So, we're back in Longyearbyen, and currently doing a little bit of drowning/paddling furiously in data, so it's taking me a little longer than hoped to write blogs. However, there's still some cool photos to share, so I'll do my best! The excitement isn't over people!

Sunday was all about the packing. Packing packing and a little bit more packing. All that science equipment you’ve seen and more has been shipped up here from various homes, the US, Trondheim and Tromsø for the most part and it all has to get back home. Batteries, boxes, computers galore and more boxes of dive equipment than any reasonable person could expect to see in one lifetime. Most of it is coming on the plane with us, something they all seem very cool about, I guess this probably isn’t the weirdest stuff they’ve seen.

So all up, it was mostly about the packing. We did do some student presentations, however those photos are on my phone and technical issues are blocking me from uploading them. So you’ll just have to trust me, they looked a lot like normal presentations. The idea is that we are going to do up a technical report, which outlines everything that we did in our groups and then presents the data and then we’re going to work with different groups to write up a mock scientific paper. That’s the Masters students, the PhD’s have to write up a real scientific paper, the thought of which has caused a few grey hairs to spontaneously appear over the last few days. But it’ll be good for them!

Anyhow, today we took the last photos of the samples the divers have collected on their journeys. Farewell hiding fish and blobby fish and misc creatures. 

And we admired the habitats that we dredged from the deep. This is one of our samples that the divers collected

And this is what it looks like in water. Perfect Ghost Shrimp habitat. Don't ask me for the latin name, latin names and me have a loooonnngg history. But the point is, it looks like a great place to hide and have some hanky panky (it's a technical term) if you're a shrimp. And it is a great place to hide if you're a shrimp. Until some enthusiastic biologists decide to come and have a peek and want to REALLY get to know what you're doing in there. I mean, they REALLY want to know!
So I spent half an hour or so spotting the shrimps then putting them in some alcohol for further analysis. As shrimp deaths go, I have to say it's probably one of the nicer ones..

And this is what happened to the shrimps that were spotted. They're going to be investigated later, once all the wetsuits are dried, the boots are found, the boxes are shipped home etc. 

It was a sad day, our last day as a whole team in Ny Alesund. From here on in we'll be loosing people to their homes, lecturers have to return to their lectures, research assistants have to return to their homes and above all the world must go on. 
However, it must be said that this time has been most certainly a once in a life time adventure. For many of us it's the most exotic thing we've ever done, and a million thanks go out to the whole team that's made it happen!
But, enough of the sop story, more photos to come later, and maybe some more science too, if you're lucky!

Because who doesn’t love alliteration?

Plus it was a beautifully sunny noon today. You could actually look out the window in the mess and see natural light! It’s practically summer! I did rather make the mistake of believing that and went outside with wet hair, trust me.. it’s not really summer out there, it’s a wet hair freezing land. Not to mention that we’ve had a few days of above zero with rain which is just like setting an aussie trap. The road seriously slick, a lot like someone went and laid hundreds of banana peels on a foot path. It’s a land for ice ninjas out there (apparently these Scandinavians are secretly ninja descendants). I’ve decided that walking hip deep in snow is infinitely preferable to banana ice concussion, sure I look slightly like an awkward snow waddling duck, but hey, I’m Australian I have a reputation to keep up!

But enough about the weather. I’ve no doubt that you’re sitting on the edge of your seat, full of hope, anticipation and questions. What’s been happening? What’s the goss? Who’s been doing what and what awesome new things have you found?

Well, for starters, we’ve been busy, and that means I’ve been busy, and work before blog I’m afraid. Since I don’t get paid for this, nor do I get class credit, it sometimes has to take a back seat. Which is a shame, however don’t fret, you’ll be brought up to speed in no time!

We (being group 4, the activities of the other groups are still somewhat mysterious to me) have run a couple of missions with the AUV and with the ROV. We sent the ROV out looking for a lost transponder (one of the gadgets that helps the AUV to know where it is) which went missing a few years ago. However, sadly that didn’t work out. The little ROV we’re using isn’t so fond of the cold, and has a tendency to die mid mission. Though, to be fair, it lasts about 1 hour, I’d last a minute maximum. So I’m not judging!

