at the shooting range in Longyearbyen.
Training for polar bear encounter...
Scenes from Svalbard...
Landing site at Kapp Lee.
Slumbering walrus.
Landing site at Bolthodden.
Spectacular alpine geology.
Remains of Swedish-Russian “Arc of the Meridian Project” base from 1899.
Tidewater glacier in Bellsund.
Remains of beluga whale hunting camp.
Well maintained Norwegian hunter/trapper cabin at Bamsebu.
The mast at Ny Alesund where Roald Amundsen launched his balloon in 1922.
Geological buffet of various rock on a recessional moraine.
Sun flare in Isfjorden.
Svalbard at last!
Jan Mayen is a remote and rocky outpost...
in the Norwegian Sea, a volcanic hot spot on which the most northern active volcano on Earth is found.
View on approach.
Beerenberg volcano, rising to 2,277 m (7,470 feet) above sea level.
M/V Sea Spirit at anchor.
An extraordinarily happy geologist, five months and nine days into “retirement.”
Farewell to the Faroes...
as we continue to travel north across the Arctic Circle and towards Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago.
The Faroe Islands are a pile of Paleogene-age basalts, deeply cut by magnificent fjords.
Passionate puffin pair...
greeting each other at their burrow on Fair Isle in the North Sea.
Edinburgh, Scotland is a city built of stone...
and home to Sir James Hutton, father of modern geology, who formulated some of the seminal ideas in geology and was a proponent of uniformitarianism in the 18th century.
Exploring the British Isles...
has been wonderful the past two weeks, with two geological highlights shown below.
Columnar jointed basalt at Giant’s Causeway, northern Ireland.
Fingal’s Cave, Island of Staffa.
Charismatic Atlantic Puffins.
Two thousand year old archaeology at St. Kilda.
Gannets galore at Bass Rock in the Firth of Fourth!
Stormy weather over North Park, Colorado...
This lichen-encrusted spheroidally-weathered granite outcrop provided a colorful foreground to the dramatic cloudscape above my camp at 8,300 feet in the Medicine Bow Range.
Green River, Utah Launch Complex...
associated with the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, where they test fired Athena and Pershing missiles during the Cold War.
The well-protected blockhouse structure.
One of three Athena missile launch stands, with the rolling support structure in the rolled-back position.
Learn more about this historic relict: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_River_Launch_Complex
Crystal Geyser on the Green River...
is an unusual and rare CO2-driven cold water geyser that is depositing a colorful mound of travertine. Furthermore, it’s the result of an improperly abandoned oil/gas exploration well immediately south of Green River, Utah, and it periodically erupts on 8 and 22 hour-long cycles that are poorly understood.
An older, innactive but natural travertine and barite mound, originally described by John Wesley Powell on his explorations in 1869: “We stop to examine some interesting rocks, deposited by mineral springs that at one time must have existed here, but which are no longer flowing... “
Mini-rimstone dams on the steeper portions of the travertine mound.
The most active portion of the travertine mound.
Here’s an interesting technical reference about this unusual feature: http://www.llnl.gov/tid/lof/documents/pdf/334382.pdf
Milky Way above Round Mountain...
Experimenting with a light-painted foreground using my Black Diamond Storm headlamp.
Stepping into the scene and pointing a 600 lumen Ledlenser MH-10 headlamp skyward.
Panorama created by stitching together five portrait-oriented shots.
Life time pass to the National Parks...
purchased today at Arches National Park for $80 for becoming a senior citizen. Priceless!
An electrical display above Porcupine Rim...
accompanied a very stormy sunset in Castle Valley this evening, and here’s a frozen image of a peculiar horizontal cloud-to-cloud lightning bolt.
Image captured using Pluto Trigger device on tripod-mounted Canon 5Diii, f/4 at 1/15 sec at ISO 200.
And yet another stunning sunset...
Love is in the air at the heronry this morning...
where I caught their courtship behavior (click any image to enlarge).
Beautiful flight in perfect morning light...
Another lousy sunset in Castle Valley...
Now three in the heronry...
The two in the upper right are definitely a nesting pair based on their behavior. It’s been enjoyable to have this opportunity to watch the gathering of these interesting birds.
The male hopped over to an adjacent nest, picked around a bit, and plucked a selection and returned to the other nest.
The twig is delivered to the nest that the female has clearly preferred. This suggests that the last mating pair to arrive inherits the last ratty nest in the heronry.
Early morning at the heron rookery...
that is technically termed a “heronry.” Early morning is the best time to catch waking activity in the roost, now occupied by two. (Click on any of the smaller images to enlarge.)
