Pyramiden

This week the Arctic Technology course completed a field trip in Pyramiden, (pictured above) an abandoned Russian mining town.
 

To the left of this photo is the mountain from which this city gains it’s name photographed below;

The main aims of this trip was to collect water samples for analysis, measuring river discharge for the surrounding glaciers as well as contributing to a Czechoslovakian research projected monitoring the movement of Bertilbreen (the local glacier).

a house made out of old bottles out of town on the way to the glacier made by the permanent residence re-cycling all their bottles

All current residents live in the Tulip hotel, which serves VERY typical Russian food. This was our accommodation for the week, shared with other tourists and the 4 permanent residents. As we arrived on the Monday we had to quickly disembark in order for the boat to travel directly across the fjord to rescue another camp whose whole food supply for the coming week had been eaten by a polar bear! The bear was still happily amusing himself in their camp, even after over 30 signal flares had been fired at him. We never encountered the polar bear but on an almost a daily basis we encountered the Arctic Fox and many Ptarmigan.

There is so much to tell you but as the saying goes a picture says a thousand words so here are a few:

All of the Arctic technology team, after walking up the glacier taking measurements at each marked station.

Measuring river velocity.

 Our own Hydrometric station

Transporting our equipment every where

Measuring conductivity

View from one of our work stations