The Twin Otter makes a 180 degree turn for the final approach to the landing strip when Nicolaj cries out: look, a polar bear with a small cub! A few minutes later – bump, bump – and we are grounded. We are now the northernmost people on earth with solid ground below our feet, more exactly at Kap Morris Jessup on the north coast of Greenland at c. 83.5 degrees north. We means Team 2 in the LongTerm project, consisting of Per Möller and Nicolaj Krog Larsen from Lund university  (specializing in glacial geology), Henriette Linge from Bergen university (a specialist in dating rock surfaces and boulders by means of cosmogenic radionuclides) and Eric Steen Hansen from Copenhagen university, a biologist specializing in lichens. We are here primarily for investigating climatic and environmental change along North Greenland’s coasts over the Holocene (11,500 years back) or as far as the geologic record goes.

Last Wednesday night three o’clock in the morning the message came: “the Twin Otter is on its way”. All stuff was packed in a hurry and the tents were taken down in the bitter cold night (minus 3 degrees, but the sun as usual hanging up there in the blue sky). We were more or less ready when the Twin Otter broke though the low fog lying at the shoreline. At eight o’clock in the morning the new camp was ready in the Sifs/Constable Bugt valley, in beautiful morning sun. We were, however, quite exhausted, and went to bed. Now we have been in this very beautiful valley for five days. Our camp is situated c. 5 km from the coast behind a prominent end moraine ridge, protecting us somewhat from coastal fog and chilly winds. The wildlife is plentiful; it is a sort of “Garden of Eden”. Muskoxen are abundant, from small herds with cows and calfs, to the lonely bull, sometimes being a bit aggressive (but it is usually just a “show-off”). Gees come in flocks of 50 to 100eds. Arctic hares are abundant and totally unafraid of us. Yesterday we had a close encounter with three young snow owls, the first I ever have seen in North Greenland.

 So far the weather has been very stable: mostly sunny and just the occasional clouds. If we go higher up in the terrain it is quite warm (more than 10 degrees) and the chilly wind from the ice in the north does not reach us. Our hikes are usually between 10 and 20 km each day, so we arrive back in camp on tired legs. We have actually even taken a swim in the river at our camp to cool down; that was, however, quite a cold experience!

So, what is the aim for our studies here? We were here also last summer and now we are trying to sort things up that were not exactly as we thought when datings on different sediments were received during the last winter. The scientific problem here is the relation in time and space between a large ice stream along the coast and local valley glaciers flowing from the mountains in the south towards the present coast. The last ice expansion was surprisingly young, so now we must do a revision of last year’s glaciation model; I think we are on the right track already, and we have at least some 5-7 days left here before relocation to a new camp site. 

Climate is important in human-scale and geologic time scales. So is also weather in arctic expedition time scale. This we really learnt during the last week. The weather turned 180 degrees last Monday; from 2-3 degrees chilly winds from the sea ice in the north we suddenly had a very strong, warm wind from the south and temperature peaking at c. 22 degrees in the afternoon for two days! Very nice of course, but the result came two and a half days later. Last Friday we woke up at five o’clock in the morning with water in our tents. Our camp was at the river bank, just 0.5 m above the – what we experienced from last summer – quite stable river and just along the landing strip for the Twin Otter. We could see the river level rising with bare eyes, and quickly relocated the whole camp to the highest possible location, i.e. in the middle of the runway some 70 cm higher. We went to bed again, though monitoring the river level each hour. At two o’clock in the afternoon we realized that we would be flooded in 5 hours. Quick decision; relocate to a much higher gravel bar some 200 m north of the camp! We thus rafted and carried our +1000 kg camp and were ready some hours later, just to see the whole landing strip disappear beneath water at eight o’clock.

Since then the water level has continued to rise and our gravel bar grew smaller and smaller, and became an island yesterday. We then suspected that it could not just be the melting of snow and ice from the föhn wind situation; Nicolaj and Henriette climbed a bit up on the valley side and saw something that we have just been joking about; 25 km to the south our valley is blocked by the Sifs outlet glacier, damming a lake to the south of it at an altitude of 216 m above sea level, whereas the two lakes on our side of the glacier are just at 18 and 14 m, respectively. What if the upper lake broke trough? And that was exactly what they saw this morning; a week ago the glacier was a tight cork against the valley side, but now there was a cascading river between the glacier and the valley side, explaining why our river is just rising and rising. This could of course get very serious for us on our small island in the river if the gap continued widening. So once more, relocation a few hundred meters away on a plateau c. 15 m higher up. Here we should be safe. However, we suspect the landing strip will never be fit for landing when we are due to be picked up at around the 26^th of August! 

