCTIC BBQ!!!

thus the men, in keeping with traditional gender roles headed out to hunt for some meat (which was conveniently killed, processed, frozen and sold by Svalbardbutikken supermarket), on returning to barrack 4 we left the women to prepare the food (chopping onions, defrosting the bread and microwaving the frozen meat) whilst men make fire, ugg!

Unfortunately, we had to use disposible BBQs in lieu of real fire! (how much of a market is there for disposible BBQs in the Arctic?!)

Colin with nicely cooked burgers and burnt sausages, it wouldn't be a BBQ without burnt sausages!

Me, now fully fledged beef eater (through necessity!) munching on a beef burger

Colin, Lisa, Judith and Dayle around the BBQs

the same group moments later, included solely because its such a flattering picture of Lisa and Dayle scoffing their faces!

Judith and Brendan

Colin posing with a burger.

Apparently me and Colin's singing around the 'campfire' reminded Judith and Lisa of High school Musical (not sure whether thats a complement or not) and that we simply must go inside and watch High School Musical 2 and 3, with ice cream. By this point it was so cold and the offer of ice cream so tempting (don't point out the obvious stupidity of that sentence, I haven't had ice cream for nearly 3 months!) that we were powerless to refuse.

Paul and Hannah would have been proud of me, watching 2 and 3 back to back. in the necessary break between the two, it was decided that what we really needed to cap off a day of unhealthy eating was a cake, so I quickly through together a chocolate sponge mix, which the girls filled with chopped up toblerone, delicious!

sounds like a good day so far? hmm, maybe some Aurora to finish it off, eh? so with the Sun barely down (still quite light on the western horizon) out we went for what could be the last Aurora I'll see because polar day is pretty much here.

Nybyen and Longyearbyen at 11 o'clock

Barrack 11 in the twilight

Green Aurora over Sacrofagen

Longer exposure, Green (and maybe some red) Aurora over Sacrofagen.

bye for now

Ash

Brace Yourselves!

Brace yourselves indeed! In fact, you might want to put the kettle on before you go any further, because this is going to be a long one! perhaps its just been an exciting week, or perhaps I'm feeling guilty about the paucity of photos and information in the last few posts, but this one is positively epic. lots of fire, sliding down hills and sea ice, no baked goods!

I guess the most obvious thing is; THE SUN IS BACK!!! I saw it briefly above Larsbreen Glacier one day on the way back to Nybyen, by the next day the clouds had disappeared, and the mountainsides glowed with reflected sunlight (and this at half 8 in the morning), by the time we got to the travel companies offices on the hill above UNIS the Sun was rising above the town. Polar night is well and truely over, and it isn't long now until the Sun sets for the last time! which probably means the Aurora of Firday night were the last I am going to see (alas, I did not have my camera with me!) but they were very good, dancing across the night sky.


The Sun over the residential part of town. UNIS and the hills across Adventfjorden bathed in sunlight!

In fact the days have been so nice, we've been going for quick wanders for the pleasure of it! Me, James and Colin headed down towards the Sea Ice, more in hope than expectation of seeing any seals (!) and were afforded spectacular views both of the valley and the Sunlight over Longyearbyen. Some intrpid souls were venturing out on the sea ice, so we left, because James said he didn't want to get wet and cold rescuing them if they fell in!

Well, From ice to fire (I promised there would be fire!). As part of the Sun festival here in Longyearbyen, there is a competition called Ta Sjansen. For this teams build sledges out of scrap and race them down a mountain side! Given that Dayle and Brendan were still in posession of a scrap snow scooter (With no track, I may add) that had been used as a engine parts donor for their scooter, it was decided to turn this into Ta Sjansen sledge. So off we ventured to the Sea garage.

There, we set about sheding some of the weight of the scooter by removing engine parts. Dayle decided the softly softly approached adopted by myself, Brendan and Colin was, shall we say, insufficient for the job and decided an angle grinder was a far more pertinent tool for the job than the hammers, screw drivers and allen keys so far employed! he did, however forget one important thing: remaining fuel plus sparks equals fire!

Dayle tried to smother the small fire using his welding gloves, but this didn't work. the amusement at a small fire soon turned to concern as Brendan and Dayle between them couldn't get a) the fire extinguisher off the wall, and b) when they did couldn't get it to work. As they pulled the scooter out of the sea garage and started throwing snow on it, I flagged down a passing UNIS van and the guy calmly removed his portable fire extinguisher and put the fire out. He returned shortly after, with a new, persumably working fire extinguisher for the sea garage. Crisis over! and thus ended my participation in the project!

after this the theme of the sledge became fire. It was made to look like a dragon (well, judge for yourself) and the team called themselves the 'inflammable gods' after an email we had recieved a few weeks previously from the people responsible for the housing up here, advising us to keep "inflammable gods" (goods) in a certain location near the barracks!

Saturday of last weekend turned out to be a fabulous day and we left early to get a band wagon (like the one used to get us to the Kjell Henriksen observatory) across Adventdalen valley to the base of the mountains you can see behind UNIS in the photos.

