The team (minus Principal Investigator Dr. Mike Retelle) was assembled by Wednesday evening to spend some time getting to know each other at a barbeque. Here we met a couple prominent paleoclimatologists (Dr. Ray Bradley and Dr. Julie Brigham-Grette) and listened intently as they told stories about their experiences in the Arctic. You could see the smiles of anticipation surface on everyone's face as we thought about our upcoming expedition.Referring back to the previous journal entry, preparing for a trip such as this is a challenge. Thursday was spent at Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley MA gathering equipment. Keep in mind that the 7 students on this trip (more on them later!) are working on different Arctic field projects and the PI's have ongoing projects. This was the last time to think about project methods to make sure everything goes to Svalbard because we won't find a science supply house, Home Depot, or Walmart when we get to our field station in Svalbard! Amazing that we managed to get it all into 7 trunks or duffels, and to our surprise when we got to the airport we stayed within our baggage number and weight limit!
The team is all together for the start of the expedition.
We hauled 19 pieces of luggage which included field supplies and personal supplies.
At 4PM we loaded up the bus for Logan Airport and by 7PM we met up with Mike Retelle and were already through the security gates. Next thing we knew we were off to Iceland and our trip has begun. We were in Iceland by 6:30AM (GMT) only to head off to Oslo by 7:30AM. We easily made our connection to Oslo and arrived there by 12:30PM (CEST). With a bit of time on our hands before embarking to Svalbard, the team went on an excursion to downtown Oslo to visit the Vigeland Sculpture Park to admire the 212 amazing granite and bronze sculptures that Gustav Vigeland created between 1906 and 1947.
A spatial view of the beautiful park
Emily tries her hand at modeling one of the many poses of the sculptures.
Our first team photo
We made it back to the airport to catch our 8:40PM plane to Longyearbyen, Svalbard only to be slightly delayed. At this point we knew it was only a matter of a couple of hours before getting to our final destination, the High Arctic. Even though we had very little sleep over the past 24 hours, the team was pumped up by the sunlight peeking through the plan windows on the plane. Wow it was midnight and the sun was still high in the sky! The reality of the Arctic has set in, we were almost there. Getting off the plane was like a breath of fresh of air and freezing rain never felt so good!
Dave and Kristen are all smiles even though they were standing in freezing rain!
You will be given challenges and questions on occasion - dig in - give them a try!
Today's question of the day: If we left Logan Airport in Massachusetts at 9:30 PM EST and landed in Longyearbyen at 12:30 AM CEST, how many hours did our journey north take?