For the most part the AUV missions worked well. It’s the little itty bitty where they didn’t run so well that caused the kind of drama usually only found in B grade scifi movies. On the last mission, a mission well beyond the range of all previous missions, our AUV developed a little too much autonomy and explorative spirit and decided to head off to a small island somewhere, presumably in search of palm trees and tequila. Suffice to say, this did not end particularly well, however everyone got to practice their rapid deployment responses and well.. it all worked out ok in the end, but I’m guessing that there might be a few more grey hairs floating around the place in the next weeks.

But science wise things have been good. At the very first brief glances at our data it’s all looking good. It’s looking like the creatures in the water column are heading up during “night” and down during “day” (I think I got that the right way around..). Which is cool, it’s good that what we are seeing matches the research that has been done before.

Also, I saw some bioluminescence off the pier, I don’t know what it was, some kind of jelly like critter, bobbing and flashing away, it was pretty awesome, and surreal! And the divers have got some completely amazing footage of creatures we landlubbers could almost never imagine. These creatures make the aliens on star trek look dull. And there’s just so much life! But I’ll come back to that over the next few weeks. We’re returning to Longyearbyen soon, which is quite sad, its awesome being here, and we have to start report writing, so I’ll try and share some awesome piccies to break up the “and today we wrote some more report.. “ Which looks like this: (not so exciting I think you'll agree)

And now, we get some time off, and we’re packing, which looks something like this:

But possibly the most excitingly different thing that I’ve been up to in the last few days was visiting the dogs. Now apparently my comment about the dogs in an earlier post caused a little hubbub in Ny Ålesund. I questioned what the dogs were here for, now I just want to clarify, I didn’t think they were being bred to be dinner! I just got a bit carried away with my imagination and thought maybe they were for hauling scientific equipment to hard to reach places, or emergency evacuation transport when the gasoline runs out, or maybe as polar bear guards. There’s a lot of possibilities! But I was wrong with all of them. The dogs are here because dogs are awesome, life is better with dogs and hence there are dogs here. No doubt a sentiment that will leave all dog lovers nodding contentedly and all cat lovers scratching their heads with perplexity.

So, I got to meet some of them today. You may now go green with envy. There’s few things more wonderful, I think, than sled dogs in their natural environment, with cold and snow and food and wilderness to run in. My guide, and the dog’s master, is the manager of the marine lab here, and I have to say, as lifestyles go it’s pretty cool. Spend the days doing awesome science and the nights running dogs, it’s pretty groovy having the wilderness just on your door step. So, thanks for letting me meet the awesome dogs! I shall find the web address so you too can meet some awesome dogs in the North J

And the wilderness isn’t something I’ve written about. Because it’s hard to describe. But being here is most akin, I’ve felt, to being in the middle of the Australian desert. It’s fine as long as the electricity keeps running and the water fills the pipes, but something fails or you walk a bit too far from home, everything changes. They are equally stark, harsh and dangerously beautiful places. They will chew you up and spit you out if you don’t respect them. But on the other hand, it’s amazing. The walk to the lab, along maybe 100m of dark road can be so different depending on the situation. Alone it can be beautiful and tranquil with a peaceful silence that seeps under your skin until you can feel the isolation as a blanket that reminds you how close the wilds are, how fresh the air is and how untamed some places still are. That or it can be the freakiest 100m of your life where you’re absolutely convinced a polar bear is going to eat you and every shadow is a harbinger of doom and death (I felt this the other night at about 3am and didn’t realise one of my mates was walking with me  and he accidentally brushed up against me, I completely flipped out and actually yelped thinking I was someone’s dinner, it was hilarious). But as soon as you add people to the equation the whole situation changes, it’s like a little bobble of humanity is shielding you from the nature. I think there’s a reason nomadic tribes go around in groups, once you get enough people together you can collectively create your own world. Maybe, I’m sure there’s a PhD in that, some psychology/geography mash up.
I might have let my creativity get a bit carried away there..  

But! I have waffled plenty for now, but I’m hoping to share some more science soon.

Snakkers!

And to keep you entertained until I have writing indulgence time, have a look see at this http://mare-incognitum.no/marinenight2014/?p=105
One of our brilliant divers, Robert, took this whilst out the other night.. see? The polar night is a pretty awesome place to be!

So, today I'm writing a report with my team on the work that we have been doing. This report is kinda important because it's what we're going to be using to write up our final papers (and the PhD's have to try and get that paper published) so I should probably work on that.. 
So, today I'll just share some pretty pictures with you, of Ny Alesund

Of Lillehammer, an unimaginable part of the world where the sun still rises.

