The high Arctic is freezing cold with February/March being the coldest months on Svalbard. So you better bring a lot of wool and warm clothing and most important don’t forget your rain gear. Yeah, you read that right: It’s raining in the coldest months and it’s not a single occation. Indeed it can rain several times per winter with a tendency of increasingly frequent rain events as the years pass. It’s just getting warmer and wetter in the Arctic. And what do you get from rain and snow? Nice avalanche danger. The combination of rain and glaciers is yet another nice story, but that’s for another time. In the meantime it just means pushing fieldwork backwards, waiting for the rainstorm to pass.