Max@Svalbard

P.O.W.

2011-12-22T15:23:00.003+01:00

Svalbard is nice, sure. But a meter of fresh powder is hard to beat. Ridiculous conditions at Nordkette, Innsbruck yesterday. The crazy thing is, that skiing took place just a couple of hundred meters above Innsbruck. As a foreigner like me, you park your car in the garage in the middle of the centre, put on your skiing gear, jump from there into the lift and 15 min later you are in powder paradise. Besides, Innsbruck has infrastructure like a normal, big town. Plus, in a 100 km radius are 15 000 more ski resorts. Plusplus, the food is excellent, since it is in Austria. Unbeatable if you ask me.

Click here to see me enjoying life.

Outreach

2011-12-06T19:43:00.003+01:00

We have now four peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals out, so we thought it was time to do some outreach. UNIS was so kind to put an article on their webpage, summarizing our results in an easy understandable fashion. At least that's what I hope we did. I think we can show that besides contributing to snow avalanche science, we also contribute to winter safety in Longyearbyen and surroundings. Nowadays, scientists should not sit anymore in their "Ivory tower", not carrying about what society does with their research. It seems to be far more ethical to care and also to communicate the findings in an understandable way. So again, I hope we managed. To get to the article, click here.

Hundstage

2011-11-21T11:31:00.005+01:00

Juni loves to be with the dogs, so I came along this weekend for a small ski trip. The idea was to mount the dogs in front of us and let them pull us over the tundra. It worked fine for Juni and her dog. I had lazy ass, old Bamse who wouldn't pull at all, but rather constantly shit all over the place. Only on the way back, a not so deserved meal in mind, he got suddenly going. After some cuddling, we visited a couple of weeks-old puppies and took them all with us. Just kidding.

Ethics course in Oslo

2011-11-21T11:28:00.003+01:00

Last week I've been in Oslo at the university to attend a course about ethics in science. The course is mandatory for my Ph.D. Here is a little video how it was down south. Click here!

Autumn activities

2011-10-23T13:28:00.004+02:00

Fall was really nice and we could also enjoy October for the first time in two years again. Colors of the mountains and the sky change daily, quite and experience. As we approach winter and the polar night now (sun is not rising anymore from 26. October), I though I compile some pictures of me and Juni on hiking trips. This time was also busy with quite some summer fieldwork, mainly putting out loggers for the coming winter, maintaining weather stations and automatic cameras. Now, activities shift to more indoor sport, besides skiing obviously. I think we manage to be in the gym almost every day to go climbing, spinning, cycling or pump some iron. Important to get in shape for the winter to come.

with Bamse and Micky (Photo from Wes)

Crossing Adventdalen, only possible in late autumn

Juni sitting in the dry river bed of Adventdalen

on Fuglefjellet, enjoying the view over Isfjorden

at Operafjellet where a plane crashed in the 80s, killing 150 people

Frozen river and Helvetiafjellet, a winter goal, in the back

that was fun

Juni on Helvetiafjellet

Lunch break with view over Adventdalen

Juni with Bamse and Mickey

Juni with Bamse

on top of Nordenskioldtoppen, our highest mountain in the area

Early season stoke

2011-10-23T12:31:00.003+02:00

Finally the first turns of the season! Since the first snow came two weeks ago I scouted the snow conditions on the glacier pretty much every second day. Snow onset is rather slow in the Arctic, so it takes always some time to get a continuous snow cover. But with the help of some winds, yesterday was finally the day.

Now I guess you have to be fairly into skiing to take that trip into consideration. October skiing in Svalbard means walking for an hour with skis and boots on the back, then skinning up for 15-20 min to the top of Larsbreen and skiing down on a hard crust for about 4 min. Repeat the last two steps 2-3 times and you get some turns. Also, don't mind scratches on the skis and walking back down for another half an hour. Definitely not easily earned, but worth the effort.

Icebreaker 2011

2011-10-23T12:24:00.003+02:00

Pirates

Instruments used in oceanography

Kalle as oil spill-shark, Peter as disgusting fishing net, Juni as tang and Endre as nobody knows

German wave

Every year again, the famous icebreaker party takes place at UNIS. New students, meet old students, meet staff. What happens then is that old students and staff tell new students how the party was so much better before. I think icebreaker spring 2008 was the best. Besides, some eating, drinking and dancing took place. All of that was so much better before too...

Norwegian Championships in Kajakpolo

2011-09-17T22:33:00.004+02:00

The weekend before we came back up to Svalbard, we played the Norwegian Championships in Kajakpolo in Bergen. I play kajakpolo since February 2008, so since I am up in Svalbard. Before, I never sat in a kajak in my life, so I had to learn to kajak the hard way. Over the last years I, and some others also, learnt to play quite ok. But obviously without much rules and knowledge how to play the game for real.

So when Christian, a German kajakpolo enthusiast, who also started in Svalbard and made it into the Norwegian national team (a German playing for Norway!) signed us up for the National Championships, our expectations where quite low. But after we got the tournament favorites close to a loss in the first game, things changed. From then, we beat all the other teams, slowly learnt the real rules and played ourselves all the way into the final. It must have been a mix of the other teams underestimating us, and us playing actually quite well. We adopted some basic techniques (you basically play it like handball), but other than that, we played as always. Quick pass behind the defense (Lochpass in den Lauf quasi) and quick shot.

So on the second day of the tournament, team leader Christian from Germany, Niklas from Germany, Thor, Pål and Juni from Norway and me played the final, with a fair chance to become Norwegian Champions. The pictures are actually from the final against a young team of national team players. In the end, we did not have a chance against them technically, tactically and also physically. Even though it looks like I have control over my opponent, being on top of his kajak in the first picture, he actually has me under his control. So we lost, 4:2 in the end. Sucked, but silver as also quite ok I guess.

Funny side story. I managed to score the one or other goal during the tournament and the commentator liked my family name so much that he kept on saying it through his microphone. Kind of: "...and Markus Eckerstorfer scores again. what a cool name!" or "Markus Eckerstorfer, our friend, he has the ball in front of the goal again, that means danger for the other team". Naja, Arnold Schwarzenegger is also a weird name, but apparently works anywhere else...

No gold found

2011-08-31T21:07:00.007+02:00

While Juni was flying home to Bergen from Portugal, I jumped into a plane across the Atlantic for the second time this year with Vancouver as destination. I flew then further to Whitehorse were I met up with my course.

The University in Oslo, where I am enrolled, had an exchange project with the University of Ottawa for the last 2 years. The main idea was basically to exchange students on different levels between Norway and Canada. The nice ending of this project was a field course in the Yukon Territory, exactly where I was heading.

The topic of the course was permafrost, permafrost landforms and glaciers, pretty much taught by the big shots of permafrost science. We mostly visited field sites of Toni Lewkowicz, ranging from boreholes measuring ground temperature, over different kinds of frost mounds to slope processes.

There were many highlights on that trip which include a heliflight from Whitehorse to a site with small organic frost mounds called palsas. There growth and decay is influenced by beavers building dams, thus draining and flooding the area. Another highlight was a flight with a small plane over the outskirts of the St.Elias Range, looking at a range of different glaciers and periglacial slope process. It was so fascinating.

We flew from Kluane Lake Research Station, a small Canadian research station situated right at the shore of Lake Kluane. We had quite a blast there hanging on the beach, joining the sauna, skipping stones, drinking beer, eating lots of food and participating in the 50th anniversary party of the station.

I don't need to say that the field course was more than enjoyable, seeing the endless wilderness of the Yukon Territory. It is quite a fascinating landscape. The course was also a success for me from a scientific point of view. I learned quite a lot and could nicely apply what I have learnt in Svalbard the past three years. It was a hell of a trip, still quite exhausting with 12 hours program every day, lots of driving, thinking, discussing and presenting.

So I kind of thought that once in Alaska, the pace would slow down and things would be taken more easy. How wrong I was! From Whitehorse, only a few of us, enrolled in Oslo flew further to Fairbanks, Alaska. The small plane touched down in two towns in-between, one, Old Creek is only reachable by plane. Alaska welcomed us with rainy weather and a nice sports shop the first day. We went crazy in there, America is a dreamland for people living in Norway. This afternoon was the only time we had some spare time. The next day we started of with a whole day of presentations at the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska. We have a project running with them that helps scientists visit Alaska or Norway. Pretty much the same as the Canada-Norway exchange, only on a researcher level. Last years, the guys from Alaska visited us in Svalbard, this year it was our turn.

Our first real program point was a visit to the permafrost tunnel. It is quite a unique opportunity to run around in permafrost, looking at all those different kinds of ice, like ice wedges. Even more fun was to meet Matthew Sturm (the bearded guy in the picture between Hanne and Steffi), a snow science pioneer. The first paper I published this April deals with some of his work. So that was cool.

Cool was also to meet another fascinating person. Kenji Yoshikawa, the tunnel men. (Check him out on YouTube) Kenji is a permafrost hydrologist and drilling person. This guy has more drilling equipment in his garage then Shell in the Gulf of Mexico. He drills permafrost worldwide. If you ever come across a borehole on the summit of Kilimanjaro. It was Kenji. Besides, he was on North and South Pole, crossed the Sahara and sailed from Japan to Alaska, only to let himsefl freeze into the ice north of Barrow. Somebody wrote a book about him called "Finding Mars", if anybody wants to read up on him.

Once finished with the program in Fairbanks, we headed out to see some of the field sites around town. We were lucky enough to see Denali, which was even far away an astonishing site. What a big mountain!

And then we were off. We packed ourselves in a big car and were off to the North. In three days, we managed to drive the whole Dalton Highway all the way up to Prudhoe Bay at the North Shore, 800 km one way. The Dalton Highway is known from the TV series "Iceroad Truckers", as big trucks haul year round heavy stuff back and forth on the highway. Right next to the highway, oil is pumped through the Alaska pipeline down to Fairbanks. Along the highway, we visited different field sites, engaged in heated discussions about rock glacier like features and drove, drove, drove. It was tiring but worth it. We saw a lot and I was especially fascinated by the beautiful mountains of the Brooks Range. Right at its foot hills, the Toolik Lake Research Station is situated where we stayed for 3 nights. Very American-like, it was quite luxurious with a kitchen that was 24 hours open, holding a ridiculous amount of food, beverages and sweets. I never had such a good lunch package in the field.

So on the lats picture, that is our Norwegian delegation. Tom Rune Lauknes to the left, remote sensing research from a company called Norut in Tromsø, then its me, Hanne my supervisor, Steffi our hopefully upcoming PhD student working on permafrost, Kjersti, PhD student in Oslo modeling snow and Sebastian, postdoc in Oslo modeling permafrost temperatures. Bernd, Prof. in Oslo was also there but got eaten by a grizzly.

More pictures from the trip are as always on my Flickr account. Click here.

Det var sommer, det var øl

2011-08-25T21:11:00.002+02:00

This spring was really exhausting, so by the end of July I was really happy to leave Svalbard for the summer. I was looking forward to a quite nice program also. So after a bachelor party weekend for Ronny in Barcelona, who is by now happily married to Vera, I found some time to show Juni Austria in summer. We managed to grill some sausages at the river Steyr, just like during my school time, when I was sick of accounting, French and all the other shit.

After a couple of days at home, the whole family plus girlfriends drove down to Limone at the beautiful Garda lake, to celebrate my dad's 50' birthday. That was a really nice little holiday in a nice place with good food and good company. Next big birthday will be celebrated in Hawaii.

Then shortly home again, repacking and off to Portugal for the third time. So good to be back there. For a few days, Dominic and Julia and Flo and Tanja joined. There is lots of space for everybody. We did what we always do in Portugal which is eating good fish and relaxing. Only at the end of the holidays I bought myself a longboard. I should have done that 3 years ago already, it was so much fun. Can't wait to practice some more next year.

Boat season

2011-06-26T18:34:00.003+02:00

Boat season started one week ago. By now, we had 3 large ships coming in, bringing every time twice the amount of people living in Longyearbyen. Streets are crowded then for a few hours until the ship leaves again. The average age on such ships is about 110 years. There are literally only oldtimers coming with the ships, hardly able to walk anymore. So they are transported from the boat through the town with the bus, right into the shop. There they buy a little polar bear and wonder that we also have fruits in the Arctic. After the shop visit, they get transported back onto the boat, changed their diaper, fed and off they are again.

During these tourist invasions, we try to get out of town, hiking up some of the surrounding peaks. It's been crazy nice weather the last 2 weeks with barely any cloud on the sky.

D'ye like dags

2011-06-16T16:21:00.003+02:00

Recently me and Juni took some dogs out for a couple of runs in Adventdalen. The dogs are from Juni's supervisor Frank and we are allowed to borrow them for hiking and running. In turn, Juni cleans the cages, cuddles the dogs and feeds them. You read correct. I am only running with them. My lately found "love" for dogs goes only as far as running with them. And actually only with one dog particularly. His name is "Bamse" and he is the largest dog in the dogyard. That's cool! It's like running with the leading wolf, although Bamse, old as a grandfather is a rather mild character. Anyway, great fun to run with him as he runs quite nice. The only pain in the ass is when he needs to shit (which is 5 times per 10 km run), we always lack behind Juni and her dog and as Bamse can't stand running in second place, he speeds up and pulls like a bulldozer to get in first place again. With his size and power, not so easy to slow him down eventually.

So as long as I don't have to clean and feed them, I am fine spending some time with the dogs. In the end it is quite nice how happy they are when they see you.

Grillin' & chillin'

2011-06-12T12:38:00.003+02:00

BBQ place out in Bjørndalen. Cosy times with Malte, Bjarki, Ulli, Marit, Juni and Phil.

Arctic still life.

Sun worshiping by Phil and Ulli.

A warm early June spoils us with nice sunny weather and great views. Having BBQ with nice friends in the midnight sun is something you don't wanna miss.

