Until next time....

Well I'm back in civilization again. I will resume posting here in May, when I return to Summit for another season!

Turnover and Redeployment

 Last aurora sighting of my second polar winter!

One of the new techs took this picture of me releasing my last ozone sonde of the winter.

 I plane came and brought eight people. Six of them will be replacing us in the next phase. They will be on their own for 3 months before the station opens for the summer phase.

 After a week of turning over tasking to the new folks, and five days of bad weather delays another plane came to take my crew back to Iceland.

 This is the edge of the Greenland ice sheet, just before it starts to flow down and in between the coastal mountains.

 We hit the mountains just as the sun was setting, it was magical.

 I think it's safe to imagine that no human has ever set foot on these peaks.

 Open water!

 I spend the night in Akureyri again after a fancy birthday dinner of baked beet, watermelon, goat cheese brie and sprouts, and a delicious molten chocolate cup cake. woke up early the next day to fly to Reykjavik and then continue on to Seattle and San Diego.  It was a very long day of flying.

This is open water in the Canadian Arctic creating clouds. 

Wind and Windows

WE got one last blow before the first plane was due to arrive.

We dug out all the new comers windows and capped them off too. I'm getting better at making snow cave roofs.

End of Winter Harvest

 I planted carrots when I first arrived at Summit. Tomorrow we are expecting a plane for 8 new people, so we harvested the largest carrot as an end of winter treat!

We cut it in little pieces to share it. It was delicious! 

Another Balloon

Balloon in the Moon from Marissa Goerke on Vimeo.

Wind Storms and Snow Caves

 I made a window out of ice (water and large cookie tray). and built it into the snow cave that is serving as the escape route from the science office in the greenhouse. This way the mouth of the cave is not open to the elements and does not fill with snow every few days and still lets light in.

 After the last big storm my window finally got completely covered so I dug it out and built this igloo type shelter for the hole so it would not fill with snow and I'd have to dig it out again.

Here is the inside view. it's about eight feet deep. Took about 4 hours to dig out and build.

And this is what it looks like to launch a balloon in 30 knot wind!

Balloon in 30 knot winds from Marissa Goerke on Vimeo.

Clouds, Food and Snow Fumaroles

Pink clouds!

For safety/ERT meeting on Saturday we talked about dealing with people with altitude sickness. This is a gamaw bag. You can increase the pressure inside the bag and effectively make the person feel like they are at a lower altitude. This is important because we are expecting a plane next week with eight new people on it and if they have issues with the altitude we will have to help them until we can get another plane.

The snow is pretty with the sun on it.

Indian food night!

During high winds, snow will creep under the door and make these fumaroles looking cones that spew more snow.

I can to dig this out of the way before I can open the door to let the balloon out.

Calm before the storm

The sunset was very dramatic today. I was in the middle of making some cheese (paneer for Indian food night) and the sun sun started to look so magical out the window I had to go run to the other building and take my camera outside. I missed the first part, but I did get these two. 

 The forecast is up to 40 knot winds the rest of the week and it is surprisingly clear and calm at the moment, it's a little eerie.  

This was a sunset from a couple days ago, the sun has been gaining about 20 minutes a day now for just about a week. 

More Balloons!

We launched another plastic balloon! Here is the time lapse of the whole affair!
8k Plastic Balloon from Marissa Goerke on Vimeo.

The sun is out so the other tech broke out his picture taking kite again.

The tower is more visable now in the bright daylight. Very sad looking tower.

The drifting has gotten quite bad.

Cleaning towers! For science! That railing is there because that is actually the roof of the Greenhouse.

The bright spot just above the fuel tanks is Venus. The spot to the left of it is Mars. The really bright spot to the left of  that is the moon.

Moon? Balloon? Yes.

It was a very nice night!

The Sun is back!

The sun is back! And it was finally a beautiful day we actually got to see it!

 Along with the sun came a bunch of frost (this is unrelated to the sun completely, I think.)

 The polar bear has put on a nice fluffy winter coat.

It's nice to see things lit up by the sun again, the colors are so pretty!

Food Shopping

 On Sunday, one of the other science techs and I really wanted to make brownies. Unfortunately we were out of bakers chocolate and the freezer trench had blown in. It does this every few days. To get to our food stores we have to shovel about 3 feet of snow the entire width of the door.

 Success! Now to hunt around in the dark for what food items we want...

Woohooo chocolate! 

Clear Day (Finally)

 After weeks and weeks of overcast and wind and storms we finally had another clear calm day!!

This panorama turned out a little wonky but it's the best I could do, my phone doesn't really enjoy doing anything at -70 F.

 I saw the first glimmer of the sun below the horizon after 75 sunless days! It was so bright it hurt to look at. It's still two days until the official day of sunrise. We will get a two day weekend this weekend to celebrate it!

I love the blue of unobstructed polar twilight.

It was a very clear night as well so I finally got to put my camera to good use, it had been collecting dust in the past few stormy weeks.

I wish it could be clear like this every night! 

 It was fantastic out! The little red dot near the horizon, almost in the center is Venus. The bright dot above and to the left is Mars.

Such a cool place to live.