Looking up the mountain, track to left, James and Jenn (on Polar bear watch) contemplated going to get a burger.

Looking back down the mountain (Dayle in his snow scootering gear in the foreground) at the Longyearbyen valley and the Sun above the mountain where Eiscat and the KHO are.

The inflammable gods dragon, which used to be a snow scooter

There was even entertainment!

The first of the UNIS sledges "Rosa Isbjørn" (the pink polar bear) containing Juni, Stine, Anna and Anya makes its way down the slope...

... its mast soon detaches...

...then its inflatables start to pop and its all downhill from there!

theres nothing for it, they'll just have to get up and walk...

...which brought to mind that scene in Cool runnings!

they still got a big cheer as they crossed the line!

Next UNIS sledge is Carl, who has cunningly parcel taped skis to an office chair...

...he got pretty far...

...before the inevitable happened!

And it turned out getting it going again wasn't that easy...

...not that easy at all...

this one speaks for itself!

In the end it was much easier to run down the slope, ski-office chair in hand and throw it over the finish line!

My favourite sledge of the day was the reclining polar bear made from a snow scooter

Although all credit to the 'prirates of Spitsbergen'!

and the team who thought music and flashing lights was more important than speed!

and the team who couldn't even be bothered to get out of bed for the race!

So finally I come to the Inflammable gods, by this point my extremities are frozen and my camera is complaining its too cold by showing low battery warnings (it took 307 photos before finally packing up, 1 photo after the final sledge). After moving about 5 metres from the Start line, Colin, Matt, Brendan, Dayle and Erik are already backwards!

then they finally decided that enough reversing is enough and get off to turn around and push. at which point the sledge accelerates and Erik, who has been pushing the back, falls over!

In a desparate attempt to gain speed Matt decides to pull the sledge down the hill

Better luck next time boys!

On the way home I was towed on a sledge behind brendan's, now working, scooter. which I have had a few opportunities to drive, which has been great fun. Unfortunately, whilst Brendan was returning from Barentsberg yesterday, he heard a loud clunk in the engine which instantly lost power, leaving him no option but to be towed home and facing the posibility of major engine work to be done. oh dear.

After a well deserved lie in on Sunday it was time to do something else fun, so off we went up Longyearbreen Glacier. passing the terminal moraine, old mining bits and pieces and lots of Polar fox tracks. I tried to go to football that night, but was thwarted by the giant bruise on my leg from last week, so am now more determined than ever to go swimming on tuesday and thursday mornings. I didn't make it last tuesday, but I did 60 lengths on thurday morning before my 9 o'clock, for which I was suitably proud of myself!

The only other news here is that there has been Two avalanches, one up on Longyearbreen glacier and one high up on the mountains on the opposite side of Adventfjorden, in which a guy on a snow mobile was buried under 2 metres of snow for 45 minutes. Unfortunately he died later in hospital. Although none of the students here new the person, there was a really subdued atmosphere around the barrack last night. After the safety course we were all so respectful of the dangers the environment here poses, but as time goes on and you become accustomed to your surrounding, you treat it with less respect. I think this accident has brought it home to everyone just how careful you really have to be around here.

sorry to end on such a depressing note.

thanks for reading

Ash

Well, its certainly getting lighter here, although I still haven't seen the Sun! this weekend was the start of a fortnight long celebration called something like Sunfest, but its been overcast and snowing, so the Sun maybe above the mountains, but I still haven't seen it! As you can see though, we've had some nice blue sky over the last few days.

We somehow managed to miss the majority of the festivities this weekend (Brendan and Dayle mucking about with their scooter again) so we decided to go for a walk past some of the abandoned mine paraphenalia instead. this eventually took us down to the sea ice (a lot of which had gone since friday, meaning there were no seals to be seen this time!) and finally for a nice lunch in the Lompen centre.

I guess I should apologise for the lateness of this blog, I found it difficult to find something to talk about, so I'll tell you about my transformation to domestic god! this week I've made bread, cheesecake and, with Colin, chocolate covered marzipan balls. the problem with food up here is that if you want it to taste good you either have to pay a ridiculous amount for it or make it yourself. I would like to point out to Hannah, if shes reading, that I can not only make a very respectable victoria sponge, but also a great lemon cheesecake (no photo, you'll have to take my word for it) and passable bread (which is about the best you can hope for up here!), at least it doesn't cost about £3 per loaf!

I've also decided that if they are not going to give us much work to do, and if I haven't got a snowmobile to be off visiting places, then i should use my time in an attempt to get fitter. to this end, I yesterday attended 5 aside football in the Svalbardhallen sports centre. due to my lack of trainers, I am suffering for it today! I have cuts or blisters or something under both big toes, a bruise on the inside of my foot, and worst of all a slight swelling where my leg impacted a goal post! We'll see how committed I am to getting fit at 6 oclock tomorrow morning when i have to get out of bed for morning swim!

I'll keep you posted!

Ash