Weekend wars

2011-06-08T15:09:00.004+02:00

Lunch in Bolterdalen

Water skiing out Rieperbreen's moraine

Camp on Foxfonna

What a horrible last week! The weather was basically just shit, constantly raining and blowing like hell, low clouds, everything gray in gray. After 5 months of going strong at work, I had the instant urge to fuck off and leave the island. I was pretty much ready for holidays. As I am writing this blogpost, I am still ready for holidays, but at least I am sitting in front of my appartment in the warming sun, enjoying life. I pretty much managed to do all the things I planned for spring, so it is time to relax a little bit. I could start analyzing a new dataset we collected since 2008 and haven't had the time to look into. And maybe I will do so before my real holidays, starting 5 July.

But I moreover like to write about a little trip from last weekend, me and Phil did when the sun finally arrived back in Svalbard. Or as Ulli actually says, the sun is always shining, but sometimes only behind the clouds. However, we packed our shit in two pulkas, drove up to Breinosa and planned to stay there for the weekend. In the end it turned out to be a smooth trip, but looking at it in detail, quite some things went terrible wrong. First, Phil forgot his water, which we initially just disregarded since I brought my stove anyway to melt some snow. Turned out later while sitting in front of the tent, that I forgot to bring the gasoline for it. So water was rather short on the trip, we only had plenty of beer. Second, right in the beginning of the trip I broke one of my ski poles. So I skied the entire first day with only one, which makes pulling a heavy pulka not so pleasant. Third, the pulling construction of both pulkas were kind of broken too, but luckely they survived the trip. Forth, we made a rather stupid decision, right before dinner. Because after we put up camp, we decided to ski down Rieperbreen about 4 km to collect 2 car batteries and a zargesbox. Swiss Peter left his equipment in the moraine and asked us to collect it for him. No problem, until we found out that the zargesbox was the largest on Svalbard and the 2 car batteries turned out to be 4. Each of them weighting more than 10 kg, we gave up about 200 m upglacier and just threw them in the snow. Empty handed we arrived 2 hours later at our camp again, grilled some spare rips and slept in front of the tent. Bad mistake as I discovered at home, looking like a lobster. Additionally I shot myself in the face, when I unloaded the tripwire around the camp. It is not going to leave a scar though, unfortunately. So in the end, we skied with our pulkas down again to the batteries, put them in the pulkas and water/slush skied out Bolterdalen, back to the road. Beautiful trip in beautiful weather, but also quite exhausting due to the heavy loads. By then, I had managed to fix the skipole with a pole from the tripwire, in a short attack of technical ingenuity.

Spring skiing madness

2011-06-03T12:34:00.001+02:00

Here is the link to a new skiing video from some late season spring skiing. Click HERE!

Svalbard's next topmodel

2011-05-30T13:06:00.004+02:00

is me! Thanks to Stephan's great photographer skills, we scored two title pages this spring. First one is the cover page of the annual UNIS report. Hardly an international read, but still some good outreach for me on a norwegian University level. The second one is the cover page of an international peer-reviewed journal. We published an article in the journal early this year and scored also the cover page. Something that rather rarely happens, and we are quite proud of it.

The picture was by the way taken in the first week of January this year. We drove out to dig some pits when the northern lights emerged. It was a stunning afternoon as visibile on the picture.

Utepils

2011-05-28T19:34:00.002+02:00

The second half of May treated us good! Nice weather, temperatures close to freezing and still good snow. So besides being busy with spring skiing, we managed to have some Utepils every now and then. It is nothing else than an outside beer, enjoyed mostly while sitting in the sun, dug in into the snow with nice friends. Good views included. Besides the occasional utepils, we invited a couple of friends for breakfast on Norway's national day, the 17 May. Juni spoiled everybody with traditional Norwegian food and even more traditional Norwegian traditions.

Hiorthfjellet

2011-05-16T09:02:00.003+02:00

Finally I got to ski Hiorthfjellet, the ultimate skimountain on the other side of the fjord again. This year I was quite late since the last seasons I always skied it around mid March. This time I was counting on some spring corn snow, but both times the snow was just wet and heavy, making it almost impossible to turn. So slowly but steady I worked my way down the bowl, first time with Jonathan, second time alone. If the weather allows for another snowmobile trip over melting Adventdalen, I might give it another shot, searching for firn snow.

Grind some nuck!

2011-05-02T16:10:00.004+02:00

Wes was here over Easter. I managed to pull some money together to fly him in from Maine for a week. Purpose of his trip was to get some work on slope scale stability variations done, as well as to grind some nuck!

Wes just finished his undergraduate thesis with honors and is going to enroll in the Master program in Oslo. He is expected to be iSvalbard in January 2012, after a term in Oslo. That's gonna be wild. So for now, we did some work, similar what he is going to do in his thesis. Pretty much a preliminary study to see what is possible and which way we will go in terms of snow stability. What I can say so far, is that

there is a lot of potential for a high impact publication within the next 1.5 years, so we are quite excited about things to come.

(That is our field site. Small slope with a nice roleover and a lot of variation in snow depth and weak layer properties. The black things are stones that indicate where the weak layer is located in the snowpack. Note that they go up and down, almost merge and divert again.)

Besides, we skied every single day of course and killed some lines. Dude, Wes, I hear you're good. But I ski soooo much better than you! Here is a video from the skiing!

Guide for a day

2011-04-28T11:50:00.004+02:00

Camp in Atomfjella

The bubble sledge

To be a mountain guide in the Alps you need to be badass in every sense of mountain climbing, skiing and touring. In Svalbard, you need to know where the throttle of the snowmobile is. Ok, this is not really true, but there is a huge difference in the definition of a guide.

Anyways, I got the opportunity to help Pål and Oydun driving out 7 skiers to Atomfjella. This group is living in Verbier, Switzerland but they are coming from all over the world basically. Our task was to put them on four snowmobiles and into this weird bubble sledge, pack their shit on the sledges and off to Atomfjella. Unfortunately I was the first to meet those guys at the gas station where I had to pretend to know what is going to happen in the next couple of hours. The guide has to stand over the things, knowing everything. The truth is, I knew nothing of course and had to pretend, or basically lie. I think I managed quite well.

The drive in took about 7 hours with filming, eating and refueling stops. The load we carried was pretty much on the edge for such a long (150 km) trip over the notorious Lomonosov icecap. But all went well in good driving conditions and beautiful weather. The further we progressed, the more clothes those guys put on since some of them really just started with a jacket.

Luckely, the minute we drove into Atomfjella, a fogbank appeared and we could not really see anything. "Let's set up the camp here, there are some mountains around, trust us!" Luckely of course only for me! Two years ago we tried to reach the same spot for some skiing, which ended in a total desaster (read the blog from 2009 to fresh up). So since I could not bring my skis, I was quite happy not to see what I've been missing so long. But after the night there, it cleared a little up and I got an impression why people go there. I might be back as well.

The way back took me and Pål only 4 hours, although I pulled a snowmobile back and Pål carried the bubble on a wooden sledge. Also there was virtually zero visibility on the ice cap which made the 40 km over it rather boring.

So much to my first guiding experience, I am a guide now, watch out ;-)

Aja, I bought myself a tent which Wes brought from the US. Proud owner of a Hilleberg Nammatj 3. What uuuuuup!

Påskeferie

2011-04-17T22:24:00.005+02:00

Long time no blogging, I know. Sadly, I forgot the highlights from the last 4-5 weeks. Business as usual I guess. The last 3 weeks, Ulli was in town again. He helped with the courses we were running and with fieldwork. Brilliantly as always, thanks for that! This weekend we managed also to do a small 2 days eastertrip. Me, Ulli, Malte, Kim, Pål and Philip drove via Grøndalen and Berceliusdalen to Fridjofbreen. A trip I wanted to do for quite some time. Fridjofbreen is calving into Van Mijenfjorden and the largest glacier in our area. It was quite impressive to drive over it. On the other side of it, a cosy russian cabin was waiting for us. Me and Dominic stayed in the same one last year. So topped a good scootertrip with a fantastic dinner and a crazy party. After a nice reindeer stew, with a reindeer shot by Pål, we partied russian style with pure Vodka. As everybody can imagine, the trip home today was rather exhausting, but still nice. A few shots from the trip can be seen on Flickr.

Tonight, Wes is coming to help with fieldwork. So the faster we manage to dig up some slopes, the faster we can ski on them. Same as I did last week (VIDEO), but faster, better, higher, gnarlier...

Boys are back in town

2011-03-15T09:39:00.006+01:00

Only one sunny day in two weeks, snowstorms rolling in day after day and a bad weather forecast. Those were the prospects for Mani and Guenther's visit in Svalbard. But to be honest, I wasn't really concerned. What I have learnt now is that Svalbard always knows to impress, one way or the other.

Still, we had to start with some bad weather program and even turn around during a snowmobile trip due to a complete white out. This white out kind of followed us during the first couple of days as we ended up in zero visibility on Longyearbreen, trying to go to the ice cave. At least it was a good experience of what can happen in such an environment. So our focus was more on the evening entertainment with joining some of the festivities during the sun week, eating good food like homemade - but not shot - whale beef and drinking the northernmost waterbeer.

But then the weather changed and you know the story now, what Svalbard knows to do... On friday we managed to pull off a pretty sweet trip to Tempelfjorden, looking at the kalving glacier front of Tunabreen. The video of the trip is here.

We also managed to at least a little bit explore a moraine cave as well as made Mani's first skitour ever. And the northernmost of course. Weekend program concentrated around a concert and a two floor party at Huset with everything it takes to survive it. And of course Ta Sjansen, which was kind of a disappointment this year due to bad organisation. Also the cold with -27C didn't make it any better.

What's left from this vacation? I think both guys had a great time and I enjoyed having them. Nice to sit around with very good friends. They were both great sports, which each of them having their qualities in snowmobile driving, caving or skiing. Also, Guenther is deeply in love now and Mani owes him 4000 Nok.

POV

2011-02-20T17:14:00.001+01:00

Helmet cam is up and taping. great things to expect, I hope. Here are two videos.

College clichés

2011-02-14T20:21:00.009+01:00

I am just back from my third trip over the Atlantic in the last 6 months. This time my journey took me to the very north east of the US. I visited Wes in Lewiston, Maine for a little bit over a week.

Wes was last spring in Svalbard and did a little project with me. We basically looked at spatial variability in snow stability on a small slope and turned the whole project into his undergraduate thesis. So he is doing a comparison study between Svalbard and Mt. Washington. The climate on Mt. Washington is somewhat comparable to Svalbard. It is shit cold up there and world record wind speeds are measured.

As Wes got a travel grant of 1000 USD I had the opportunity to fly to him and help him with his fieldwork on Mt. Washington. We spent 2 full days out in the field in -20 C and pondering winds. I was barely as cold during fieldwork on Svalbard then over there. Still everything worked out beautiful. We managed to collect two nice datasets and came back with more questions then answers about how topography controls snow pack stability. But that is what makes science so exciting. So really stoked about the data and the fieldwork, but also about the gnarly terrain and conditions in Tuckerman Ravine on Mt. Washington. What a place! Besides we spent two cosy nights in a cabin with a nice caretaker, hugged some trees and got some turns.

The rest of my stay I spent on Campus of Bates College, where Wes is studying. It is a small undergraduate college with a nice campus and big cantine. Besides the fieldwork the cantine was the highlight of the trip. Open the whole day, you could eat yourself silly, which we apparently did. Good food, lots of choice, just incredible. Nevertheless the kids were all slim and sporty, so this classic cliché did not hold. What did hold was how people are divided into groups, depending on their subject, sports team or simply appearance. Everyone sits on their places in the cantine, not mixing with other people. I think you enter college and find you group as a freshmen, getting brand marked for the rest of your college life. But there were of course more clichés to experience .

I got my first taste of college campus life the second I walked into Wes' house. A big party was going on and people played beer bong! One round made me realize that I could not keep up with these people and their drinking games. The night in general had it all, after the police stopped another party we went too, taking all ID's from everyone under 21. During the week it was rather mellow, with a lot of work, one presentation to the natural science department about my work and a lecture for a geology class on talus slope formation. Use every opportunity to speek in public they say, so that's what I am doing.

But of course the last weekend I was at Bates College got wild again. More drinking games, including hanging upside down over a 50 l barrel of beer. But this time I was just observing, wondering on how those kids spend their weekends. And to my great surprise even those who were blackout drunk the night before, showed up completely fine in the cantine at lunch time, making new plans for the coming night. Besides from that, some folks had a live band playing in their living room, which was great. But overall I think I am too old for college life and actually quite glad that I do not have to experience all this craziness ever weekend. But it was fun to check off all possible clichés.

View from the base of Tuckermans Ravine towards the cabin we stayed.

Vertical headwall of Tuckermans Ravine. Skiable!

Looking at a nice example of topography determining snowpack depth and thus stability.

Wes stoked about the work!

Every year again

2011-02-02T13:39:00.002+01:00

Some pictures from the light conditions right now:

FLICKR

The light returns again and I am experiencing that for the third time now. It doesn't get boring! Just amazing to see the blue and the pink surrounding sugarcoated mountains. And it lasts for the whole day. Fieldwork is great these days, although after the tropical winter last year, the island is freezing in this year. It's cold as shit the whole time.

Outreach week

2011-01-31T17:46:00.004+01:00

Outreach is a very important part of the work a scientist is doing. I think we have been quite good at it the last years. We had several articles in magazines and Svalbardposten and taught schoolkids and teachers about snow and avalanches. Last year I also joined a project by the Red Cross evaluating the avalanche danger on a road that leads up a mountain to a local company. So things are working out when it comes to this part of my work and I think it is important since avalanches are a natural hazard and people need to be informed about them.

So today ended a crazy week of outreach. It started with a Svalbardseminar I gave on tuesday. This is a seminar serious that is running every year, given by scientists and historians for the people in town. Typically it covers topics about Arctic sciences and exploration. I had the honor to introduce the people to my work and give them some safety tips before the main season starts. The response was quite positive and I was happy with my talk. I then got an article in Svalbardposten, our local weekly newspaper. The interview with the journalist was not too easy, but I got to proof read the manuscript and the article came out fine. Thursday and friday I taught at the Red Cross both inside and outside, the topic was snow physics and avalanche mechanics. Went also well and was a pleasure. Today it ended with a lecture at the governors office. I was hoping to make them a little bit more aware about my work, but that did not work so good to be honest. Still nice that those guys know who I am. Could be quite handy.