And of home (Well.. Wilsons Prom), with miles and miles of empty beach and more sunlight than anyone knows what to do with!

So, apparently this blog has a slightly larger readership than I was initially aware of. It's exciting and ever so slightly daunting. For everyone out there who doesn't know me. I'm the Australian on the AB334 UNIS course. If you see someone slipping on ice, tripping over snow in the dark or staring in wonder at icicles it's probably me. I was raised in southern Australia during one of the longest periods of drought so I'm still amazed by all this frozen water just sitting around not doing anything, on the other hand I am mentally well equipped to deal with the water shortage we're currently experiencing! (4 minute showers every 2 days, just like being at home!)

Anyhow, the official Mare Incognitum blog is back up and running here, but as many of you have notice I quite enjoy writing so continuing doing so is the plan! 

I'm hoping to be able to give an update on what's happening in some of the other groups sooner rather than later, but we in group 4 have been pretty busy of late, so there hasn't been too much time to catch up on the science gossip. 

On the other hand, we've been busy because we've been getting stuff done! It's exciting, it's radical, it's awesome! Yesterday was predominantly a AUV day, our job for the day was to run a mission which would map the sea floor of the bay just outside the marine lab. We're doing this for group 3 so that they can correlate some of their findings to specific locations (obviously correlation still isn't causation, but it looks pretty to have maps! - Plus, I love all things spatial so it was quite an exciting mission).
We had group 3 ghosting us for the day so they could see the process we went through to get the mission up and running. The majority of the process being waiting for the wind to calm down, so they got to really experience the whole thing. Waiting, waiting, short periods of action followed by waiting. As our leader (aka lord and master) keeps saying, "Now boring is good".
Though it wasn't actually too cold we still wrapped our young lady in a sleeping bag so she could keep warm and snug whilst waiting. 

Because we had a lot of activity down at the pier today we were based out of the most high tech of offices, the back of a van. I can't help but feel after this we're going to be very well trained to work as spooks spying on people, or when we put on balaclavas against the cold possibly we're training as bank robbers. It's hard to know, but either way they're transferable skills, as my mum would say!

I finally got a good photo of the AUV in water and the boat. So here it is, I'm guessing everyone has a pretty good idea of what this looks like in water now.

And a reasonable photo of us shepherding the AUV out into the big bad wilds of Kongsfjord. You can see the slight green glow of the AUV out the front of the boat. 

And this is what a bunch of group 3 peeps watching the AUV going out looks like. It was exciting stuff, though moods were somewhat dampened by the whole rain thing, I thought this was supposed to be the arctic! Frostbite is supposed to be the risk not getting soggy and sulking!

But all up, despite the rain, it looks like the whole mission went really well and we got some data that hopefully group 3 will be able to use!

But, it was not just robots that happened today. Group 3 also have been building a scaffolding of awesomeness which they have attached a time-lapse camera to. This is now sitting out in the sea and taking regular photos of whats happening out there. I believe the plan is for it to be out there for a full 24 hour period. Group 1 is also doing a similar 24 hour measurement off the pier to measure bio luminescence, they have also been doing water column profiles through the day and night. 

And even with all that there was still a more important lesson that we learnt today. And this was about the process of science. There is a common myth amongst society that science is done by the lone guy in a lab coat at night, he's probably cackling to himself and sticking electrodes in things. That or he's doing something with a syringe. This is a myth that is perpetuated by TV (where everyone wears a lab coat all the time) and even by those personality profiles where introverts and people who work better by themselves are encouraged to become scientists. 
But that isn't what's happening here, and from my experience isn't what happens in the most of the scientific world. Science isn't the Big Bang Theory with super smart people coming up with brilliant ideas all by themselves. It's a collaboration between people with different skills, ideas and backgrounds. It's discussion and debate and above all it's team work and it takes time and patience. 
The things that we're doing we couldn't do by ourselves. We need technicians, boat drivers, divers, administrators and cooks. We need biologists and technologists to work together to solve problems that are going to mean that we can actually do what we came here to do. And that we can hopefully answer some of the questions that we have. 
Yesterday we spent much of the afternoon discussing and planning what we are going to do with the AUV tomorrow. This meant extensive discussion of the question that we are asking to ensure that everyone understands it. That's particularly important because we've got people with such different expertises working together. And then we spent just as long going back and forth with different options and ideas, as a group of about 9 or so people. As most people are aware, this isn't a natural environment for an introvert, and it can be challenging and frustrating environment. But at the same time it can also be invigorating, fascinating and is an excellent chance to do some hands on learning. 
So the moral of the day was that it's all about team work and working hard so that people with different skills and backgrounds can contribute to something greater than what anyone sitting alone in a lab could do. 
In the end we came up with a great plan for the next few days, and if the weather gods play nice we should have some awesome science on our hands!

