Orca pod welcoming committee in the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland.
Entrance to sub-glacial ice tunnel on Langjokull glacier, Iceland.
Exploring the excavated ice tunnel within Langjokull glacier.
Hraunfossar waterfall, with groundwater emerging from a lava flow into a glacial meltwater stream.
is an interesting and uncommon layered ultra-mafic intrusion in Kangerlussuaq Fjord in southeastern Greenland.
Igneous rocks displaying sedimentary bedding!
Close up of “sedimentary” beds of mafic crystals that settled from suspension in a cooling magma chamber, 55 Ma.
where more than 200 humpback whales were traveling the ice edge in an endless display of blows.
the last two-and-a-half months at sea.
M/V Sea Spirit
M/V Le Boreal
for four days, the northernmost town on Earth.
Searching the glacial moraine with Ida and Ryan for Paleocene plant fossils.
Me at the headworks to coal mine 2B above town.
Inside the headworks at mine 2B.
Exploring the coal mining headworks with Cobus and Blackjack.
Svalbard poppy enjoying the short summer bloom.
Lilliehöökbreen glacier complex
Calving front of Lilliehöökbreen glacier
Bearded seal on ice.
Atlantic puffin waving hello.
Barnacle geese with a chick (in nest, far right).
Exploring the edge of sea ice, approximately 81 degrees north latitude.
Landing at Hamburgbukta, northeast coast of Svalbard.
occur everywhere in Svalbard.
Walking down a medial moraine in Kongsfjord.
never disappoints the guests and expedition staff!
Walrus are, without a doubt, my favorite marine mammal.
at the shooting range in Longyearbyen.
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 1926.
Geological buffet of various rock on a recessional moraine.
Sun flare in Isfjorden.
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.”
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.
greeting each other at their burrow on Fair Isle in the North Sea.
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.
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!
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.
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