But enough of this now, back to science.

Longyearbyen Cribs

2011-01-23T12:20:00.008+01:00

We moved! UNIS pimped Juni and me with a new, bigger appartment. Since my contract says that I get an appartment according to my family status, they upgraded me to a nice, big appartment just below the old one. It has basically a larger living room/kitchen, larger bedroom with a king size bed and two storage rooms, one inside and one outside. That's the most important thing here in Svalbard, having all the outdoor gear. What we also like is the big window wall in the living room with a nice view on Hiorthfjellet and the fjord. And we finally have a dishwasher, that's also a big plus. So everything nice, guess we soon have to invite people for a house warming party.

The view towards Hiorthfjellet, right from the couch. On the picture below parts of the living room. The pictures on the wall are from Ulli.

Parts of the inner storage room, my sanctuary!

View from the living room towards the entrance, with bathroom to the left and sleeping room to the right.

The kitchen with dinner table.

Cosy living room with planty of space. Again, Ulli's pictures he took with his unmanned airplanes.

with family and friends

2011-01-05T10:09:00.006+01:00

It seems to become a tradition now to go home for Christmas to meet family and friends, eat good food, get some lift access skiing and enjoy some daylight.

Again me and my friends managed to meet up for a nice feast. We also - all almost at the age of 29 - managed to get in trouble with the owner of the restaurant. Some things probably never change. But it was nice to see everybody again, especially Guenther and Gregor, both guys I haven't seen for a whole year. Christmas turned out to be nice as well with my family although my Christmas mood was as far away as somehow possible this year. A positive surprise were the family meetings on the holidays this year, both were really fun and it was nice to see my uncle being fit and funny as always again. Only sad to realize that the grandparents seem to grow older at a faster pace than we do.

And finally on 26., Juni arrived in Vienna. After spending a nice day there we started to tick off a tight schedule including playing "Lasertag", joining Dominic and Julia at her cabin, going skiing with the Combo, meeting the major of Kronstorf, celebrating New Years and fighting endless UNO battles.

But as I write this I am back in the holy land. It's dark, it's cold, it blows. Home sweet home. My third spring lies ahead, which means full throttle until June. Teaching, supervision, digging, digging, digging, a little bit writing and ripping down some mountains. Good times ahead!

Mørketid

2010-12-19T15:16:00.002+01:00

The dark time (mørketid) starts always with the UNIS christmas party. Probably not the greatest of its kind, but still quite nice. It definitely marks the start of a very social time in Longyearbyen. Nobody can really escape except with the plane, so people are in town, meeting up at Kroa, in the pubs or at the training facilities. Yes and of course also at UNIS, although especially in the last days only the UNIS working horses, namely the PhD-candidates were there doing business. Unfortunately not appreciated by everybody...
A great thing the last weeks was the miraculous appearance of Ulli in town. Rumors spread already before his arrival but nobody believed it until he stood there, smiling and happy as ever. So together with his friends we spent great 10 days going skiing, fixing snowmobiles and meteorological stations, cooking together, trying to put beer into this guy and convincing him to stay longer or come back. I think we succeeded at least with the latter. Since you cannot rely solely on UNIS logistics, it comes more than handy to have somebody like Ulli, who knows how to fix things and is also willing to do it.
The rest of the time I spent going out digging and skiing basically. Business as usual of course. Kim got a PhD position in the CO2 project and was here the whole December. Great to have him around since he is up for some outdoor adventures pretty much all the time. Just yesterday we came back from skiing to Bjørndalen and staying at the cabin together with Pål.
I think I managed to be also quite productive during the last weeks and submitted two new articles to two different journals, as well as got one back from the reviewers for further revision. So things are working good, let's hope it stays like this in 2011.

Autumn rap up

2010-11-30T15:27:00.006+01:00

Oioioi, long time no see. It's been a busy autumn with a lot of things happening and changing.

First week of October I spent in Bergen with Juni. We basically sat in school for the whole day since she had to read for her lectures and I had to do some work anyway. After a short stay at home and some biking I took off with Stephan to California, where we attended together with Wes the International Snow Science Workshop. It was in Squaw Valley / Lake Tahoe, really nice conference with lots of scientists and ski patrolers. Great fun and good times there. Then me and Stephan took a little road trip in California and we visited places like Yosemite and San Francisco. We had an excellent time, I would do it again. Specially the Yosemite part. Pictures from this trip are on my flickr account.

After this two weeks in the States I spent another few days at home where I could meet some of my buddies. Then again off to Bergen to stay with Juni. Same story, reading and working, but also a nice cabin trip. And finally, mid November, I was back on Svalbard. Super cold and nice snow. At least on the first view. In the end it turned out to be just pow lying on nothing. The skis loved it.

So here I am back now working and enjoying the dark time. Quite busy with all the administration stuff at the end of the year, preparation for next years teaching and also paper writing. I got a deadline on 15 December and I am fighting with statistics here. So we'll see.
I also bought a new, used snowmobile, since mine was just too old and crappy. It is a touring scooter now, an Arctic Cat, 4 stroke engine with 1000 cc. Two people can sit on it, long track, comfortable seat with heating! So finally something for longer trips. And it is a 2009 model so still a year warranty. I think I got a good prize after seeing the green strap on the hood. Something broke there which I will have to fix. Or better, the workshop will have to fix. But I have to admit that it was quite expensive and would have rather liked to spend the money on skis or a bike.

21 December I will join Stephan's thesis defense in Oslo and then head home for Christmas. 26 December Juni will come to visit me in Austria. That's nice. Other than that, things might change all the time. Business as usual I guess. Only thing also fix is that I am going to visit Wes in Vermont or Maine (dont know) to do some fieldwork with him for one week in February. So another transatlantic flight for me because I like them so much.

Flickr best of album

2010-09-20T17:49:00.002+02:00

From now on I post the best pictures I make on my Flickr page, but I will keep the blog updated as well!

My new Flickr best of album

Winter preparations

2010-09-20T17:29:00.007+02:00

Winter is coming any day and therefore the last summer fieldwork needed to be done the last two weeks.

Besides some new snow temperature loggers I put out a big construction on the crest of Gruvefjellet, right above Nybyen. It has temperature loggers on the vertical boom as well as on the two horizontal booms that hold the thing in place. Furthermore, temperature loggers are buried into the ground. The idea is to observe the cornice growth as well as the snow metamorphism inside. I also want to know when the ground freezes back up there and how the cornice snow actually freezes onto the rock debris. I hope it is going to work, once the cornice cracks and breaks down, the whole thing probably goes with it. But let's hope for the best!

Juni was also here for a few days and we could enjoy the last summer days with hiking and kiting. We bought new snow kites and were both pretty eager to try them out and fly a bit. It is going to be a really nice spring snow season with having her up with me.

So since Juni is gone and the fieldwork is done, I am back to office work. I need to prepare my poster for the snow science conference in Squaw Valley, CA in October and work on my papers. Besides I might enjoy the icebreaker party next weekend and the upcoming Octoberfest. Never boring on this little island. But time up here is short since I am leaving for 10 days in Bergen 1 October and will fly to Vienna 11 October.

Høst kommer!

2010-09-10T11:06:00.006+02:00

I am finally back on the island and as always, Svalbard knows to impress. Autumn is coming with its characteristic colors. The nights get darker and darker every day, the ground freezes over and snow persists on the mountain tops. Surely also a beautiful time of the year.

Do what you love 4

2010-08-29T16:28:00.003+02:00

One last nice thing from Portillo. Julia Mancuso's ass! Respect Aksel. And yes, I pretended to talk on the phone while taking the picture. Paparazzi style.

Do what you love 4

2010-08-25T02:14:00.008+02:00

Literally no snow. Apparently this year is very cold and dry and today I talked to a guy from Chile, who said that there were years where he could ski in November in Portillo. This year it is just half of the usual amount. How unlucky can you be? It normally dumbs like complete madness and this year nothing is going on. Right, the slopes are in good shape, little bit hard but ok, the problem is just that Portillo has two real slopes and 5 connection slopes, so there is no point of skiing this two slopes for 3 weeks. Portillo is rather famous for its offpiste opportunities. And there is a lot of really good stuff. Lifts go up the talus slopes and by crossing or booting further, it is quite easy to access really good backcountry stuff. If there would be the famous Portillo powder. Instead, the slopes are rocky, completely skied and these frozen tracks in combination with the famous chicken heads make it not really a pleasure. So much to the skiing conditions, the main reason I came to Portillo and the fact I was looking forward since spring. Do what you love...

Portillo is also a nice hotel, with great facilities, nice food and nice people. It seems that the entire freeskier elite pops by Portillo in summer, hanging out in the living room or in the Jacuzzi, getting some turns every now and then. Besides those guys, the Austrian SkiTeam is in Portillo, returning since many years, so there must be certainly something about this place.

So there are two sides of the medal and of course the most important one is not showing what it should. So disappointed as I am about my situation here, I decided to cancel my reservation and simply fuck off. And no, not to any other skiing location in South America. I am heading home to my Mom. After my first week of travelling did not turn out that great either I decided to call it a day for this time in Chile and head to Middle Europe instead. And in the end, I probably blew quite a lot of money for not much enjoyable skiing and not the greatest experiences. At least I got to know some very nice people. If I am coming back? Well, sometimes I have to experience the legendary Portillo powder. There must be a reason why all the pros keep coming to Portillo every year. But for now, Austria, here I come!

Do what you love 3

2010-08-25T01:58:00.003+02:00

The McDonald's test results were slightly better than in Santiago. I got a Coke and some French Fries after another worker stepped in and helped the person I was ordering from. But anyway it worked, so far so good. But generally I was not too successful on the food front. The famous Argentinien beef steak was horrible, hard, overcooked and full of fett, so were the Fries and the vegetables. Still I kept on hanging out in restaurants and caffes, writing my paper and reading a book. On Saturday I finally took off to Portillo, although I almost missed the bus because the hotel was just not able to call me a big enough taxi for me and my skibag. The skibag and I, that's a love/hate relationship already. I love to have my skis with me but it is a pain in the ass to carry them around. Anyway, I made it onto the bus, we drove through the beautiful Andes again where I could take a 2 seconds look at Aconcagua, right when we passed the valley towards it. Then it was bordercontrol again, which took 1,5 hours of waiting, getting the stuff out of the bus, through the customs and in again, getting 20 stamps and 30 questions about the ski gear. And finally I arrived in Portillo. Bluebird day, 10C and no snow. Literally no snow.

Do what you love 2

2010-08-19T02:43:00.002+02:00

Everywhere I wanted was in that case Mendoza. I took a public bus over the Andes to Mendoza, Argentina. It was supposed to be warmer and drier then in Santiago and from there easier to reach Portillo in case of heavy dumping. And that is exactly what we want here! It was exciting to drive over the Andes. Beautiful mountains with crazy geology. Different rock sequences in crazy colors and enormous talus slopes, alluvial fans and river cuts. A paradise for any geologist or geomorphologist. And a paradise for any skier. Yes, we passed Portillo on the way to Mendoza. I saw the big yellow hotel, the lake and the slopes. I also noted that it needs some more snow, so I hoped the best, said goodbye for then and we headed towards Argentina. After another annoying two hours where Cameron Diaz was screaming in Spanish into my ear, we finally arrived in Mendoza. The taxi driver was my friend again and did not rip me off this time. I just discovered that the next day when I found out how much an Argentinean Peso is worth in good old Norwegian Kronor. Actually nothing. Mendoza is way smaller than Santiago, warmer and drier. The town looks like a chess board from space which makes it amazingly confusing. Shitloads of small shops, all looking the same, with some parks in between. There are also a lot of tourist agencies offering trekking, paddling and climbing. But seriously all of them were unoccupied during the day. There is nothing going on in terms of tourism in winter and once again, I am obviously the only tourist in the whole of South America, outside the ski resorts. Right, I could go to Las Lenas, but I figured that 3 weeks of Portillo would be enough for me. So what to do instead? After whining for a bit about my situation and the suggestion to go straight to Portillo the next time, I decided to hang out in caffe’s, reading a book and writing a paper for the ISSW conference in October. Both the reading and writing was quite successful today, not so much ordering things in the caffe. My attempt to order a hot chocolate ended in “enjoying” a coffee with a distinct chocolate taste. After putting enough sugar inside, I struggled it down and went for a Coke afterwards. Right, the waitress understood Coke, at least something. But lets not shoot too fast, and rather wait for the McDonalds test results.

Do what you love 1

2010-08-19T02:26:00.009+02:00

Chile, finally! Three weeks of powder skiing and highly anticipated face shots. Many faceshoots! But first a week of acclimatization, getting back and forth, looking forward to some turns. Chile, what a country anyway. It has the worlds longest NS extension and must piss of quite some countries in South America for sitting on the Pacific Coast all the way down. On the other hand, who wants access to the Ocean on the 1000 km long Atacama strip, virtually the driest spot on Earth.

But from the start. The first impression of Chile was an exciting one. As I woke up after 10 hours of sleep on the plane I looked out of the window and saw mighty Aconcagua. Right it is in Argentina, but still. What a mountain, rising more than 1500 m above all its neighboring peaks. Then we dove into the clouds and a minute later we landed at Santiago airport. That was the second impression of Chile, or rather the first real one. Fog, rain and 0C. Buenos dias!

As usual my ski luggage did not arrive, that was almost expected. It was also expected that the taxi driver ripped me of on the way downtown. That would not bother me in the first place, but during this 25 min drive, we became really good friends, me and Juan. Juan spoke as good English as I do Spanish, which is close to nothing. I am only familiar with phrases from stupid Mallorca Party songs like “no tengo dinero” or “vamos a la playa”. At least the first was helpful since I really did not have any money and he extra drove me to an ATM. The rest of our conversation was done with hands and feets (note that Juan was driving a car) and was basically about the beautiful woman of Chile. After having spent two full days in Santiago I seriously have not seen a single beautiful woman. Neither a Chile chick, nor a foreign chick. The girls in Chile are as ugly as their country is long. And speaking about foreigners, as a matter of fact, I was the only tourist in whole Santiago. So Juan, first you ripped me of and second you lied about the girls in Chile. And I shook hands with you and thanked you. Not cool!