It's a beautiful day here in Ny Alesund. The sun is shining (relatively speaking), the birds are tweeting and the skeleton shrimp are having an excellent time in the bay just outside our laboratory. I finally managed to get a photo which almost represents what it looks like to the human eye. As you can see it's not completely dark, and you can see outlines of clouds, mountains and such. Under some light some of the mountains appear to glow with the snow which is quite a majestic thing to experience. If you're looking for something to do with your January, I can definitely recommend a Northern trip. But, enough of standing around and appreciating the nature and onto the science!

And good science starts with planning (well, realistically it starts with an awesome idea, however planning is a key element). So we planned. This is our plan for today (Tuesday) and tomorrow. We're planning on running two awesome and mind blowing AUV missions one over midday and one over midnight. Then tomorrow afternoon we'll be taking two groups out. For one we're going to be mapping the bathymetry of the bay here and the other group we will be introducing to the ROV, little little geek, the cutest of cute ROVs. So it's looking like a fun, full, long few days!

And good science also involves a good bit of problem solving. Today I was quite impressed with one of our tekkies solutions to the "only have 2 hands" problem. (I have my suspicions that coke would also be fairly impressed, and possibly happy with the product placement). 

But somewhat more vitally (depending on your point of view) we had to find a way to help the AUV deal with the cold. As I've mentioned before, the battery is freaking out in the minus temperatures we're having here. So in a first attempt at solving this problem we've found a sleeping bag, AUV sized, and we're going to keep it wrapped up in that until deployment. There was talk of someone snuggling up with it and whispering softly, however it seems that that won't be required, though we had no shortage of volunteers. 

Overall we were really happy with our efforts to get the AUV in the water nice and quick and she got off to a great start getting a nice quick GPS fix and roared through her mission. 

The best sight of the day was possibly the surfacing of the AUV out in the Fjord. Due to the awesome strobe and glow stick we could spot it hundreds of metres away and helped guide the boat out to meet it. They then brought it straight home, and we plugged her back in to charge for an evening mission. I can't help but wish it was so easy to recharge humans too! A nice easy data download and a few hours recharge, leaving you ready and rearing to go! 
But as it stands, all the data is looking great and quite interesting and the AUV should be rocking 10pm tonight!

And now we wait for our next mission. But in the mean time the science never stops. Three of our brave, intrepid and adventurous diving scientists are heading out into the bay to document what's going on in the water in the evening. They looked pretty tough in their dry suits and ready to take on whatever kongsfjorden might throw at them. 

They also took out some cool non standard equipment, including, and I think this is particularly groovoid, a device which will test the nature of the water column so they can relate the information they get from photographs to the natural state of the water and also above water ambient light. Cool stuff. 

They also took about 4 cameras with them, a thought which brings fear to the hearts of all shy sea critters. Having had a peek at some of the photos they are getting, they are getting some really really really awesome stuff! These guys are both skilled scientists and photographers, which could result in a bit of embarrassment for some of the critters that thought they were safe getting up to some hankypanky in the polar night!

And now the time comes to start prepping the AUV for her next mission. As I've said before, Science doesn't sleep, and apparently we don't either! (but correlation is not causation friends)

So, in exciting news today we're hoping to have a guest blogger bringing some new and exciting perspectives and news, however in the mean time I've got some photos to share. We had a few delayed and cancelled plans today, purely due to bad weather meaning that it was unsafe to head out on the boat. 
So here goes. Today in group 4 we had to pack up little hulk and prepare him for the journey back home by boat. We're doing this because there is a serious restriction on the weight that we can bring back on the plane and little hulk, little though he may be, is still a bit of a hulk. So we're going to be using an even littler little ROV. You too can meet him here below! (We haven't got a name for him yet... suggestions welcome!) 

