In mid April the Icebound project is returning to Northwest Spitsbegen for its third field campaign in this area. If we return with as good data as we hope, this might be the last campaign in this tremendous mountain area. So far we have dated around 20 samples, and we are starting to get some ideas of the glacial record. Our samples so far indicate a quite complex history through the late Pleistocene time period. The dates points towards glacial coverage of the highest peaks at least once during the late Pleistocene. More samples have to be taken from key areas and some sites have to be reinvestigated to improve our analysis and interpretation. This year we hope to cover the key areas that we previously have not been able to research. We expect the weeks up in this alpine area to be the highlight of this spring, as it has been the two last years.
The 2009 Icebound field campaign in one of the most alpine areas of Svalbard, - the spectacular Northwest Spitsbergen, became another successful campaign in this National Park. Despite a high amount of mechanical and technical problems this year we managed to bring lots of beautiful rock samples home and we also widened our working area and took samples more evenly distributed than the previous year. Working in this exceptional beautiful mountain area is a great privilege. The stunning combination of steep mountains, fjords, ocean and the large glaciers just has to be experienced. - And the best of it all; - we have the area for ourselves.
After crossing the Lomonosovfonna Ice Field we got a tremendous scenic approach to the Atomfjella Mountains in low sunlight, shortly after the return of the sun. Snow covered alpine peaks painted in red and purple colours as far as the eye could see were smiling to us. These snowy peaks all surrounded by glaciers, remained us on what we were here for; gain our knowledge on whether these mountains were fully or just partly covered by ice during the last ice ages. While driving on the Veteranbreen glacier we were following tracks of a polar bear and a polar fox. On an elevation of about 1000 m a.s.l. this tolled us that the polar bears can climb pretty high. Probably these animals learn the shortcuts over the glacier plateaus from one coast to another when they are pretty young.
The 2008 Icebound field campaign in stunningly beautiful and extreme alpine North-West Spitsbergen became very successful. Back to Ny-Ålesund and Longyearbyen we could bring lots of rock samples that we’re now eager to obtain dates on. By the beginning of 2009 we should have dates on some of these samples. Spectacular, steep, alpine mountains, - fjords and large glaciers as far as the eye can see. -This is the view you wake up to every morning when you're doing fieldwork in Northwest Spitsbergen.
"Austfjorden 2008" was the first field campaign for the Icebound project and Endres’ PhD. Even if several samples were collected and lots of geological and geomorphological sites were visited it was a proof-of concept field work before the more sustained field work in Northwest Spitsbergen this season and the fieldwork in the years to come. We now had a chance to see how well our technical approaches to the sample collection worked and receive first test samples for checking our working hypothesis.