On the second day I finally received my skis, after waiting for 6 hours in the hotel. Welcome to South America I guess. The rest of the time was spent strolling around, getting a feeling of the city. Santiago is modern and clean, with a lot of shops, skyscrapers and modern bank buildings. On the first look it seems quite developed, probably more than other cities in South America. Until I went to McDonalds. Now this is what I call the McDonalds index, something the United Nations or the World Bank or whoever should use from now on, to determine the stage of development a country has reached. This is how it goes: Walk into a McDonalds and order a simple cheeseburger and a coke. If the person behind the counter does not understand what a cheeseburger is but gives you a coke, you might really wonder but at least you got something to drink. If you have to jump over the counter and point the Coca Cola sign to get what you want, as well as take the cheeseburger yourself, you definitely wonder, but know for sure. Nobody speaks a fucking word of English. I heard the rumors before, but now it is confirmed. The don’t even understand cheeseburger and Coke, Halleluja! Still, I got everything I wanted and everywhere I wanted.

Svalbard goodness

2010-07-25T03:03:00.008+02:00

No it's not knitting. It's crochating motherflipper!

Juni's summer visit

2010-07-14T18:22:00.007+02:00

Juni is here for a short visit, after she was out with a hovercraft for about a week. With Juni came also the summer. Warm temperatures and sun. Perfect time to get some instruments back that were placed a year ago. Besides, its grillin' and chillin' time at the beach. Life is good in the Arctic.

Summer in the city

2010-06-28T10:41:00.003+02:00

Summer has arrived, finally. After a June with low temperatures, low clouds and high winds, the weather turned. Its sunny and warm now, snow melts fast and birds taking over. Speaking about birds, Vogel has left the island. That sucks of course, but probably that's the way it is up here on Svalbard. A constant coming and going. Much like the four seasons...

Avalanche rescue or airport jumping

2010-05-30T20:18:00.005+02:00

In recent years, several studies were published about the use of a 800 Mhz ground penetration radar to detect avalanche victims in the debris. And the results always showed that this method can work, with an important exception. So far it worked only on dry snow. The basic ideas behind the GPR is that a signal is sent our and received again and this signal is running through different material with a different time and amplitude. Now, it is possible to distinguish snow from ice and air, but as the human body is made mostly out of water, there is no much difference in the reflector between a body and wet snow.

But that was exactly what the police in Mosjøen, a small town in middle Norway wanted from us. They called UNIS and asked if we could help out searching for a missing avalanche victim. On 16 May, a large slush avalanche took the lifes of 4 people, 3 of them were sisters. The avalanche stroke in a rolling terrain with rather low angles after a snow damm broke and released a heavy mass of water, snow and stones. 3 victims could have been found but 1 of the sisters were missing and so Karoline, a specialist with the GPR was called for help. She asked me to join and so we went down to help with the search. Luckely a rescue dog found the last body after 1 hour of search. When we ran with the radar over the body, we could not detect it due to the large amount of free water in the debris. But we think the GPR can provide important information about the depth of the debris and the interface between old snow and avalanche snow.

Besides this interesting work and the opportunity to help the family burring their daughters, we pretty much had crazy 2 days. Just to get to Mosjøen, we flew from Longyearbyen to Tromsø, further to Bodø, then to Mo I Rana and finally to Mosjøen. There we drove 3 times with a police car, a new experience for me, and had two heliflights to and from the avalanche. On the same day we operated the rescue we left again, flying first to Trondheim, further to Oslo and then back to Longyearbyen. We pretty much seen whole Norway for 1 hour of work.

Svalbard, approved!

2010-05-28T15:42:00.007+02:00

Finally my parents were here! After 2 days in rainy Oslo my folks spent 5 days with me in Longyearbyen. The timing was not the best since this early melt made it difficult to show the island. With the melting season comes also the bad weather, so not the best circumstances. But that only stressed me a little bit and did not bother my parents. They loved to see the town and surroundings I fell in love with, met my friends, visited my work and experiences the way we live up here.
We basically did the whole program possible from kayaking, over scooter driving, ice cave visit and they also did a boattrip to Barentsburg. I think mom and dad liked it a lot and that is good! They even managed to visit a place I have not been before in the last 2 years. The church.

Takk for besøk!

Shredding days

2010-04-29T16:33:00.009+02:00

Last weekend we put our skiing gear on the sledges and drove off to Burn Murdochbreen. The glacier connects Tempelfjorden with Gipsdalen and is known for good snow and nice mountains. Our goal was to set up camp somewhere on the glacier and ski as many lines as possible.
On our way in, we also spent some time in Tempelfjorden to watch a mother seal with her little baby. But then, no more distractions from our main program. Once we found a perfect camp spot, Wes and me immediately put on the skiing boots and hiked up the slope behind the camp.

The first run was already money. Nice slow, steep slope and some rock outcrops completed that perfect start in the weekend. I basically just skied down the fall line in the lower section of the slope and was actually uncomfortably fast which cost me quite some nerves for the other runs to come.

The picture above shows the third run of the day, down this impressive face. We did not pick the chute right from the top, but still an amazing descent.

The tracks on the picture above are from the last 2 runs on the second day. I first skied the open face but then also decided to go for the 2 m high outcrops. Jumped it like a girl, but hey, we are getting there.

On top of Botnarryggen. Note the face in the back. Still plenty of stuff to shred.

Our cosy tent camp. We actually used a place that was prepared by some other people previously, so we did not have to build a kitchen and shovel platforms for the tents. Stephan and his buddys brought "Brats" from Germany which we grilled. Skiing, midnightsun, Bratwuerstel, camping and 12 hours sleeping. That is what a good trip is all about. We definitely come back for some more skiing.

Dominic's extreme visit

2010-04-11T16:01:00.003+02:00

Dominic's extreme visit

He wanted extreme, he got extreme. Mainly extreme warm weather, but besides also most of Svalbard has to offer, or can be experienced in 10 days. Sun, clouds, wind, different light, snow, quietness, peace, relaxing as well as exhausting times. Svalbard knows to impress at any time and I think Dominic liked it and enjoyed his stay here.

We had some quite ambitious plans in the beginning. After just a short acclimatization for Dominic, shooting training and shopping, we packed our scooters and headed out south. On our way we skied a face on Bingtoppen, stopped by Colesbukta, the old russian mining settlement and progressed further to Barentsburg. The russians definitely dug too deep. After a night in Kapp Laila, we climbed and skied a colouir in Grønfjorden and headed back home because the weather forecast was bad and we did not want to waste any time sitting in the tent, waiting for better weather. So before we drove out again, we visited an icecave and did some more skiing above town. We even got to try out the kite in fairly stormy conditions. But then it was time to hit the road again and we drove down to an open russian cabin at the head of Grønfjorden. I got almost stuck in slushy sea ice while watching a seal tanning. What an adrenaline rush. The night in the russian cabin turned out better then expected after Pyrodominic heated the cabin up to 30 degrees. Slightly shitty weather did not allow to drive down Fridjofbreen so we just did one Nunatak up on the big glacier which gave us quite a hard time after fighting to get over the Bergschrund. On an other route we basically just walked on pure ice all the way up to the summit. We found even some more ice in a crazy colouir down in Kapp Linne. A perfect colouir, which we called Austrian colouir after we conquered it, was one of the highlights of our trip. Good climbing, nice summit ridge and crazy skiing down. Our good mood was just shortly interrupted by my scooter getting to hot on the strandflat, not moving anymore. But thanks to Håkon from Isfjorden Radio we could just a little bit later drive back to Longyearbyen again. After another overnight stay at Kapp Laila and two more peaks in Colesdalen we put our skis aside and focussed more on student life, partying and going out. Which was a good roundup of Dominic's visit and as well as all the other stuff we did, quite extreme. So thanks for coming buddy, it was a pleasure to have you up here. Driving scooter, stopping at any peak, climbing and skiing it felt like we have done that for years.

Max claims Hiortfjellet

2010-03-30T16:25:00.008+02:00

...and has the melody of "The final countdown" in his ears. Tadadadaaa, Tadadadadaaaa, Tadadadadadaaaa, Tadadadadadadaaaaa, Tadadaaa,...

Finally, on 27 March we skied the Hiortfjellet bowl. And finally I was first again, after having to take a terrible defeat by Tine and Eli Anne. Still, those two drove half way up with the scooter, but ok, that was last year. This year we progressed somewhat slowly towards the top and the bowl. First we skied a big flank east of the bowl. Fantastic skiing, nice snow and quite sick lines made us reach higher. So we went up the bowl last Saturday, or better dug ourselfs up doing numerous stability tests and still did not make it all the way up. We skied down from the upper ridge right into the bowl. First picture shows the place were I heard the "Final Countdown", took a last breath and dropped in, ripped it on the way down and claimed the Hiortfjellet bowl! Sunday, same story but this time from all the way on the top. The other skiers were Stephan, Wes and Gjermund.

Both times the snow was just perfect and the light, Svalbard like, beautiful as always. Besides I am starting to open up my turns, getting them bigger and wider, thus also gaining more speed. Thanks to Espen, who introduced me last season into big mountain skiing, thanks to the crazy ski footage I am watching from time to time and massive thanks to the Megawatts. These skis are just crazy and completely changed my way of skiing. There is just so much floatation and controll going on, it is super easy and a true pleasure. With some luck, shots like the ones underneath are possible.

So no more small "wedel"-turns, but rather big and powerful ones. Less exhausting since you are down the slope way quicker, more adrenaline pumping and thus more fun! I am getting used to it and will start pushing it a little bit more to become a better skier.

At the end a few words about Hiortfjellet. Since the deadly avalanche accident on Hiortfjellet last year, great attention is given by the folks in Longyearbyen to what happens in the bowl. There is somehow the idea, that when someone died up there last year it must be life threatening all the time. That is of course bullshit. Avalanche danger depends highly on the snow pack stability and any given slope around Longyearbyen with the same steepness can be equally dangerous or safe. So people were talking in town, who the crazy people were that skied down Hiortfjellet and without any bad conscience I can say that it was me, and yes, I flippin' claim it!

Beanie

2010-03-23T10:11:00.004+01:00

There is no day in Svalbard where I am not wearing a beanie on my head. Simple just not warm enough. So a fine collection of different nice beanies is important, its part of who you are I would say. Still I am not overdoing it with wearing a hat all the time. Some people seem to even shower and sleep with it.
Anyway, I figured when Nick DeVore, crazy telemark freeride dude chrochates his own beanies, I can do that to. If I will never become a better skier then him, but maybe at least a better chrochater. So in the picture my first creation. Took me 4 hours last evening while eating, watching TV, doing some reading,... I would not say this is my favourite work to do, but it was quite fun . And there are more to come I think.

Jente på besøk

2010-03-21T16:00:00.004+01:00

My first visitors were here! After more then 2 years of living in Svalbard I got my first visitors from back home. My sis Julia and her two friends Marianne and Rita survived a 8 days high arctic outdoor boot camp, I think they even enjoyed it.
We basically run through the whole tourist program from shooting with the rifle, over seightseeing in town, icecaving, snow mobile touring and dog sleding. On top of it, we participated in the yearly Ta sjansen competition. To be honest, we did not win the prize for the fastest sledge or most creative one but our Schnitzel could have earned the fiaskoprisen at least. But even this prize went to some others. To be fair, the Schnitzel made it all the way down. So after experiencing also the famous student life at the Friday Gathering and in the barracks in Nybyen and even one of the rare concerts in Svalbard, the trip was rounded up by some crazy Northern Lights. So everything checked I would say, just a Polar Bear missing. This one I spear for Dominic's visit in April.

Snowkite training on Longyearbreen

2010-03-02T16:43:00.002+01:00

Snowkiting season opening 2010

2010-02-28T22:22:00.006+01:00

Wind, yes wind is blowing in Svalbard all the time. It is a barren landscape here, with no trees or major obstacles so the wind just blows freely. Because of the wind, we have some snow on some slopes, otherwise it would be rather stone skiing all year round. Because of the wind as well, we have the opportunity to snowkite pretty much every day in winter. So I bought myself a foilkite before christmas and finally today I could give it a first try. The way to go normally is to take a kite course. Kiting is quite dangerous if you underestimate the power of the wind and if you have no clue how the safety releases on the kite work. So I downloaded a "How to snowkite" video and did some serious video analysis, something Didi Constantini does not find necessary at all. I say, why spending shitloads of money for a day out in the cold, learning how to kite if you can sit on your couch, drink a cacao and learn by watching the video. And to make it short, it worked pretty fine. I put the kite out, secured it with snow, struggled with the 1000 lines for a while and was finally ready to launch. I put it 90 degrees to the wind window, stepped a few quick steps back, pulled the lines and off it went. And it took me with it. Before I had it all the way up some gusts pulled hard on the kite and it lifted me 2 m off the ground and sat me down some 10 m away. Shit, that sport is scary. But besides that little incident I could stear it quite well in and out of the wind window, land it and relaunch it again. I started to become quite confident so I even managed to stear with one hand and take photos with the other. What uuuuup!

Next step will be to put some skis on my feet and just follow the wind. We'll see where it brings me.

Nitro Circus

2010-02-25T18:22:00.001+01:00

Honestly, snowmobile driving does not need too much skills. Even I can look cool on it. I cannot understand why people claim this is a serious sport. anyway, we are just doing fieldwork when we are out.

Safety first!

2010-02-19T18:02:00.004+01:00

Airbag Test release

Finally I bought myself an ABS avalanche airbag. I probably should have done that some 10 years ago already. Anyway, this thing should keep me quite safe in case of a slab avalanche release. Still, with all this avalanche equipment. You pay a lot of money for things you hopefully never need to use.

