Submitted Friday, August 24: Okay so lets see. Last blog update was ... Sunday. Sunday? Sunday was brilliant! Monday. what happened on Monday? Ah yes, it rained. And rained. And was foggy and windy. So we sat in the hotel and watched the rain. Tuesday was like Monday, only more so. Here's a consolation picture of a couple of sled dog puppies. Wednesday. Hmm Wednesday. That was... hmm two days ago! Feels like it was a long time ago. It rained and had low clouds and fog. But only for half the day. The rest o...

(Written on Sunday, submitted on Monday) Yesterday, which was Saturday, and today have been no fly days. Not due to the weather mind you, just the helicopter has been busy doing other things. Yesterday it had to take a party of New Zealand school girls up to Helheim Glacier, the weather wasn’t great so they didn’t go. Today it was a day off for everyone all round – no planned flights. So a couple of non weather-caused day offs. What to do, what to do, what to do? Hmm dissertation? Lets see, I could sit here at the hotel and stare out at the bay and the mountains and the icebergs while trying to finish another chapter… or Thomas could knock on my door and say “lets go for a hike up the flower valley walk." Oooh tough decisions. Oh listen, Thomas just knocked on my ...

Yesterday started out in the murk. Grey, with a visibility of about the end of your arm. Not much use getting out of bed I thought, thoroughly depressed. But as the minutes passed there were patches of blue that started to appear and by 10am the weather was worthy of a flight. We hustled down to the small heliport and met with Per who was pleased that we had shifted the coordinates a bit farther south and to a lower elevation. "Much more manageable” was his comment. We did a quick, relatively empty flight up to Tugtillip where we had stashed all the gear. On the way we passed the Bluie One East Airstrip that the US installed in WWII. It still looks very useable. Once at Tugtillip we again left Abbas to fend for himself for an hour as we headed inland. He told me later th...

Today we lost. And it started so well. Up at 7am, misty as anything. No view, no mountain, couldn't even see the airport. Another day of waiting for the weather to cooperate in Kulusuk. After a couple of days, there's not much to do in Kulusuk. But a Welshman and a Scotsman in the dining room of the hotel told us just to wait a bit, that the sun would burn off the mist in only a couple of hours. Before we knew it we started to see small patches of blue sky. Maybe today wasn't going to be a wash-out after all. By 10am the airport was receiving flights from Iceland. The hordes of Chinese tourists were pleased, as were we, as now we had a chance to go and do something! We loaded up the helicopter to head north - the northern sites being our priority just now as the equipment...

Written August 14, 2007. (To see more photos by Mike posted on Google Earth, open this link in Google Earth.) The weather didn't clear up much since last night. The mist rose but then hung around the mountaintops and the wind got up. Windy misty weather, I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but it is weather we see on "the ice" too. We tried to go north in the helicopter and got some of the way towards the fuel cache before turning round. We took 30 minutes to go north towards the fuel cache, but a "slight" tail wind allowed us to cover the same distance back to Kulusuk in 10 minutes. We repacked the helicopter with a different GPS site — it took about 10 minut...

The following was written on August 8: Today was a good day. Thomas and I took off on a DeHavilland Dash 7 at about 10:30 this morning and scored the front seats of the aircraft, right behind the cargo, so we had loads of room. I was surprised about how busy the Kangerlussuaq airport was. We saw several Dash 7s land, they hold about 50 people, and a Boeing of some sort landed too. The Boeing seemed to disgorge people for a good 15 minutes. The plane to Kulusuk took about an hour and a half, and was pretty full. Air Greenland served a complementary meal and several drinks (which is obviously a bad business practice since non of the airlines in the US do that anymore) . The complementary meal was meat and potatoes. Does anyone else spot a pattern here? ...

Written on 13th August 2007: I am writing this on Monday night, with the sun streaming through the fog into my hotel room, and right into my face. There's only one desk to write at so I am wearing my darkest sunglasses. I could close the curtains, but that would spoil the view, which is pure magic. The mountains on the far side of the fjord are higher than the fog, and the icebergs are eerily poking through the murk and everything is changing from minute to minute. Anyway, its Monday, but let's pretend its Saturday. Saturday was a bit special. No, Saturday was a lot special. So cue up some sort of flashback special effect; you can add music, if you like. We were up at around 6:30 am, nowhere near the crack of dawn (which is 4 am and is spect...

Conference Announcement and Call for Papers 2007 Polar Archive Symposium 19-20 November 2007 London, UK Abstract Submission Deadline: Wednesday, 1 August 2007 Publication "Archive" Proposal Deadline: Monday, 10 September 2007 For further information, please go to: http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/about-the-faculty/events.php or contact: Kathryn Yusoff Open University E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it The symposium "POLAR: Fieldwork and Archive Fever" will be held on 19-20 November 200...

Today was another long day. Up at the crack of dawn - we're far enough south here in Kangerlussuaq that it still gets dark at night, and then pretty much busy busy busy until this evening. Eric Kendrick was first to leave on a commercial flight towards the north. He had a mountain of excess baggage that needed to go with him to Upernavik, where he will be installing one of our GPS sites. The folks at Air Greenland had been warned we were coming, but even so it took a moment or two of concerned glances and nervous foot shuffling before forms were produced and signed and Eric could be on his way. An hour or so later Dana and Abel carted off to a military flight towards the south and Narsarssuaq. They will be based from there while installing four more GPS sit...

I'm somewhere over Baffin Bay in a noisy but not very cramped LC-130 of New York Air National Guard (NYANG). Up at 4am this morning, running around as usual in order to stop and wait. and wait and wait. The formalities at the Scotia Airbase were very much more relaxed than those at Christchurch. No Extreme Weather Gear to roast in in the middle of summer and no barked commands like I am used to on the flights to Antarctica. We still got a cramped plane though. Instead of the ever-so-nice C17 Globemasters we take from "Cheech" to the ice, we got onto a ski-equipped Hercules with web seating to fly from Scotia to "Sondie" as the guard call it, or Kanger as pretty much everyone else seems to call it. We were told we were going to stop on the way there, and ...