New web camera on Svalbard

A new web camera has been added to the Svalbard collection.
This time it is a camera standing on Lunckefjellet, our newly opened mine. The camera is not as advanced as the ones in Svea in Longyearbyen, but will give a good view of the weather and activities at Lunckefjellet.

http://intranett/Avdelinger/IKT/Sider/Webkamera-Lunckefjell.aspx

The link has also been added to the web camera link list ;0)

Kautokeino

more to come

Northern Lights

more to come

Adventdalen and the cable way

Me standing above Mine 7 and Svalsat

The view from the back of our house and the heitapottur

Mauritius

more to come

Anna infrot of the water-fall at Chamarel

The swimming-pool at our hotel

Married

On Saturday 28th of September Anna and I got married in the Church in Hafnarfjordur, Iceland.
We where very lucky with the weather and had a good day with family and friends.

More will follow...



The married couple, Anna with flowers and the Geologist with a piece of lava ;0)

FRAM in Svalbard, Greenland and Iceland

Due to pour internet in the Arctic I have not posted anything yet...

Last day...

Today is the last day at the office. Tomorrow I will start my summer vacation. I will board the cruise-ship MV Fram (as i have done the last couple of years ;0)), where I will work as a lecturer and guide. We will sail a few days around on the NW corner of Svalbard before heading over to NE-Greenland and my favourite places on Earth :D. From here we will follow the coast-line south to Iceland, where I will jump off on September 18th!
Then the rest of the vacation will be spent in Iceland, preparing for our wedding...

Anna is not coming on the cruise, as she is working until the 12th, before flying home to Iceland.

All updates for the next 14 days will be on my Greenland blog (link on this page)

Reindeer hunting

Friday morning I called my father and asked him if he wanted to come to Svalbard to go reindeer hunting with me. He came back from NE-Greenland on Sunday and has therefore been away for most of the summer. He thought some hours and then he flew up the same evening. The weather was excellent on Friday. The forecast predicted sun and now clouds for the whole week-end, but when we woke up it was quite cloudy. The other side of the fjord was sunny so we expected the sun to break through during the day.
Steinar drove us and 5 other out to the hunting terrain in Hollenderdalen.
We walked for around 1 1/2 hours when we saw a reindeer. One of the girls tried to shot it, but it was a bit difficult for her. We continued for a short while when we saw several heards of reindeer. I shot the first one and the two other girls shot their reindeer shortly after. Since we where so close to each other we could help each other. When we started cutting the animals, the sun came and it got nice and warm and beautiful weather. At 1630 we got picked up by by a RIB and where back in Longyearbyen in time for "lördagsbiffen" at Huset. The evening was spent in the hot-tub :D

Today the weather has been low clouds. My father will fly home to night.

End of season

Mobile drilling on exposed ridge close to the new mine

Exposed drill site

 

This week-end we more or less ended the field season at work. I flew around with helicopter cleaning up the drill-sites, measuring the drill holes with DGPS systems and we also finished a trial project - drilling on very exposed cliffs high above the valley floor.

This week-end I hope to go reindeer hunting and Thursday next week I will have my summer vacation, though not summer anymore ;0)
I will be going with "FRAM" from Svalbard to NE-Greenland and Iceland, as a guide. The trip will take 14 days. Anna is not coming along, as she is working. Hopefully she will be with me on next years trip. After the trip we will stay in Iceland and prepare for our wedding, on the 28th of September. We will return for Svalbard and work on October 2nd.

The "summer" weather on Svalbard has been horrible this year. We had a lot of rain and rain and some more rain. One positive thing is that everything is much greener than normal ;0)

Tide water table

Today I added a tide water table in the link table to the right.
You have the possibility to choose other places on Svalbard and elsewhere in the world.

Longyearbyen Airport, 2200 m runway

Failure

Failure, failure to update my blog since Easter. Shame on me...

A lot of things have happened here on Svalbard since Easter. My parents had a GREAT trip here and very good weather. We drove scooters and saw a lot. For my parents it was like being on Greenland again.

Anna finally got a full-time job, working for the largest travel company in town, Spitsbergen Travel. She is very happy with that and loves her job and aslo knows when she has to work and not to ;0)

My company has been loosing a lot of money, both due to falling coal prices and to many people employed in my company. Therefore my company fired 25% (80 people). Most of them will be gone from the company in the next 1-3 months. I was lucky to keep my job, so i am very pleased not be forced to move away from Svalbard.

On Iceland we had a leak in our apartment. This is always a mess with the insurance company and the tenants and for us living in an other country.

Two weeks ago, my colleague and I went to Berlin and Potsdam to attend a one week course in coal petrology. This was very interesting and necessary for us to learn more about.