Solen kommer tilbake

2010-02-17T15:26:00.006+01:00

16 February marks the end of the dark season and the first day, the sun, just very shy but still, pops up over the mountain tops. It needs a hike up a mountain to really see it another 3 weeks before we get some direct sunlight in the valleys.
So we took the opportunity to see the sun and combined it with some skiing. I have been skiing anyway more or less every day the last week in amazing light conditions and yesterday finally with the sun in my face. Additionally it snowed last week but was very calm since then, so on some slopes is really good powder. And of course I brought my Megawatt powderskis! What an experience. These snowboards float like crazy and make every turn a really pleasure. In combination with some jumps down a cornice, really nice skiing these days. And more to come...

Vesuv Redux

2010-02-09T22:10:00.008+01:00

In February 2009, Stephan, Alex, Nial, puking Juni and me stayed overnight in the UNIS staff cabin at Kapp Laila. In May 2009, Stephan, Joar, Espen and me skied Vesuv. This time we combined both, the cosy little cabin at Kapp Laila and skiing beautiful Vesuv. Again, Stephan and me and we also brought Wes, Max and Sasha. And it turned out to be a great combination.
We spent a beautiful night at Kapp Laila under crazy northern lights. Between eating 84 Lefser, playing UNO and cooking pasta for 3 times, we even found some time to slackline between two scooters. But we went to bed quite early in order to be ready for some nice turns the next morning. At this time of the year it is just a few hours light, so we wanted to take advantage of this. In beautiful light, with a pink horizon in the south, we enjoyed the ascent, standing on the top of Vesuv and the freshies down. Great skiing day in the magic Svalbard landscape.

All pics are from Stephan. The guy is going crazy with his camera. Which is good since he is delivering amazingly nice pictures.

Extreme avalanching

2010-02-02T22:34:00.005+01:00

End of January, we had a big storm. Wind speeds up to 30 m/s and snow showed us the forces of nature here in the Arctic. Before it was quite warm with quite a lot of rain. So it came as expected. Slabs released naturally on the rain crust, resulting in the biggest avalanches we have seen in the last 3 years. On Nordenskioldtoppen, the highest peak in the Longyearbyen area is no more snow left. The entire slope down to Longyearbreen avalanched in 7 big avalanches, one with a crown length of over a km all the way down from the summit onto the glacier. Absolutely crazy.

Pics are all taken by Stephan.

Telemarking på fastlandet

2010-02-02T22:05:00.003+01:00

I worked on my telemark technique in Myrkedalen. Supposed to be the skiing area in Norway with the most snow. Yeah right. There was even powder on the slopes and we might have counted 40 skiers on that day. Nice.

M.E.G.A.W.A.T.T.

2010-01-28T21:42:00.003+01:00

It's like girls with their shoes. They need different pairs of shoes for different occasions. Same goes for skis. You just can't ski with the same ski in every condition if you want to enjoy skiing with everything it has to offer. Therefore I added to my two beauties another beauty, or should I rather say beast! The Black Diamond is 153 mm wide at the tip and 135 underneath my boots. A big mountain powder ski, rather soft, long rocker, zero camber. Everything is mega on the Megawatt. Accept the prize. Martin from logistics offered me this 1 year old pair for a supernice prize. He skied it 3 times, it looks like it has been never skied before.
And yes you read right. A ski for big powder days. Something we do not have on Svalbard too often. But he, high heels are also not for every day and still every girl has a pair. And the mindful observer probably saw the gap in the picture where my ski poles are hanging. Damn right, space for another pair of skis.

Christmas 2009

2010-01-13T19:23:00.003+01:00

Christmas 2009

Christmas is the time to be with the family and friends. But also with your girlfriend. Juni came for a visit to Austria. We had a really good time seightseeing in Vienna, spending New Years Eve with my friends, going skiing with Julia and Dominic and being at home with my family. On my birthday we were in Bergen, enjoying two nice and cold winter days with bob sleding and cross country skiing.

Now I am back on Svalbard teaching at the safety course together with Stephan. 8 hours of teaching every day makes us quite tired, but we are also enjoying it. It is nice to meet all the new students and tell them what we know about avalanches to make their time on Svalbard a little more safer.

Also nice to let others dig, while just standing around with a shovel to lean on, as the picture from Stephan is showing.

Farewell Ulli!

2010-01-13T18:36:00.002+01:00

On 31 December Ullis contract at UNIS ran out, together with our Cryoslope Svalbard project. It has been two very nice years, working with Ulli. He was picking me up at the airport on a cold day in February 2008 and guiding me through the first months in the Arctic. I learned all the essentials you need for carrying out good fieldwork and for that I am very thankfull. Even though we are actually quite different since Ulli is always smiling and happy and a rather handy person, we still got along very well.
So I did not only loose my colluege but also a very good friend. Good that Ulli is coming back in February for another spring season. He otherwise would be highly missed since he already belongs to the Svalbard inventory.

PUDDERSNØ

2009-12-18T13:31:00.004+01:00

Oh yes. Powder alarm in Svalbard. Not that common, so there was just one option. Out of the bed again at 1 in the morning, starting the scooter, up to Nybyen and on the glacier. It was a true pleasure, to wash the 15 cm of powder off the hard underlying snow. Telemarking never felt sooo easy.

Juni på besøk

2009-12-14T22:26:00.002+01:00

There are certainly signs of a womens influence on a guys appartment. Suddenly it is clean, smells like christmas, candles are everywhere, it has 25 degrees and a pepperkakehus stands on the table.
Juni came for a 11 days visit after we have not seen each other for 2 months. Unfortunately this time went way to fast. But we had a lot of fun, a lot of cosy time in the dark, one nice scooter trip on the lille runde and lots of lots of food in all the different restaurants. that was great!
Now, science has me back, 100 %! That is ok, we will see each other after christmas. Looking very much forward to that.

Fieldwork in the dark

2009-12-04T11:36:00.003+01:00

The fieldseason 2009/2010 started already beginning of November. I put out some temperature loggers in the snow in late summer which should help me to understand the metamorphism in the snow pack and most important the formation of depth hoar. These big, loose cup shaped crystals are responsible for all avalanche accidents in the last years and theory says, that they form in autumn, when the snowpack is still very thin and a huge temperature gradient between atmosphere, snowpack and ground exists. So I am frequently digging snowpits, even though it is shit dark. Only right now, mother nature, switched on some natural light for a few days and it is such a pleasure to be out. So far, not much depth hoar has developed and I think it is due to the warm air temperatures in November. We had a monthly mean of -1.9 deg and the highest temperatures reached 5.8 on 18 November.

Endelig tilbake

2009-11-06T17:01:00.003+01:00

Finally I am back in Svalbard. The light is already gone, only on clear sky days and fullmoon, it is still quite bright and the mountains turn pink. Svalbard magic moments, much appreciated.

Mera Peak Trekking

2009-10-29T15:04:00.003+01:00

Mera Peak

Since I started spending my spare time in the mountains I was reading books from the climbing heroes of our time. I was fascinated by the stories of Reinhold Messner, Hans Kammerlander, Kurt Diemberger or Jerzy Kukuzcka and even more by the big mountains those guys climbed. Since then I wanted to see the highest peaks in the world. All a question of time and money. First I had as a student, second not.

With my first salary this January, I booked a trip to Nepal. I chose the Mera Peak Trekking for some reasons. First I wanted to see some 8000 m peaks and from the Mera Peak summit, you were supposed to see 4. Second I wanted to know how I am doing in higher altitudes and Mera Peak is over 6400 m high, therefore perfect for my purpose and third I wanted to know how I am dealing with living in a tent for nearly 3 weeks.

On 3 October we took off to Kathmandu. The city reminded me of Bangkok. Loud, messy, full of life, cheep and instead of fake Rolex you can by fake Mammut equipment. Nice. Right the next day we flew with a little Twinotter plane to Lukla. Unfortunately we could only bring 20 kg per person, so we put some of our stuff, mainly the hardwear, in separate bags which of course got lost on the airport. So we had to borrow some gear. From the plane I could get a first exciting glimps on Everest and the landing stripe in Lukla is really as scarry as everyone says. What a short landing between the houses of Lukla. In Lukla we met our Sirdar Ramis and the helping guides.

The first days brought us up to 3500 m asl. to some small huts called Chutanga in the middle of the jungle. It rained for three days constantly which brought the tents already on their edge as well as the nerves and moud of some of our group. We also could not do our full acclimatization program for crossing the high Zatrwala pass (4500 m asl), so we had to stay longer than expected. Finally we got over the pass, the weather got a little bit better as we progressed still through rain forest to Tuli Kharka, Kothe and Tangnang. In Tangnang we had a first day off with very bad weather. It was three days before our Mera Peak summit day and the mood of the group was again at a low point. Also because Charly Gabl forecasted -20 deg and 60 km/h wind on the summit day. This prognoses gave some of us nearly the rest and they seriously wanted to turn around an walk back to Lukla. It was suggested we could do some daily trips around Kathmandu instead! This was more than ridiculous and it showed that some people were either physically nor mentally prepared for this kind of trip. I instead was still happy to be in the landscape of my dreams.
The following day was amazingly nice and we hiked underneath the northface of Mera Peak up to Khare, 4820 m asl. On a moraine ridge I reached 5000 m asl. for the first time in my life and payed it with heavy headache for the rest of the evening. But all was well the next day and we reached Mera La, 5200 m asl. in beautiful sunshine, progressing further to our High Camp at 5350 m. From there, we had an amazing view at Everest and Makalu and the sunset was breathtaking. Normally the high camp is at 5800 m but we decided to sleep lower and better and be fitter the next day to ascent to the summit. So after a good night we started at 2 in the morning, the sun hit us at about 5800 m asl., right were the difficulties started. I had just water in my drinking system and did not really like it. So I stopped drinking for a while and payed of course the prize. The steep slope between 5800 - 6000 m asl. was pure horror. I had to stop every 5th step and breath for my life. As we took a rest at about 6000 m asl. I was ready to walk back, I was just done. But than I squeezed in a power gel, drank two cups of hot water and ascented further. And suddenly it went well. One step, one breath, one step one breath and at about 9 in the morning I stood alone on the summit of Mera Peak, 6461 m asl. And what a view! From left to right Cho Oyu, Everest, Lothse, Makalu and Kanchenjunga. 4 peaks above 8000 m! Beautiful weather, maybe -10 deg and almost no wind. Dear Charly Gabl, you were perfectly wrong.

I started descending after maybe 20 m on the summit and was well back in time in the high camp, were I ate, took a quick nap and advanced further down into the Hongu valley to our next camp. The next days we could enjoy the lonelyness of the beautiful Hongu Himal until we reached the foot of Amphu Laptsa, a 5780 m high climbing pass into the Khumbu valley. A spectacular way lead us up through ice cascades onto a narrow ridge with amazing views at the big Lothse south face. We abseiled down the first 60 m of the pass, tourists first, then porters and equipment. Amphu Laptsa demanded all the day and we were happy to reach camp right underneath Island Peak in the evening.

The following days we comfortably walked out the famous Khumbu valley amongst thousand other hikers, slept in lodges, enjoyed the great Ama Dablam, Tengpoche monastery, the flair of Namche Bazar and ever and ever again Everest and Lothse. I might have taken too much pictures.

Back in Kathmandu I enjoyed sitting 4 hours at the tourist police station because of the lost equipment and we had the honour of getting a foot at the Rum Doodle. Mera Peak 2009, Bergspechte trekking, next to the great Everest adventures.

To wrap it up. The trip was a dream come true and I could fulfill all my wishes. I saw Everest and the other high summits, felt pretty good above 6000 m asl. and enjoyed every single night in the tent. But I would not do some sort of trip with unknown people again. All this complaining was too much and I always walked in far in front of the group in my own pace enjoying the greatness of the Himalays. Next stop Muztagh Ata?

Off-topic: On travel

2009-09-29T22:53:00.002+02:00

Moeseler

Since 2 weeks I am off the fridge. First I visited Juni in Bergen where we had a nice little trip to her cabin in the mountains. This was just before she left to Portugal and further to the US and all the way down to South America. Check out her travel blog in Norwegian: http://junivl.blogg.no/

Than I went further to Vienna to attend the Deutsche Geographentagung, organized by my former institute. It was a very nice opportunity to meet those people again and show what I am doing right now. I gave a nice presentation about my recent research. But more important, I could enjoy life in Vienna for a week. Thanks to Dominic and Julia for couch surfing. It was a pleasure to meet my friends, eat good Austrian food and be back home, also in good old Thaling with my family.

For two days, me and Dominic went mountaineering in the Zillertal. Our target was the Groesser Moeseler, with almost 3500 m asl one of the higher peaks in Austria. It was a pleasent trip with some way finding over a crevassed glacier and a good climb up a ridge. We missed the way a little bit so the climb turned out harder and longer then expected. Also the conditions were not the best since it snowed a little the night before and the rocks, which on top were superloose, were quite slippery. But we did it of course, although it took some time. And after the trip we went to a birthday party in Kufstein. Was good to do a trip with Dominic, at least one this year.

After the climbing days I went further to Davos to attend the International Snow Science Workshop in Davos, Switzerland. So there I am right now, enjoying presentations about nothing else then avalanches.

Sommer blir til host

2009-08-30T23:06:00.007+02:00

After we got spoiled in July, with temperatures constantly over 10 degrees, it is quite a change now. The sun is going down already for a view hours, temperatures are close to freezing and the wind is blowing. Still, the endless sunset makes the horizon burn and the rest of the sky is completely pink. What a spectacular beginning of autumn.

Abisko and Tarfalalalala

2009-08-29T20:09:00.006+02:00

Abisko and Tarfala

One of the nice things about being a scientist is to visit different places for free. The last two weeks I had the opportunity to visit Abisko in northern Sweden. Abisko is situated in the Subarctic with a MAAT of -1 deg Celsius, mountaineous landscape with a lot of lakes and a low birch forest. I attended a summer course at the Bert Bolin Centre for Arctic climate research on different aspects of the Arctic climate system. The course brought 25 Ph.D.-students from all over the world together, all working in the Arctic. Almost everyone was from somewhere else than he/she is working right now and/or doing fieldwork.
The course program was really interesting and gave me a good insight in the Arctic climate system, especially in relevant topics for my work like snow and ice as well as cloud albedo, the North Atlantic Circulation, synopthic weather systems, heat transport in the atmosphere,... That helped quite a lot and was really good. Also the helicopter flight to the Tarfala mountain research station and being up there was really great. It looked like Svalbard up there, just rocks and ice. I felt like home and enjoyed every minute. A lot of glaciology was done so far at Tarfala, with the longest glacier mass balance record. But not very much periglacial geomorphology, would be a nice place to study some avalanches and their geomorphologic impact.

