AMASE - Day 10 - Troll Springs

After running one sample in the morning, I totally lucked out and got a change to fill up and empty seat in the helicopter to Troll Springs, AND the helicopter actually left as well! (Previous attempts to go into the field by several other people were either canceled or results in a 3-hour airtour of Svalbard, because it was too foggy to depart or land).

Troll Springs is a thermal spring travertine site on "the other side" of one of the glaciers in our scenic view. The main reason why I am very interested in the site is that Verena (see previous post) is doing her PhD on microbes living there and I really wanted to see what she is working on. 

Besides poking my nose in her microbes I also got a chance to work with the PanCam (panoramic camera) team, making myself quite useful (at least that's what I think) by measuring reference distances from rocks and other geological features to the cameras and holding red-green-blue filters in front of the camera.

We spent about 6 hours at the Springs and even had a 5-minute "uh-oh are we going to be fogged in and staying overnight, or will we get back", but we did get back (somewhat fortunate, but camping out there wouldn't be too bad either).

Below the pictorial impression of this (fill in comparable word other than awesome) day.