Lots going on here! We had our final field days in Kobbefjord this week — one on Tuesday and one on Friday. That kept us more than busy, trying to turn around our experiments in time for the next samples to roll in. Lorrie, Heidi, and I also sampled some snow near Stør Malene.

1) The upside of working through the night — you get to see the sun rise!

2) Snow sampling panorama

3) Sampling air and snow at sunset

4) Overlooking Nuuk from the base of Stør Malene

5) Looks like a good place to get some snow.

6) On Saturday I spent some time walking around Nuuk, looking for Coleman fuel/white gas to test my melting technique for the traverse (I haven’t found any, yet). I came across some new construction on my walk.

7) And a playground on a cliff over the Nuuk harbor.

8) And found this nice graveyard in downtown Nuuk.

9) I also observed sea ice in the harbor — I’m planning to sample it to culture some oil-degrading sea ice microbes!

10) Sunset from the “Biology Station” — the original research station in Nuuk that grew into GINR.

11) These photos from our 2nd field day in Kobbefjord give some idea of the variety of terrain that is crammed into such a small area. Steep mountains falling from the sky straight into the sea. Macroalgae grow along the shoreline and are exposed at low tide.

12) The large tidal range (8-10 feet) leaves the shoreline littered with ice at low tide.

13) This topographic map shows the steep hillsides around the fjord. Our expert field hands, Peter and Ivali, can beat us back to Nuuk on their snowmachines (we go by fishing boat).

14) An extremely steep hill down to the sea ice — I cannot believe the kind of terrain they take snowmachines on here.

15) A small avalanche triggered by snowmachine while transporting people and equipment back and forth from the drop-off site to the field site.

16) Two animal tracks cross on the snow — their footprints compressed the snow and have caused differential melting in the sunshine.

17) Windswept animals tracks morph into mini-sastrugi.

18) Clearing snow on a beautiful day in Kobbefjord.

19) A patch of ice we cleared for an experiment to investigate the effects of ‘shocking’ the ice microbes with a cold snap, brought upon by the absence of snow insulation.

20) Shelly poses in her survival suit — safe AND stylish!

21) Peter relaxes in the sun, waiting for us scientists to do our thing. He shared some traditional wisdom from his father: “If you can see the top of the mountain — the weather is going to get worse. If the top is cloudy — better weather is coming.” Truer words were never spoken.

22) Lorrie making a snow pit to look at snow stratigraphy, density, and thickness.

23) The bottom of one of our sea ice cores — no strong algal band like we might see in the Alaskan or Canadian Arctic. Why not?