On the other hand, the course was also political. The Bert Bolin Centre is enrolled in the IPCC somehow and many lecturers are working for the IPCC. Therefore the discussion on certain climate change issues was pretty much onesided and sometimes presented as they would speak in front of journalists and politicans and not young scientists. And that sucked super much since I do not need anyone to tell me that we have not much time anymore and the situation right now is threatening, that is just bullshit. I want to see data, the interpretation of the data as well as the scientific discussion in a reviewed journal and not some personal opinion and political statements and unserious blabla. After I got really pissed about this situation I took the opportunity to address some other opinions about important climate change issues like the global surface temperature, anthropogenic C02 emission coupling, or how to manipulate data presentation to channel interpretations into the way you want it. Unfortunately the students did not really dare to express their opinions and the teachers just wiped out everything right away. That was a pity, since I believe that it is very important to have a diverse discussion in science. This is what it is all about and helps to progress, not just looking in one direction. Same goes for the modelling people. Even tough they claim something else, they believe too much in their models and in the end, a model is just a mathematical way to express your own opinion.

At the end of the day I am following the advise of my supervisor Hanne. I go back to my own little research field and try to do good research, with respect to a changing climate on our planet. That is the good thing about a Ph.D., I do not have to have a professional opinion on the big climate change thing, since I anyway do not have the data for it. And finally that is what it is all about as a scientist. Your own opinion is uninteresting, you have to proof your findings.

(For those who are not familiar with the climate stuff. IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They got the peace nobel price together with Al Gore. It is a political instrument, set up in the 80s when we had a quite distinct global warming phase, which is stagnating since 2000. Many climate researchers write big reports which get a lot of media echo. Everyone who tries to have a closer look at the data and the way it is presented is pretty quickly brandmarked as a climate sceptic and out of the community. I wonder how you can be a sceptic on climate. It is not a person, just a thing.)

Geomorphologic field work at Kapp Linne

2009-08-10T15:54:00.004+02:00

Kapp Linne fieldwork

Kapp Linne is the paradise for every geomorphologist! Polygons, sorted circles, solifluction lobes, ice wedges, sand wedges, rock glaciers, talus slopes, avalanche fans,... Geomorphology heart, hva vil du mere?!
In addition, the whole interesting landscape can be enjoyed in great detail because in the evening you know that you come back to the nice Isfjorden Radio hotel, meaning warm shower, comfi beds and a good dinner. No tent, no wet clothes, no polar bear thread! Sure, the food could be less fancy and a little bit more in the evening. Therefore it is important to even that out at the breakfast and try to beat each other in making the highest sandwich towers to bring in the field. The weather could have been better as well, but it was more or less ok. So we got quite a lot of work done, downloaded all shock and temperature loggers, hidden sometimes quite good by Hanne, re-measured the rock glacier with a differential GPS in order to find out if it moved a few cm in the last two years and put some electricity into the ground to find out how much ice is in the permafrost.
But the coolest thing was the drilling. Me, Zoe and Hanne drilled a permafrost temperature hole with a hand drill. First we had to dig down to 120 cm, that was the depth of the active layer. The active layer, thaws in spring and freezes up again in autumn, is therefore active in a way. At 120 cm we found the permafrost table, so from this depth, the ground is frozen since many many years down to a certain depth were the geothermal heat heats it up again. At this location, maybe 150 or less? At least quite some meters. At this part a quick joke: Where does the permafrost researcher enjoy his coffee? At the permafrost table of course! Also, never confuse the permafrost table with a rock if you want to become a permafrost researcher. After digging we started drilling. Always just a few centimeters into the frozen and hard soil. We had to obtain the core in order to send it into a lab for further investigations. So slowly but steady we made our way down to 280 cm! Quite good work and in your face, Stephan! We put a plastic tube into the hole and into the plastic tube some temperature loggers at certain depths. Together with my installation, measuring the snow temperature at different depths, we should get a good temperature profile in order to understand the temperature differences and exchanges betweeen atmosphere, snow pack and ground. Quite important data for my Ph.D. since I am putting a lot of emphasis on this topic in the coming year. Watch out depth hoar, I am on your track!
In the end it was a very nice trip with nice people. I enjoyed being in the field with Hanne. I probably learned more about periglacial landforms and processes then after reading a text book. So that was pretty good and quite exciting. And last but not least, we got to enjoy a nice sail back to Longyearbyen with Kongsoy.

Portugal med Juni

2009-07-25T22:54:00.003+02:00

Portugal med Juni

This was my first real vacation in almost 2 years and it felt sooo good. Mostly because I had finished writing the manuscript of my first paper just before I left after 2 weeks of non-stop work, but also I was going to a nice appartment on the Algarve coast, owned by Juni's parents. and I would meet my sis after 6 months. And of course the most important reason, I could spend some time alone with Juni. And it turned out to be great. The weather was perfect, the beaches nice, the food amazingly good and therefore we went out for dinner every single day, sometimes twice. The appartment was unbelievable nice and cosy, with 3 sun terraces and a pool and plenty of space for us two. So we enjoyed our being together every single minute. I just got a little bit sick from the sun. My body, after so long time without warm temperatures and sun could not cope with the new situation. I had to spend all the time in the shadow. Still I got a little sunburn, but overall I took a nice tan back to Svalbard. So now I am a little bit sad that the vacation is already over again and I am sitting in rainy Svalbard, with quite some work ahead. Sure, I am looking forward to do it, to go hiking, kajaking and windsurfing. But I am also looking forward to see my Miss Norway again in 3 weeks in Oslo.

And so tusen takk to Manfred og Anneliese who borrowed us the appartment. It was great, we'll be definitely back next year! Obregado!

Evening kajak trip

2009-07-25T22:46:00.006+02:00

Rather than going for a drink in one of the bars it is sometimes clever to do something else on Friday evenings. Kajaking for example. Low fog and a swedish icebreaker made up the scenary, Stephan made the pictures. We went to the Sauna afterwards. All good.

GRATTIS JULIE

2009-07-06T10:38:00.003+02:00

Congratulations Mag.a Julia (or MSc or whatever), great work, well done! Still, one step behind me little sister...

Surfin' Svalbard

2009-07-06T10:28:00.007+02:00

If someone did not notice yet, I live by the sea. And therefore it is just logic to do all the fun things other people all around the world like to do. Ok, it needs a few adjustments since the water might be a little bit colder than at other watersport locations, but otherwise the conditions might not be so different. And the last days we had amazingly warm weather. Today is the 4th day in a row with temperatures at around 10 degrees. The sun is shining 24 hours, no clouds on the sky, just amazing. On the negative side is to state, that my appartment is made for such a heat wave, I have 26 degrees in my living room. First night in Svalbard I could hardly sleep because it was too hot. Haha!
Also just funny to think that I learned kajaking, sailing and windsurfing in the arctic ocean.

Thanks to Ulli for the pics.

Norsk friluftsliv

2009-06-29T23:02:00.003+02:00

Norsk friluftsliv

The Norwegians definitely know how to enjoy life! But me too. So what is better than meet with some mainland Norwegians and enjoy life together, or better, enjoy norsk friluftsliv.
For 5 days, I was visiting Juni in Bergen for her 24th birthday. Since Bergen is worldwide known for its rainy weather, we were quite lucky to experience the best weather in probably 100 years. It was always sunny and above 20 degrees. Therefore it is also not hard to guess what happened to me after 2 years of summer abstinence. Right, I got a freakin' sunburn on my back and my arms whick knocked me out for almost the entire next day. But let's start from the beginning.

First, I was shopping. I just had to buy some things I don't get in Svalbard. Second, I had to eat. There are also some things you don't get or have in Svalbard. McDonalds for example. Third, I had to touch a solid rock. There is some in Svalbard, but not really easy to reach. And therefore we went climbing with Espen at one of the most beautiful climbing spots I have seen. A nice wall close to a little lake not far from Bergen, with incredible good rock (gneiss) and easy but very enjoyable routes made our day. We climbed, jumped into the water and grilled some sausages. And gained severe sunburns.

The next day was Juni's birthday and we more or less just relaxed until the evening. A nice birthday party + BBQ finished off a supernice birthday I think. And than the really exciting part of my short holiday started.

We went to her dads and Ada's cottage on the fjord, one hour away from Bergen. To walk over the hill and have a first look from the terrasse of the cottage was pretty amazing. Tiny little fjords, little hills with bushes, trees and rocks, wild sheeps and clear water made up the scenery. The first evening we chilled out at the fjord, eating fresh crabs and shrimps until her dad and Ada arrived. After a little rowing/fishing trip where I caught my first fish from the sea (which was small and damn ugly), we went with Harald to set out the fishnet and the crab traps. Unfortunately Juni's dad was with his head still at work so he filled benzin into the diesel motor, or the other way around, but anyway we had to row the whole way. Still, it was a nice experience.

The Saturday we started with getting the fishnet and the crab traps in again and we caught 5 herings and two crabs. One was a big Trollkrabbe, scary but tasty. The rest of the day we spent with kajaking, eating more shrimps, meeting more family members (I know now the brother from the cousin from the dad, that met a guy at the bus station which had the same eye colour as the waitress at the bar the friend Juni's grandma never visited) going for a swim and last but not least on a nice boattrip. Harald has a nice little boat which he is quite proud of. Of course, it is a nice toy for big boys. So we drove through the beautiful fjord landscape, got some ice cream, lost the race against Nils and had a very good time. A big family dinner rounded of the great day.

On Sunday, we caught another 3 nice crabs which Juni probably ate all alone. She is a crab monster, slurbing every piece of meat out of the crab. Quite disgusting!

Last but not least, we got to try waterskiing. I could stand up on my first attempt, of course I knew it before. Once a skier, always a skier, does not matter if the water is frozen or not.

So in total norsk friluftsliv is super nice and Bergen on a sunny and hot day always worth a visit. Also because Junchen min is there. Than of course it would be also nice on rainy days. For sure baby.

Distraction program

2009-06-23T00:09:00.012+02:00

One love already left the island, another one is soon gone. So I needed a little distraction program, saying goodbye to Junchen min and the snow. And there is nothing better than doing that with a nice and decent last skiing trip. For that, we did not have to go too far. We chose our skiarea Larsbreen, struggled with the heavy tent upwards, put the shit on the flat glacier and made our way up Trollsteinen to enjoy the always amazing view.

This time we chose a different route down and Stephan dropped one of the cornices in a very impressive manner, if you think about steepness, thickness of the cornices and overall crazyness.

Once down at our equipment again, we started our grilling session. I think we must have spent 10 ours minimum just holding our faces into the sun. And we should have known better! I just made a bench and a table out of the snow. But I should have made the table in the middle and a round bench surrounding it, since the sun in the arctic is just circulating around our heads. So the next morning I had to re-digg the whole setting. Worked, but we were sitting half a meter deeper inside the glacier. You get the point what could happen after a while...

Pics are mainly from Stephan. I was busy tanning and preparing nice food with my lovely, nice and very reliable stove from Primus. Yeah right Nial, fuck off if your MSR. Although, the make nice pots. One is standing on my Primus.

Producing body own drugs

2009-06-11T00:30:00.002+02:00

Skiing

Last week we opened the sailing club which might be a good indication that the summer is on its way. If you ask me, he can still wait a bit, I prefer powder in June. Hell yeah!
In the last days we managed to ski a bit and take pictures of us doing so. Not so easy to take nice pictures and to ski well enough so that it looks good at them. But we tried a few times and this gallery is the first outcome of our freeriding-picture taking sessions.

Our last trip lead us up to Lars Hiertafjellet. Usually too far to walk since you have to walk flat at least 1 km over the glacier before you can ascent the summit slope. But we gave it a try and it was more than worth the effort. Finest powder, up to 15 cm, completely loose and dry was waiting for us. So we skied the upper most part of the summit slope twice as well as the entire summit slope. What a ride. Perfect weather, perfect snow conditions made us scream like hell, producing endorphine, adrenaline and maybe other stuff. That is what skiing is all about!

Besides we took a lot of pictures. On the one hand, you can show off like I do with this gallery, on the other hand you can also quite good study your technique. So we found some very interesting things, what we do right and wrong, how we could improve... First thing for example I did was to make my poles shorter. I could telemark as well as freeride way better than before. Still, my telemarking needs a lot of improvement. But in perfect conditions I can do it pretty well. It is definitely getting there.
Stephan, he is the perfect skiing instructor. Pretty oldschool technique but extremely well done. There is no space between his skis, the upper body is totall straight, does not move at all and faces always down. And he perfectly initiates the turn with his hips. Give him a Jethose and he is in the game. For proper freeriding of course not so suitable since he likes to kill every turn with a nice hipkick.

So there is room for improvement for both of us of course, let's hope the winter stays a while! Fingers crossed!

Congratulations Norway

2009-05-19T21:23:00.007+02:00

17 of May is the celebration of the liberation from Danish control, or occupation or union or whatever. It is a big deal in Norway and everyone is dressing up in their traditional clothing, the so called Bunad and watching the parade marching through town.
In Longyearbyen, everyone is joining the parade and nobody is watching it, otherwise there would not be any parade of course. So we went in our own UNIS section through town, listened to some speeches and ate 4-8 pieces of cake in Svalbardhallen, waiting for some kids to perform, sing, dance or whatever.
The rest of this holiday we spent grilling on the roof of Brakke 4 and watching a polar fox which chose its territory in Nyben. Pretty clever this fox, since it gets food from everyone for some nice photos.

Vesuvo, checked!