The Twin Otter was also supposed to land today with our food rations for the last two weeks as we just have food left for c. five days. As landing was not an option we were instead “food bombed”; food containers were dropped from the slowly approaching Twin Otter, making large splashes in the shallow water along the river (see video-clip), and we had to be quick about it getting the containers in before the stream took them. Most things survived, though there was a nice mixture of mayonnaise and rice between some of the cans. And we never got hold of our wine boxes that were said also to be dropped. A few hours later the Twin Otter returned, scouting for a possible landing strip further up the valley (they can land at very odd places, just flat dry ground without boulders and a length of c. 100 meters). They obviously did so as we later saw a large dust cloud and heard roaring engines (meaning full breaks and short strip) a few kilometres away. So hopefully we can be brought home and do not have to over-winter!  

What a miserable week!  We have only had one possible working day. Since last Tuesday it has been dark clouds, rain and snow, and a wind trying to blow the camp away (see video-clip). The wind died away after lunch yesterday, and there was hope for weather improvement. But during the night the storm hit us again with all its powers, and we have now (when this is written on Sunday night) been fighting the storm for 20 hours, clearing the tents from drifting wet snow and securing tent pins with large boulders as the wind pressure drag them out of the now very wet silty ground. Above all, we must have the quite large kitchen tent secured, and one person is sitting there all the time to give alarm if anything breaks. So, now it is a matter of survival! Team 1 is even worse off, having had 25 m/s wind for seven days now, and about a metre of snow.

Our landing strip is still 2 metres below water, so this will unlikely be useable for the evacuation, originally planned to take place next Monday the 26th. We have located the alternative landing strip that the Twin Otter found on its last visit to be two kilometres away, and marked it up with canvas sacks. The distance is too much for carrying all equipment, so we must bring in one of the terrain vehicles that team 1 has been using for transport. Weather forecasts give us hope for an improvement in a few days, and as everything has developed with winter approaching, we will try to get the Twin Otter up from Iceland as fast as we can and evacuate all teams to Station Nord as fast as weather permits; we would not appreciate to be trapped in another week-long storm!

Someone closed the gate last Monday, and suddenly the wind died. We woke up to the clearest blue sky you can imagine. The snow from the storm had covered the Alpine mountains tops at 1000-1500 m in the south in total white, and further down the slopes there was a fantastic graphic effect between snow and bare rock. Later, when the mist rolled in, gravity seemed to have stopped working, and we could see the peaks floating on top of the mist and reaching for the sky.

So, once again it was working weather and we could complete the planned work, meaning moving round in the terrain (some dig more than others ...). The snow storm had created fantastic snow sculptures in the lee of boulders, and some still blooming arctic poppy showed their yellow cup through the snow in some places - this is due to the fact that the cup acts as a parabola collecting sun light and projecting it back, melting the snow! All animal youngsters seem to gather now as autumn is here; the snow-white arctic hares were seen in large groups of 12-15, both fooling around and eating, and grouse could bee seen in groups of some 20 now quite large chickens and some few adults. During the week we have also had constant visits at the camp by two polar foxes, first fighting over leftovers in our waste pit, and later seen playing, running after each other, lying down on watch, then jumping over each other. 