Conventiantly this little fella is super quick and easy to deploy, but we suspect he's quite sensitive when it comes to the cold, so we kept him nice and warm inside the hut on the pier before he headed out. (as we are also quite sensitive to the cold I fully understand his sensitivities) 

So we took this little guy out into the bay and had a great time exploring with him. He was an excellent little run about, great for curious scientists and even more exciting as he has a little grabber claw. 

The little grabber claw meaning that we were able to take some samples from the sea floor (an possibly on occasion scare a crab or two.. )

As these samples had limited scientific value they were re purposed as per below..

At the end we had to abort the mission due to the cold and some rather enthusiastic sample gathering. 

All up, it was a very awesome day and a great chance to play with different machines, it had never occurred to me how different they would be and how different their characters would be. 
More post to come later! 

Today turned out to be a big day for group 4. Why? Because we students suddenly became the teachers! Group 3 want to have a look at what creates they can see out in the bay near the marine lab, and to do that we're going to take the ROV out for a spin and see what we can see. So we did a quick check and look see to make sure that all things were operational.

And the group 3ers took this opportunity to photograph the most photogenic of our team, little hulk. 

And then we went out for deployment. We almost managed to run two transects out from the pier, but we had a lot of trouble with the wind and currents that were running. We also took a bit too long to deploy which could have been a problem for poor little hulk being stuck out in the cold for that long (it's much warmer in the water than in the air at the moment) but he took it well and was happy as a little lark when we deployed him. 

Deploying was actually quite an exciting experience, as we were going off the high side of the pier. But with lots of safety measures in place we got little hulk down to the water safe and sound with no students following him, always a good thing!

All up it was a pretty awesome day, we had a great time teaching some of the other students what we had learnt and sharing the awesomeness of being with little hulk. It was a bit sad though as he will be leaving tomorrow on the ship to save space on the plane, which means we will be moving to a different ROV which I hope to introduce you to tomorrow. Sadly we ran out of time to do our planned AUV mission, but we're looking forward to having a good smooth mission tomorrow during the day, and then probably at night as well. 

In other news the divers went out in the bay today and apparently they saw some really cool stuff, including a whole raft of animals which are usually only found at 200-300m depths, these guys were hanging out around 1-4m deep. So there's defiantly some new stuff going on down there, new to science, I'm guessing that the creatures themselves have been doing it all for quite a while. 
I also heard rumours that some birds have been caught and we're going to have a look at their stomach contents to see what they've been eating. But these are still rumours, I'll try and substantiate them tomorrow! 

And last but not least, the light environment was really interesting today. It was incredibly bright (relatively speaking, my sunglasses are still in their case) this morning with a beautiful "sunrise". This was followed by an incredibly sudden drop of the sun and pitch blackness. The kind of dark where you can't see your hand in-front of you, though you can see some amazing stars. And a few hours later the full moon rose. This all happened within a matter of hours, and I think it must have a pretty amazing impact on the creatures living here to have such different light environments within such short periods of time. I know I couldn't have predicted what was going to happen, maybe the animals can.. who knows.
Either way, it was a pretty exciting and exhausting day!

So, it’s Saturday, and this is science, so no rest for the wicked (or for the well behaved either for that matter). Today we are planning on running a bigger AUV mission, out to do some transects across the Fjord to see what we can see. We’re hoping to run this same mission a few times, over midday and midnight so we can look for water column changes during the day/night cycle. But first we have to get out into the water.

Naturally, everyone’s pretty excited about the concept of the robots and as such we get a little bit of paparazzi action happening.

But we’re not going to let that get in the way of some good science! So, up first is testing that all the sensors and programs on the AUV are working ok, which includes testing the internal accelerometers within the machine. Doing that looks something like this:

Then there’s a bit of time where the adults stand around and do some talking and planning and quite a bit of joking around. Just to make sure we’re all on track.

One of the more photogenic elements is the adding of the strobe and the glow stick to the AUV. This is so that we can watch it as it heads out and can also more easily find it when it resurfaces. I was quite amazed at how strong the glow remains even in such cold conditions.

