At about midnight on the turn from Friday pm to Saturday am we arrived in Longyearbyen and were hopeful that our bags did too. Luckily, everything made it with the downside that my hot sauce and tooth paste decided they didn't like the inside of their respective containers and exploded in my bag…small potatoes. Sara from UNIS (the University Centre in Svalbard) picked us and our gear up and we made our way, exhausted, up to the housing for the REU students. From there, we beat feet back to the guesthouse near UNIS and Mike, Steve, and I got our keys and then some shut-eye.
Helena giving two thumbs up to be out of the plane. John and Mel agree...
Fast forward 8-10 hours: At 11 the next morning we met again with Sara to go over logistics for the coming days and by 12 everyone had congregated in the main lobby at UNIS. At this point we were 14 strong with the addition of our friends taking the field course AG-212 through UNIS. The day's plan was then laid out that we'd go over introductions, an overview of the REU program from Mike, a glacial history of Svalbard lecture by Steve, and then dinner for all up at the student housing about a 25 minute walk to the edge of the settlement. You'll find the glacial history talk in .pdf format here soon and I do encourage you to check it out. Essentially, we are going to be working solely with Holocene age sediments (the epoch lasting 10k years to present) but there are a plethora of other formations spanning geologic time around the area. We specifically spent a lot of time learning about the large scale glaciation that overtook the Svalbard during the Weichselian glacial period, which spanned roughly 100k years ago to the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) roughly 20k years bp. Prior to 15k years ago a large glacier covered much of the Barents Sea, advanced numerous times out to the continental shelf, terminating with Svalbard just at its northwest corner.
The front of UNIS, the University Centre in Svalbard.
To start introductions we all wrote our names and where we hailed from. Now it is official: we're an expedition team and all in it together.
Dinner was prepared solely by the students and it was an amazing spread. Burritos for all (I had two) and even guacamole! The conversations lasted long after dinner and the energy in the room was amazing. When you put 14 people in the same room that have a passion for the outdoors, geology, and are soon going to be in the field together they somehow find things to talk about : ).
A plan was made for Mike, Steve, and Sara to go through the field gear the next morning and myself and the group to meet up at UNIS for a hike before afternoon lectures. The days are just packed…
Svalbard Note of the Day: The air up here is incredible and like nothing I've personally breathed before. At the risk of sounding corny (something I've never shied away from), it has a earthy but extremely clean smell and feel to it like you're breathing in the glaciers, ocean, and landscape around you. This place is unreal...