The pre-scheduled Twin Otter arrived to Station Nord last Thursday afternoon and evacuated team 3, but could not take off for the remaining two teams the day after due to white-out at Nord. Friday night it was time again; the storm hit us with full power, and Saturday morning our kitchen tent finally gave up, after which the wind died. Full of hopes, we were said to be evacuated in the afternoon. We packed all equipment in our heavy boxes, except our personal tents, and started to carry everything down to the original landing strip; the water in the river had sunken dramatically for the last two days and it was dry land again, though a bit soft. That was an exercise of about 18 km in total for each of us! But of course the Twin Otter did not take off for us; instead it headed for Kap Ole Chiewitz and evacuated team 1, after which it was good night for the pilots at 11 o’clock. And  we were stuck there with perfect landing weather the whole night! It was still ok at 9 in the morning today, and the plane set off, but that was all to that. As we were carrying our tents and personal equipment over the mudflat toward the landing strip we heard the plane circulating high above us in the clouds, and then just disappear. The pilots took the decision that it was not possible to land as they saw a snow storm approaching, and right they were. So we just had to put up two tents again on our original camp site here at Constable Bugt, and here we are sitting, the wind roaring and the snow coming parallel along the ground outside. Hopefully we eventually will be picked up, but there are not many hours of weather window permitting the flight operation. So we are now the four absolutely northernmost people on Earth, and feeling somewhat abandoned......

The snow storm had us in its grip the whole night towards Monday morning, but then it died out. Due to the hard winds no snow accumulated on the landing strip. However, our two tents put up as shelters were the perfect snow catchers; a half meter of snow was blown up around them. When I went out first thing in the morning I noticed that we were not alone, we have had visitors! Track from our two friends the polar foxes revealed that they had close watch on us, and even had been at the entrances for a sniff.

Flying conditions were good the whole day, but the two hours in-between satellite telephone contact to Station Nord just told us continuous snowing there, and so it went on for the whole night and the morning of Tuesday. Food was now down to minimum, with just one supper left, and then some bread and soups. The situation was not optimal, to say the least. However, after lunch we saw the blue strip in the north, rapidly expanding southwards; the high pressure prognosticated for yesterday was approaching and after a few hours we had majestic snow-covered mountain tops against a clear blue sky, mirroring themselves in the river; no wind what so ever. It was go-go-go here, and in the late afternoon also at Station Nord – we thought. The Twin Otter arrived at about seven o’clock and after quickly loading it,  we headed south. An approach to Station Nord was made, but now the clouds were down to ground level again and impossible to land! So the plane just did a steep climb and turned north again, heading for Kap Moltke in the inner part of Independence Fjord, some 50 minutes from Station Nord. There we stayed for the night in a hut, so at least we didn’t have to put up tents again. Fine weather on the next morning, and a new try towards Station Nord, and now we barely managed to slip under low clouds and hit the ground at this infamous place when it comes to weather. So, eventually after six days of trying we were “home”. Warm showers, nice warm food and a couple of beers were waiting for us. 

But Station Nord was of course not our final goal; the plans were to continue towards Iceland after a few hours stop. But due to the involuntary overnight stay at Kap Moltke the pilots had run out of flying hours and must have their regulated rest. So the blue skies of the high pressure came and went, and it was snow again over this winter landscape. The planned pre-evacuation had now gone over into expedition overtime, putting a quite high stress on most of the expedition members due to obligations waiting at home – and there was not much to do about it. Snow and low clouds were reported along the whole east coast of Greenland, including the places for mandatory fuelling for the Twin Otter on its way to Iceland. But nice food, showers, and a suddenly upcoming sledge tour made some compensation! On Friday the prognosis for flyable weather was not good; possibly a flight on Monday or Tuesday as a low pressure seemed continuously rotate around us. However, early Saturday morning when I was in the shower it was shouted: take off in one hour! Suddenly it was hectic activities and away we were! After fuelling stops along the east coast of Greenland at Danmarks Havn and Constable Pynt we headed for Iceland. 22 hours after take off from Station Nord we were all in Copenhagen, and the expedition came to an end. All near and dear ones were quite happy to have us safe at home after close to six weeks of absence. 

Our results from this season and those from the previous one in 2006 were summarized during afternoon meetings at Station Nord, and we were all quite content with the total outcome of the expedition. A publication plan, a plan for talks at upcoming scientific meetings, and how we shall inform about our results in a more popular way was agreed upon, though we must await a large number of dating results. A minor part of the latter objective will the publication of these bloggs on my personal home page (Per Möller at http://www.geol.lu.se), with addition of a number of pictures, hopefully ready in a month or so - as you now see is the case! If readers of these bloggs have any questions on our work, please feel free to contact me on e-mail (per.moller@geol.lu.se).