And today we’re going to be sending a few people out in the boat to track where the AUV is going and how it is progressing, so that if there are any problems we can rapidly abort the mission and rescue the machine. This is just going to be a first day thing, to make sure that nothing weird happens like the AUV suddenly deciding to head off on a tropical holiday or something. For all those people worried about robots taking over the world, trust me, they are a long long long way from being anywhere near organised enough to do that!

But part of going out on the boat means getting kitted up in the sexy survival suits, which is always fun, although can be incredibly cold. 

And we had a few technical issues, so there was quite a bit of wandering around and waiting and trying to work out the flash on my phone to try and take some photos of wandering and waiting. 

And then I got sent off to get some petrol! There's a gas station in the Arctic, for cool trivia you can now take to the pub. This is what an arctic gas station looks like, jerry cans and snow mobiles.

And finally our little AUV headed out into the wilderness all by itself! It was a bit of a stressful time because the battery freaked out quite a lot in the cold, as most batteries do. But it came home safe and sound in the end :)

In other groups news group 1 has successfully put all their sensors into the cage that you see below and they will be lowering it off the boat so that they can test different parts of the water column. Apparently they have been having quite a few problems with their batteries running out too quickly, so it will be interesting to see how they solve that problem

Additionally I thought you might like to have a look at the wet room in the basement where we have been working. This is where all our boots are stored, but also where all the dive equiptment lives and dries. It never ceases to amaze me that there are people who will happily go out diving in the Arctic night!

And last but not least, it was a beautiful sunrise today!

Today we had some introduction to another new friend! The Automated Underwater Vehicle (AUV) arrived yesterday on the ship and has spent all night on charge so that we can run a test mission today! There’s a lot of cool tech on this little baby, which all the guys insist on referring to as a woman because they can be occasionally temperamental and refuse to come home (which I think applies just as well to men), but in this case I think it’s a pretty cool compliment as this baby is sleek, powerful and independent! Just have a look!

We had to test every element of the AUV before putting it into water. Mostly because putting something autonomous into water when something doesn’t work is going to end in tears. Luckily for us pretty much everything did work! Yay! Happy Panda. This is the screen where we do most of the tests, and even cooler can actually control the machine when it’s in the water (to an extent). 

So we did things like dry test the fins and propeller, but only for a short period of time. Because everything is set up to run underwater it can easily overheat when tested above land. 

And just for reference this is the kinds of boxes that everything comes in. There is lots and lots and lots of walking back and forth with boxes. 

Following successful testing we set up lines to be used to moor some sensors which are going to be out for the next week or so and will give an extra location point to the AUV when it’s doing it’s missions. This involved a lot of walking back and forth with measuring tapes, some duct tape (real engineering now!) and a bit of splicing. Practical stuff! 

After all the lines were made and tested we had the enviable job of heading out onto the water, in some sexy survival suits, to deploy our sensors. It was cold, it snowed, it was awesome. We found all the locations we had to get to and no one fell in (well the sensors did, but that was all part of the master plan!). 

Following all this success we had to set up a plan for the AUV to follow when it went out on a mission. This means having a look at some maps to see what hasn’t been looked at too closely before and coming up with a plan to have a look at it. We stuck to a short plan today, along the lines of 20 minutes, just to see if everything is working. 

And finally we got to head out to see if it was going to work! The excitement, the tension builds! It’s all about being cool from here on in. Although, I will admit, I got entirely distracted from the mission by about 6 birds which were out feeing off the pier. They were Little Auks and they were happy as little larks and were going for it! It was incredibly fun to see. You’ll have to trust me that the little blob is a bird. 

And then finally we got to deploy! Down the slippery walk way we go!

And there she goes into the water. 

We had to hold her there for a bit just to check that all the sensors were still functional in the water and that she floated (quite an important element). 

And then off off off into the wilderness she headed! It was just as she was returning that we were called off for a whole class meeting, although apparently everything went incredibly well and we’re looking forward to having a look at the data tomorrow! 

In other news we’ve had some funny weather up here, it’s been snowing like there’s no tomorrow and occasionally above zero. This has resulted in some pretty serious ice on the runway which meant that the media TV2 (a Norsk TV channel) were unable to fly in. Somewhat more entertainingly this also means that the French radio people are also stuck here in Ny Ålesund. Apparently the cosmopolitan journalists are somewhat less than enthusiastic about this. But there you go, it’s life, there’s always the possibility of getting snowed in/out and you have to be psyched up for it!