2009-05-09T23:08:00.012+02:00

Vesuv, seen from Fardalen looks like a perfect pyramid and as nice as his big and famous brother in Italy. It rises almost 750 m from the nearby fjord and has been a goal for quite a long time since me and Ulli always look at it during our fieldwork route.
Today, we made it, Vesuv, checked! The skiers were Stephan, Espen (on board of course), Joar (Junis brother, for a visit right now) and me.
Our first impression was not very good since the route up to the top seemed rather boring. A little bit steep at the beginning, flat in the middle, windy, steep and hard at the top. Indeed, it was exactly like that. But once on the top, the wind surprisingly stopped for 15 min and we could enjoy the view over Nordenskioldland and Isfjorden all the way to Prins Karls Forland. Since than, our luck did not stop until we were down at our scooters again. First Espen managed to drop down from the top without starting a helicopter rescue mission, second, one side of Vesuv had perfect powder snow, third we luckely chose a route down which gave us an additional slope with nice powder and third we discovered a pretty cool cave in the middle of the gully we went down. It looked like the snow, building a bridge over the gully remained for several winters, forming ice and sediment layers from rock fall activity in summer inbetween. Almost like a talus derived rock glacier would form, I wonder if it creeps.
Of course I had to build in some new knowledge I gained during the 5 weeks course I took and finished on Wednesday with an exam. I am on my way to become a periglacial geomorphologist and enjoying it a lot. It is fun to have an idea how a landscape develops and forms after a glacier retreated. And since 40 % of Svalbard is a periglacial landscape it is quite interesting now to go out and apply the knowledge, even more in summer, when more landforms are visible.
But back to the trip and therefore the end of it, as well as the beginning. As shown by the last picture, Stephan managed to sit 40 km on a sledge in the morning and was dragged back the same distance in the afternoon. Quite exhausting, but still worth the effort, I would guess. And by the way, Sysselmannen was controlling today in front of Longyearbyen and we had to blow into the alcohol tester. But they were so busy that they oversaw Stephan sitting on the sledge. That would have been an ugly fee...

Gratulerer med dagen Ulli & Flo

2009-04-26T22:56:00.007+02:00

I am pretty bad in remembering birthday dates, but as Ulli and my brother Flo have their birthday on the same day, it is almost impossible to miss it. So happy birthday to you guys!

Last year, Ulli celebrated his 30th birthday with a big 2-days party in Bodalen. I made a blog entry on this. It was a great party. This year, we celebrated as well, smaller party, shorter time, but still very nice. Party location was the beach next to Ullis cabin. Fortunately the fjord was still frozen, at least more or less, so we could extend the party location onto the sea ice. Besides a nice bonfire, bbq, marshmellow compatition and quite mindblowing music, we could watch Daniel and Peter ice diving, Malte and Ulli ice swimming and the sun turning further east and east and east and never going down anymore. Velkomen tilbake sol!

Deltaneset Tv show

2009-04-16T23:23:00.003+02:00

Deltaneset-Pyramiden

Easter + Norway = cabin trip. Therefore Juni and I packed our scooters and went from Saturday till Monday for a nice little cabin trip to the Deltaneset cabin. It is a UNIS welfare cabin on the eastcoast of Isfjorden, 50 km away from Longyearbyen with scooter. I have actually been at the cabin last summer on our kajak trip. Deltaneset is a nice and very cosy cabin, slightly tilted to one side. Nevertheless, it has one of the most amazing views. Two big windows make it possible to watch Svalbard TV. Which means sitting in the warm cabin, looking out of the windows the hole evening over Isfjorden, Billefjorden and Tempelfjorden. Pretty spectacular in this nice conditions we had with the sun rising, painting this amazing purple and pink tones on the sky.

Besides watching the sunset (at 22.45) we went on a trip to Pyramiden. Since the iceconditions in inner Isfjorden are very good this year, we could go pretty much straight over and into Billefjorden. A normally pretty long trip became quite short and convenient to drive. Pyramiden, an abandonded old russian mining settlement is surrounded by the most beautiful landscape of all the settlements on Svalbard. The town itself is typically russian, with a lot of ugly buildings crazily distributed. But there are new citizens in Pyramiden since a polar bear female and her cub moved in.
For our way back we chose the normal route over the moraine of the highly crevassed Nordenskioldbreen. Quite spectacular glacier, leading up to the famous Lomonosov icecap. On the way through Gipsdalen, my trailer hatch broke off my scooter. Driving scooter during easter was somehow not meant to be...
But in general a great trip.

The curse of Lomonosov

2009-04-08T13:54:00.002+02:00

Newtontoppen

Living on Svalbard, in a periglacial environment with permafrost, surrounded by glaciers means living on the edge. Infrastructure and humans are very vulnerable in such an environment and it takes a lot of effort, knowledge and also some luck to make life worth living here. Nevertheless people leave the safe place in Longyearbyen to go out in the wild to explore the beautiful landscape, knowing of course, that everything is working very much on the edge and a lot of bad things can happen. Most of the time all is well, but sometimes, some higher forces come into play, making things quite hard. The curse of Lomonosov hit us on our trip and it hit us hard.

The plan was to drive to Atomfjella, a very alpine mountain range, consisting mainly of granite, 250 km north of Longyearbyen. There, we wanted to set up our basecamp and ski the mountains. We heard about crazy and steep colouirs, just waiting to get skied and named after our moms later on. But, we did not even reach Atomfjella.
The German scooter club + Matt joined us on the trip up to Newtontoppen and the first problem occured already in Helvetiadalen, when the trailer hatch of one scooter broke and Espen had to pull the sledge. Everything went well over the ice in Tempelfjorden and we made our way through Gipsdalen. I abandoned my scooter there and jumped on the backseat of Espens two seat scooter to drive to Atomfjella. His rear suspension was already a little bit fucked which made the trip over Lomonosov fonna one hell of a ride. Lomonosov fonna is a big icecap, over 1000 m high, measuring about 60 x 40 km. Quite impressive to drive over this huge icecap, knowing that bad weather, cold temperatures and wind could turn the beautiful landscape into a deadly trap. But we made our way over the icecap as suddenly Matt crashed into Espens scooter, while he was turning around, checking for the scooters behind him. The damage was just a cosmetic one, but still something to worry. 500 m further, with a big bang, the rear suspensions of Espens scooter said goodbye and he suddenly had a nice Lowrider. But of course undriveable for two persons and a sledge which meant that the trip was over before it even really began. And we needed the Germans to help us drive back to Longyearbyen, so their trip was also over.
But as we were already quite far, we stupidly decided to check out Newtontoppen, the highest peak on Svalbard with 1717 m. It was just around the corner, so we left Espens scooters, jumped on other backseats and drove up the Nunatak. Not the way to do that normally, but whatever. On top of Svalbard, a breathtaking view in every direction was at least a little reward. This was one of the nicest views I ever enjoyed but it also made me realize in which landscape I am actually living. Its different rocks and ice and it looks quite peaceful and harmless in nice conditions but it is not. Due to no wind and the sun, we did not feel that the temperature was far beyond -30 degrees on Newtontoppen. As we wanted to leave the top to drive back to Espens scooter, two scooters did not start anymore and we could not get them started at all. Suddenly this trip became quite serious. 7 people standing on the most remote spot on Svalbard with just 3 working scooters, two of them one seat scooters. So we decided to pull the broken ones down the mountain and abandoned them on the foot of Newtontoppen. Than we started our rescue mission by sitting people on the sledges, driving one on one up steep slopes, going down again and driving the sledges up and so on. It took quite a while and a lot of sweat and effort to get everyone and all the equipment over the icecap back down on the solid ground of Gipsdalen. From there, my scooter was also available again and we progressed very slowly back home. Matt was sitting all the way home (150 km) on the sledge!
At 3 in the morning the trip was over, but everyone was in healty conditions and that is the most important thing. Still, two scooters are standing on the glacier next to Newtontoppen. Wheter we get them somehow down, or the glacier will do it for us. But this will take a couple of thousand years, or maybe the glacier starts to surge.

What's left is to think about what went wrong on this trip. We definitely should have turned around when Espens scooter broke down. Also, the scooters and sledges are pretty much on the edge in this cold conditions and students normally do not have the newest and best stuff, so for really long trips this can be a problem. But otherwise we were on the safe side, had enough spare seats in the beginning and no matter what, we could have survived easily a week, because we had enough food, stoves, tents and sleeping bags and even mobile coverage on Newtontoppen. So even though it was scary some times, it was never life threatening.

In the end, we were on top of Svalbard. Newtontoppen, checked!

BTS Measurements in Nornes

2009-04-05T20:00:00.003+02:00

BTS Measurements in Nornes

Thanks to our boss Hanne, we had a pleasant vacation in north Norway! Hanne asked me and Ulli to work at a mountain slope, where parts of the slope are sliding down and endanger a road and houses underneath. Therefore scientists from NGU put a lot of money, effort and knowledge into this fjellskred site to monitor every movement the slope is making, even if it is just a few centimeters.
An important factor is the permafrost, which keeps the mountain together. So it is essential to know, where the permafrost is, or how far it reaches down. It is clear, that permafrost can be found in the uppermost parts of the mountain.
And this is where Ulli and me came into play. We were allowed to go to Mandalen to carry out BTS measurements on the mountain. The idea is to measure the ground surface temperature under at least 80 cm of snow, and certain temperatures indicate permafrost or no permafrost. With a lot of measurements in the area, the distribution of permafrost can be interpolated.

So much to the theory, in praxis, it was the same. We went up with scooters to a little cabin, unpacked our stuff and made about 130 BTS measurements in two days. Also, we started Ullis little planes and took several aerial images from the area to get an idea about the snow distribution. Finally, we went to another site near the finnish border to check an automatic camera.
Overal, a nice working week in a fascinating landscape full of fjords, wild mountains and of course obviously trees...

Svalbard in a pocket

2009-03-22T22:31:00.002+01:00

Tempelfjorden

If you want it all, or let's say almost all Svalbard has to offer in winter, Tempelfjorden is the place to be. Obviously snow covered mountains, birds, seals, polar bears, sea ice, calving glaciers...
And the best thing about Tempelfjorden is definitely that it is quite close to Longyearbyen. The whole trip is about 140 km. This is why of course also a lot of guided tourist groups show up at Tempelfjorden and turn it into a pretty busy place. Also because Noorderlicht, the ship which they let freeze into the sea ice is in the middle of the fjord, serving as restaurant for the tourists.

Therefore it was even more surprising that we could watch a polar bear for a long time in the middle of the fjord, between the ship and the glacier front, the area with the most traffic and people walking around. We were sitting on our scooters, maybe 150 m from the bear and watched his lazy ass lying around in the sun. He did not seem to bother or care at all, he was just chilling and probably enjoying himself. Great animals those polar bears, but very vulnerable and a good indicator for changing climatic conditions in the Arctic.

Style police

2009-03-22T17:09:00.007+01:00

Style competition between Juni and me on telemark skis and snow scooter. Who do you think did a greater job...

Death hoar

2009-03-16T22:53:00.003+01:00

Two huge slabs got triggered by highlinging snow mobiles on Sunday. Unfortunately, one guy that triggered the slab on Hiorthfjellet could not escape and got buried under 4 m of snow. It took us 45 min to get him out, but too late.
The snow mobile driver on the second slab, sooner that day, on Nordenskioldtoppen could drive out of the avalanche and survived. But when Ulli and me saw the avalanche by incident, we started searching, together with Espen, Pal and Jonathan for buried victims. But we could not find anyone.
On both slabs, a similar layering could be observed. Loose powder snow on top of a quite dense layer of rounds, sitting on a distinctive layer of depth hoar. At the Hiorthfjellet slab, this depth hoar was the killer. The scooter with his weigth and high speed and therefore creating a shock wave in front of him, penetrating all the way through the thin snow pack was too much for it, the depth hoar collapsed and a fracture occured. Very sad of course.

Velkomen tilbake sol!

2009-03-16T22:39:00.003+01:00

Hiorthfjellet & Ta jansen

Last Saturday was the first day of spring! -20 degrees cold, no wind, perfect sunshine, what a spectacle. We took the opportunity to ski Hiorthfjellet as I was quite sure from snow pack investigations during the week, that the conditions are good. So we made our way up the ridge to the top of Hiorthfjellet. I was very confident that, same as last year, I will be the first in the season, skiing the big and steep bowl. Just as we made a little break in the middle, two skiers dropped into the bowl. What a disaster! And of course I also knew who it was, Eli Anne and Tine. They tried since 3 years to be the first on Hiorthfjellet and this year they succeded. By and hour I would say and they cheated since they went up to the radiostation with the scooter. Shame on them..

Anyway, to our surprise, we found powder on the summit, which is very unusual for a peak on Svalbard and of course powder in the bowl. Endless powder and endless pleasure to ski. And the Gotamas are one hell of a pair of skis. First I just made small turns as always, but the skis want to run fast and make big and wide turns. And since they are so big, they run supersmooth and stable. I have never been able to make such turns, it is just pure pleasure..

Before we actually started our skitrip, we visited Ta jansen, the big sledge event to welcome back the sun again. People building their own sledges and slide down with them. Fastest and most creative wins...

Unwanted public interest

2009-03-09T12:40:00.004+01:00

Sometimes public interest is not what you want even if it is nice to see you face in the newspaper. Unfortunately this happened last week in Svalbardposten, the only newspaper we have on Svalbard, which is sent to more people outside Svalbard.

Now what is the story all about and what is the background? We applied for setting up to radar systems in the rivervalleys of Fardalen and Todalen to count the scooter traffic. We simply want to know, how many scooters travel during the high season in our field area and are thus exposed to avalanches. We just want to have numbers which will help us to argue better, cause if no one would travel in our field area, no one could get caught by an avalanche and therefore my aim to contribute to the safety around Longyearbyen would be just perls for the pigs.
Unfortunately you have to ask Sysselmannen for permission first and everyone can read those applications. So did Svalbardposten and asked us about our little project. And as we wanted to keep this rather our secret and don't make a big deal out of it, the last thing we wanted is public interest and discussion. But too late now anyway. Tomorrow we put the radars out in the river valleys and than we will see what happens. It should not be possible to drive around the radars, but you never know...