In the beginning of September I will finally have some vacation. This year, as last year I will spend the first 14 days as a guide, sailing from Svalbard to Iceland via Greenland. Thereafter we will stay in Iceland and prepare our wedding, before heading back to Svalbard in the beginning of October...

Easter

Todat my parents arrived from Oslo. They will be staying with us for the next 10 days. The weather was great today, -21, a breeze of wind and sun. I have been working and will do so until Wednesday, so my parents will have to entertain themselves until I get vacation. Anna is unlucky and will have to work most of the Easter days...


Jeremy Clarckson also arrived on Svalbard ;0)

http://www.nordlys.no/nyheter/article6572447.ece

Polar-Bear shot

Yesterday a polar-bear was shot in the SW part of Svalbard. It was trying to brake into a cabin where two people from Longyearbyen was spending the night.

http://nrk.no/nyheter/distrikt/troms_og_finnmark/1.10962731

The polar bear

More day-light

Since the light came back, we have been going on a few scooter trips. Anna is not to found off the cold weather when scooter driving, so I have been more on trips on my own.
Last week-end it was only -7 and no wind, so I drove to Tempelfjorden, 60 km away while Anna was working ;0)
This week-end I went with Anna to the Russian settlement of Barentsburg. The weather was not to good but not bad either. We still had a good trip.
Yesterday we hiked up to a mountain ridge, Sarkofagen. It is always good to move the body after being on a scooter for a whole day...

The frozen boat in the fjord

The frozen boat in Tempelfjorden

The frozen waterfall in Eskerdalen

View over Tempelfjorden

 

View over Longyearbyen from Sarkofagen

Anna on her way to Sarkofagen

Scootertrip to Barentsburg

Welcome to Barentsburg

 

Night-photography

This evening there was no wind and sky clear weather. While Anna was going to pilates and eating pizza with her friends, I took my scooter and my camera and drove across the valley and up on of the mountains. It was bitterly cold in valley, with temperatures dropping down to -30, not very pleasant when the two hand warmers on my scooter decided to stop working. But it was all worth it. The view was magnificicent!!!

 

The sun is back

Yesterday after nearly 4 months of darkness, the sun came back to Longyearbyen. For some weeks though the sun has been visible if one had went out of town and up on a mountain ;0).
For the first time since 2005 the sun was actually visible in Longyearbyen on the return of the sun. The other years it has been overcast and bad weather.

Today is a local tradition called "ta sjansen" where people and companies in town have a competition using their imagination making some sort of sledge and trying to get quickest or funniest down a long slope at the end of town...

After that we will walk on skis to a friends cottage outside town, for some cocoa and cakes :D

Anna happy

The winning team

Let the games begin..

Drilling season and web cameras

We started our drilling season last week, by driving snow-scooters to a glacier between Longyearbyen and Svea, to mark our first hole. Last night my colleague and I went to the drill site to see how the work was progressing and to mark the next drill-hole. This morning I got a phone call at 0300, as I am the Geologist on duty. This meant that I had to drive out to the drill-site this morning to find out if the drilling was finished or not. The hole was 344 m deep. After logging parts of the core, I could conclude that the hole was finished and my job was done.

The daylight is now increasing by 20 min each day, so soon it will be possible to see the sun. In longyearbyen we will be able to see the sun on March 8th :D

I have added two new links to the web cameras, one is from the loading facilities in our coal harbour in Svea and the other one is from Svalsat, on the mountain above Longyearbyen.
Enjoy the light...

The drill site

Watching the light from my scooter

The drill site on the glacier

Self portrait - waiting for the light...

The flu has gone and winter has come

The helicopter spotted Anne

We are both now finished with the flu, which is a very good thing. This year it took a very long time to get or the ice to come ;0)
Since my last blog entry the temperature has been quite stable around -10 degrees with an occasional increase to around 0 degrees. At work we are preparing the drilling campaign, this year 1 month earlier than last year. It is still very dark though but the blue light is coming...
Anna is still with-out a full-time job, but is quite happy with working as a substitute now and then. She has also started working in the kindergarten.
During a short scooter-trip with Anna, due to bad  weather we suddenly saw a red flare , shortly followed by several other flares and then a Super Puma helicopter, belonging to the search and rescue team passed over us. It took a while before we understood it was only an exercise. It was very interesting to see how the rescue teams work when it is winter and snow and wind being blown all over the place.

The helicopter attempting to land

Northern lights from our bed-room window ;0)

cooling down again...

For the last couple of days the temperature has been plumeting here in town. We had temperatures around -20 degrees with lows down to -23. There has been some northern light and very little wind and almost clear sky.
Tomorrow the forecast says wind, snow and increasing temperatures... this is the way it goes on Svalbard, just enjoy it while it lasts ;0)