Ice station H (5-6/9) - Helicopter ice station on Monday 6/9





The ice stations were really close to each others, we just left one and the same evening we were supposed to reach our next station. This meant a lot of work for many of us - filtering and measuring water and ice core samples, preparing all the equipments ready for the next station, archive  data from instruments etc. We arrived at Station H on Sunday evening around 5 pm, starting with CTDs and again a helicopter trip for deploying fishing equipments at 8pm. I felt sorry for them - they had to get up early at 3 am in the morning for retrievals of the equipments and now same evening they had to go out for deployment at the next station! As this was not the first station, they were already experienced and effective, and fortunately returned to the ship already around 10pm in the evening. I was also planning to give a dance class together with Frank this evening at 8 pm, but the sudden change in the plans and the earlier arrival at Station H changed the relaxed evening to a stressful one, and lot of us were super busy and I lost my dance partner since he went for the Heli. But in the end, three followers joined the dance class and we went through some follower styling tips with twists and some solo jazz - I am happy the dance class was not cancelled and it gave us all a lot of joy. 

Evening scenery

As CTDs went on the whole night, I finally managed to go early to bed - around 10.30 pm, to make up some of my sleep deficit due to the early 5am balloons - as I had to get up early tomorrow as well. 

Monday morning was cold, windy and foggy as I launched the morning balloon. This time it was not without complications - the wind made the balloon fly horizontally and exploded in my arms! In a small shock, I had to prepare a new sounding and a balloon - the second time I managed to launch it, without the balloon hitting the ship or exploding. Due to the strong winds, the beam net was cancelled and they started to operate CTDs in the morning and the ice work was scheduled for the afternoon. The winds decreased during the day and the 12UTC balloon was more successful. Today was also Salars birthday and thus we got cake for fika, no vegan one though but still cake! 

It was a bit unclear if we were allowed to go on the ice, since there were no accessible lead close to the ship. I went to work on the bridge to be closer to the polar crew and thus getting the updates as soon as possible. In the end, we got offered to go out with the helicopter to a lead, and after some discussion and convincing John to try out the helicopter, we managed to fit in all our gear in the helicopter - so this ice station turned out to a helicopter ice station for us! Yippiii!!! It was a successful station and everything went smoothly - the wind had decreased and it was not that cold anymore. On the picture you can see me and Ted (our pilot) smiling in front of the helicopter, with Oden on the background. The evening ended with CTDs and helicopter retrievals before the begin of the next transit around midnight. 



Ready to land!




Pilot Ted and me happily posing in front of the helicopter

John fishing gases of methane and carbon dioxide between air and water with our gas chamber right at the ice edge.

Happy me getting to fly with the helicopter :) 


From now on, we have only 5 days left for research, which is supposed to include one shorter ice station at the Gakkel ridge (8/9), and the last ice station I on Friday-Saturday (10-11/9), before the begin of the final longer transit back home to Sweden. The last ice station included a lot of excitement - with two wildlife visitors! I will post more tomorrow from our last days of research on Oden during the SAS polar expedition 2021.

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