The good thing about the article is, that I could introduce myself to the public and Longyearbyen knows now what I am doing. That is good and could help me, hopefully!

A shitty translation, but you get the idea of what the article is all about:
English translation Svalbardposten

Praise the Buddha

2009-03-05T00:10:00.005+01:00

Sorry Juni, since today I have a new girlfriend. In fact, they are two and twins, a dream come true I would say. Ok, they are quite fat, 133-104-124, but that's ok, it is all about the inner values.

And they are great: Multi layered wood core, tough box, armed edges and a always smiling buddha on the outside. Also outside, the furious, hard, uncompromissed and stylish (trying to use freeride slang already) Rotefella NTN telemark binding. In combination with the Crispi EVO, a beast on its own, this binding skis the skier and not the other way around. And that is so far my problem. I am a newbie in the telemark business, which means I have to learn and learn and learn, go skiing as often as possible and spend as much time as possible on the Gotamas. Oh what a pitty! And anyway always remember: If it was easy, it would be called snowboarding.

Scooter madness

2009-03-02T13:19:00.007+01:00

Imagine you are on a nice glacier, somewhere in Svalbard. You are enjoying the beautiful, quiet and peaceful landscape. Suddenly, a bunch of mad middle Europeans fire their two strokes up the glacier, leaving a track and this nice smell of burnied fuel. Isn't that what you always wished for?
Maybe not, but sometimes it is quite nice. We used the last day possible to drive in the scooter free area, east of Longyearbyen between Adventdalen and Reindalen and found some really nice places, great glaciers and even greater mountain peaks. Definitely something to ski!

Icebreaker 09 - the ages

2009-02-25T15:04:00.009+01:00

The facts are already well known. Every semester, the new students organize the Icebreakerparty for the rest of UNIS. This spring, the topic was the ages, from dinosaur to aliens. As you can see on the pictures, I had to dress up as a viking. Again I could wear a skirt, that was nice and Nial was jealous. Me and Alex decided to build a viking ship, which we did not put down the hole evening of course. Made it easier to escape after we raided one of the other groups. And we won the prize for the best costume!
So it was a pretty nice party, with good music, good food and a lot of good people. Oh yeah, 7 more to come...

Long time no see

2009-02-25T14:38:00.006+01:00

Oh yesss, here she is again. Strong, nice, round and yellow as ever, truly missed and highly expected. Last time I saw the sun on Svalbard was in mid October, the time when everything with my job was still unsure.
This morning, I could sit back relaxed on my snow scooter and enjoy the sun for a few minutes. And as I pointed out already last year. It is an amazing feeling to see her again, even though you've seen her rise up the horizon a couple of times before. And even though she stays for quite a long time up here.
While sitting still, listening to the wind and looking at the sun, I think about the new season her on Svalbard. Intensive field work starts right now with some pretty busy weeks until beginning of July. In March, Ulli and me go Kapp Linne for some field work. I extended my area of interest to this more maritime spot on the west coast. We are also busy giving lectures on snow and avalanches for the undergraduate courses and we are starting to try our new idea out to establish some kind of scientific based tourism. Also, we are helping our master student Mathilda with her field work and last but not least, Hanne asked as to fly to Norway mainland, to Troms, to do some BTS measurments in her field work area there. Which means for us, skiing and snow scooter driving in a very beautiful landscape. Than in April starts my course on Permafrost and Periglacial Slope Processes, which will keep me superbusy, because I have to make a B in the end to pass the course. May will be field work and skiing, June, same same.

But in fact, it sounds like work, and it is sometimes hard in harsh conditions, but it is exactly what I love and enjoy to do. It's going to be great!

Phaser II on sea ice

2009-02-10T10:29:00.004+01:00

Agardhbukta

It is still dark season in Svalbard. Only 3 hours a day, the sun - still hiding behind the mountains - lightens up the snowy landscape, setting the horizon on fire. Out of this horizon, a black snow scooter appears with fast speed towards the fiske and jakt cabin in Agardhbukta. The Yamaha Phaser II made it to the east coast!

Doesn't sound too surprising, but knowing that the Phaser II is over 20 years old and 500 Nok worth, it is actually quite a miracle. He managed all the 260 km of our east coast trip without any problems, or maybe some. The moraine up from Elfenbeinbreen got him a little bit into trouble, but some might say, he was just too lazy to go up the steep flank. It is way cooler to let the people push instead of using to much power. So it is obvious that this black beauty has its own mind and is a natural poser. Whenever the possibility is given, he puts himself immediatly into spotlight. But also his owner is quite aware of the Phasers fame and therefore treats it like his girlfriend. What a couple!

The whole trip was pretty nice and everything went quite smooth. Driving to the east cost via Reindalen, Satebreen and Sveibreen was unbelievable beautiful, took about 4 hours and was more or less a walk in the park. Just the wind ripples and zastrugis made it quite hard to drive in Reindalen, where you could go 150 km/h on a smooth surface. The fiske and jakt cabin at Agardbhukta turned out very cosy, because it was simply very small and two of us five (four crazy germans) had to sleep on the floor. The problem with this small cabins is always, that they get way too warm after a while and we ended up heating the whole bukta. But we tested the sea ice next morning in front of the cabin, still ok, with some nice polar bear tracks. We haven't seen any bears, luckily not next to the cabin. A big one could easily just walk through the thin walls.

On Sunday we made a little trip to Dunabukta. A nice small bukta with a calving glacier front. Pretty impressive to stand in front of the glacier, even more impressive and with a high coolness factor, to have lunch on an iceberg in the middle of Dunabukta. Always included of course, the red horizon in the south. Crazy Svalbard landscape.

Back to Longyearbyen, we chose another route through Fulmerdalen and Sassendalen. This is the normal route, because the other route will be closed very soon. It is leading through protected areas. This way turned out to be a little tricky because on the one hand, the landscape looks completely different to what you can see on the map. NPI should consider taking some new aerial pics and update their maps. The moraine of Elfenbeinbreen is not there any more, or on another place and a big, deep channel starts in the middle of the glacier, going down to Agardhbukta. Some time ago, the glacier must have releaced a lot of slush, water and ice in the bay. Also, the moraine up to Fulmerdalen was very tricky to drive, some steep passages demanded everything from our heavy loaded scooters and sledges. Because the small student equipment sledge broke down, so we had to devide the stuff onto the other sledges and put the broken sledge on top. But we managed and came home safe, cold and happy, right in time for Kajakpolo.

The map of central Svalbard shows the routes we chose. Red the route to Agardhbukta, green our daytrip to Dunabukta and yellow our way back. 260 km in total.

Austrian food-house warming-new job-one year Svalbard-party

2009-02-03T18:29:00.005+01:00

Saturday night burnt the whole appartment down! At least I was hoping so because only when everything is destroyed, the neighbours are complaining and the police was here, the party can be considered good.
Nothing of it happened, except all the beer was gone after the party. That's also a good sign. Or maybe someone stole some cans?
Chronologically, the party started off with a small and cosy dinner. Just the amount of people was small, the food was rather big. A lot of different austrian sausages, kaesespaetzle, fries, salad, vegetables, kartoffelsalat and sauerkraut made us fight with the food but we managed to eat it all!
After the dinner, the rest of the party crowd appeared and made it a nice evening. Next party in my flat is when I am moving out in February 10. Looking forward...

Correction

2009-01-30T09:47:00.002+01:00

Mr. Willi Eckerstorfer (aka dad) demands the following correction from me: He is not cheating and did not cheat in UNO!
Moreover he is cheating in every other game, but never in UNO. No, of course not right, but I wonder how it is called when you read the manual and burn it later and then explain the rules and change it from game to game? ;-)

Blue phase over Longyearbyen

2009-01-26T15:16:00.006+01:00

The light is slowly coming back to Longyearbyen, creating this unbelievable blue at noon. People called it the blue phase. Anyway, light is the determining factor in Svalbard. Wheter it is dark or light all time or blue, violet and pink inbetween.

Kapp Laila

2009-01-26T14:28:00.002+01:00

Kapp Laila Welfare Cabin

As staff it is possible to rent several cabins for a trip. So I got the cabin in Kapp Laila, on the farside of Colesbukta. We did not take the direct way which takes only 30 min, instead we drove over Gangdalen, Reindalen and Skiferdalen to the cabin. Nice trip, no see. Unfortunately the cloud cover blocked all the light and we pretty much drove in the darkness. But was nice anyway and for the scooter newbies a got practice, as the conditions changed from valley to valley.
The cabin itself was great. Very clean, kjemper koselig, small but nice. And unless Bjoerndalen, we managed to get the cabin super warm, so everyone was sweating and happy! Also, because Nial pimped us with some great chilli. The rest of the evening was spent playing UNO. I look back on more than 15 years of UNO experience and also cheating experience, because my dad always cheated and I learned from him. Unfortunately the caught me, sorry Paps, next time I take care better. Nevertheless, a great victory was mine. Juni lost completely with 3 times more points then me. Afterwards she also lost all her food too, something was wrong with her stomach. But the next day she was fine again.
All in all a perfect trip, because nothing happened, everything went smooth and I won at UNO.

Scott Turnerbreen bobsled run

2009-01-26T14:19:00.002+01:00

Scott Turnerbreen Ice cave

One very close ice cave I missed out yet was the Scott Turnerbreen ice cave in Bolterdalen. Last week, Nial, Johan and me went with the scooters to the cave. Lucky enough we did not have to dig the entrance out because the guiding companies already did a great job and made a nice iglo over the entrance.
The cave itself is cool, looks like a bobsled run and I recon you could also iceskate. It is not as narrow as the one on Longyearbreen but has some nice vertical drops. Most of them are between one and two meters, easy to climb, but one was 4 m and the last one over 6 m, probably a little bit higher. We brought all our climbing gear but did not use the rope in the end, just climbed the drops solo. Up no problem, climbing down was a little bit stupid, but everything went quite well. Great trip.

Vei 232-20A-12

2009-01-22T13:42:00.002+01:00

Vei 232-20A-12

These are the first pictures from my new, or better first flat. It is small (35 sqm), new, very cosy and is situated 5 min away from the town centre and UNIS, on the north facing slope of Sugartoppen. I feel very comfortable in my new flat!

Besides, these pictures were taken with my new camera. As I sold my Nikon D40 to Julia for a brother-sister-prize, I had to buy myself a new one. And I am rising up towards higher class SLRs because I bought the Canon 450D. Nice camera, still small, but more megapixel and features. We'll see if it makes me make better pictures, or so.

Safety course 2009

2009-01-14T17:09:00.004+01:00

It's a wrap! What an exhausting week. I was sick when I arrived last monday in Longyearbyen. After a 22 hours travel and the most expensive night in a hotel ever, the safety course started and kept us busy for the whole week. All new students and new stuff had to participate and got theoretical as well as practical lectures on safety issues.
Ulli and me prepared lessons about avalanches safety. Each day, from Tuesday to Friday, we spent 6 hours giving lectures and 2 hours practice outside. This experience was a lot of fun and the presentation seems more like a poem after the 3rd or 4th time. It is more or less always the same stuff you are talking with a few exeptances. The time we had to spend outside with the students were a little bit harder, due to the very cold weather. We faced constant -30 degrees during this week. Everyone was always happy to practice digging. This is rather rare I would say.
On Saturday, the safety course ended with a big outdoor exercise at the moraine of Longyearbreen. Besides first aid and camp building as well as glacier rescure, avalanche safety was a big issue. Ulli and I set up to rescue scenarios, the groups had to solve in a certain amount of time. All teams did a got job and found the buried victims. But as I presented how to prevent and avalanche accident, nobody will ever use the rescue techniques again. Bullshit of course, but at least I hope that nothing happens to students this spring! We'll see!

And Gunnar already told us, that we got a very good evaluation from the students, so I guess we did a good job! That's always nice to hear and a got motivation for my further teaching.

Scientific family

2009-01-13T13:39:00.002+01:00

Finally I spread the news for those who don't know it by now. It took a while but since 1st January 09 I am part of the scientific family. This is the date I started on my 4 years PhD-project in physical geography about periglacial slope processes and I am very proud of it.

The slope processes I am obviously going to deal with are of course snow avalanches and this means for me a dream come true. Since the last couple of years I tried to get a job where I can be outside, dig in the snow and work with snow avalanches. After one year working for the Cryoslope project, my patience and hard work paid off and I got this PhD-position. I am super happy with it. It offers me the chance to work in my field of choice and a good education on snow science, physical geography and cartography. What more can I ask for....

Visitors for example! As I am on Svalbard for the next 4 years, more or less all the time, everyone keen to take the once in a lifetime chance to come to Svalbard is of course welcome! I have a nice appartment where I have enough space for visitors. So people at home, this is an invitation for a cheap trip to Svalbard. Of course the flight is rather expensive, but I can offer you a cheap and comfortable stay in my place once you made it up. Best time to visit Svalbard ist from April to August, depending of what you want. Snow season with dog sledding and scooter driving ends normally end of May, but summer in the high arctic is also nice and offers other possibilities like hiking, kajaking, boot trips,...

Shortly to the picture on top. The tower is Ulli, you might know him by now, the woman sitting next to me is my boss and supervisor Hanne.

Home sweet home

2009-01-02T15:04:00.004+01:00

The program for my holidays at home was pretty simple: Being with my family, meeting my friends, eating Austrian food. Everything as much as possible. And I guess I was quite successful! Highlights are hard to pick, but my welcomeparty on Friday in Vienna was unbelievable. All my friends were suprisingly in Vienna at Ronny's place, we ate sausages, drank Jaegermeister and the rest I can't remember.
And although I thought that I had enough of sports, I couldn't resist. So I went skiing with my dad, climbing and bouldering with Dominic and at least one skitrip with Dominic in the famous Gesaeuse mountains. The great Lugauer challenged us hard...
Besides all the nice program I also had to pack my stuff for Svalbard and do some organisatory work. But now, everything is ready for another 4 years on the fridge.