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...