Easter - part VII

Last post about Easter 2012 on Svalbard. The weather had been cold and clear all Easter, and this last night was no exception. Instead of spending another night in the icecave we ended up snuggly sleeping nine people in an igloo set up by Spitsbergen Travel on Tellbreen. They didn't need it. It strictly said on a plaque outside the igloo do not enter, Spitsbergen Travel uses this as a lunch stop during day trips. Or something in that general direction. Point is, we knew no one would pop by during the night anyway.

Even with nine people (where two of us had the extra long, extra wide downmats from Exped) there was enough room. I must say, great igloo Spitsbergen Travel! And thanks for the loan. We cleaned up very nicely after us as well.

Yes, this is pulka on snowmobile sledge. Amanda (on the right)  helped the skiing people by driving their one pulka up a steep hill. Afterwards Amanda, Katja, and I went skiing and then snowmobiled home.

Thank you wonderful Svalbard people for a magnificent Easter holiday!

Easter - part VI

After a bad night's rest in the icecave (note to self: inflate sleeping mat more, waking up with arse touching ice cold rock is not very comfortable), we all went for a ski. As far as I can figure out from maps, I think we skinned up Ottofjellet. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Mari and Elena skinning up.

Katja and Amanda sporting their Aklima wool nettings (very much recommended form all of us). I think that should be Tellbreen in the back left there...

Myrull:

Curtis:

Mari:

Getting ready to telemark down. And I'm making faces as always. And btw I don't actally know how to tele. Amanda did teach me some very useful stuff the day after this, but this day I mainly just came down by falling.

Now, that's me on the right there, and about two seconds after this photo was taken, I managed too fall as well, straight from where I was standing.

Easter - part V

After a night's rest in Longyearbyen recovering from the adventures of Easter part I-IV, Katja, Amanda and I headed out again towards Tellbreen. We knew some other friends had headed in that direction the day before, on skis. We went on snow mobiles.

Long story short: all nine of us spent the night in the lower part of an englacial conduit in Tellbreen, i.e. in an ice cave.

As I said, this was in the lower part of the conduit, meaning that we had ice above us and mainly debris and frozen ponds under us. Also, it was too low to stand upright.

And again, any questions, don't hesitate to submit a comment below.

Melting water form icicles freshly picked off the wall!

Meeee!

The next morning we ran into Doug Benn, professor at UNIS, and knower of all that is to be known about glaciers. He told us that this particular ice cave had not been very stable lately. Whoopsie daisy....

Easter - part IV

Heeeey! Remember Easter part I, II and III? No? Well, it's all about my easter 2012 adventures on Svalbard, and to be honest, they were quite interesting. Now I am going to my arse into gear (can you say that in English, or is that just a Norwegian expression?) and post pics from rest of the easter holiday during the next somthing days/weeks. I don't think I can be bothered to write too much about the general happenings in the pics, that's what stopped me getting the posts done the last time.

If there is anything in the photos that you are curious about, post a comment, and I will answer. Enjoy!

Easter 2012 - part IV:
The strangest sunset, and Eskerfossen.
 A little bit of background: Snowscootered from Svea and all the way to the east coast. Met complete whiteout and increasing winds at east coast, turned around, drove through tricky moraine, and headed back to Longyearbyen. Made a couple of stops on the way back:

We were met by the strangest sunset I have ever seen on our way back through Sassendalen. To begin with I thought something was on fire, because everything else had the usual bluish tint. One of the you-kind-of-had-to-be-there-experiences.

 Stopped at the Esker waterfall. Frozen at this time of year. Unfortunately it also had a big pile of drifted snow in front of it during our visit...

 

 Next time: Easter - part V: Sleeping in a Glacier

Stay tuned!

Easter - part III

It's the middle of the night, the sun is shining just outside my window here in Longyearbyen on Svalbard, and apparently theres a solar eclipse going on at this very moment, but only 9 percent or so is being eclipsed so I can't really be bothered to stick my head out the window to have a look.

So, easter, part III. Well, hum, so, we stopped by Paulabreen (Paula glacier) on our way to the east coast, or rather, we stopped on the sea ice in front of the glacier.

Paulabreen is a surge-type glacier, that is a glacier that every now and then decides to move forward really fast, and then quiet down again. Wikipedia can tell you more.
Anyway, Paulabreen surged 600-700 years ago, ending up with its glacier front 25 km further out than today. But, Skobreen (Sko glacier), which terminates into the side of Paulabreen, surged in, ehm, 2005, or around there, pushing on Paulabreen, making the front of Paulabreen move forward up to 10 metres a day for over a year. This whole business makes the glacier become massively crevassed and nasty and beautiful, none of which you can see from the pictures below. But it is nice and eerily blue.

Amanda demonstrating how to perform glacier/sea ice yoga in a scooter suit and -helmet, and still looking good!

Ice, ice, baby. Mind you, I haven't tweeked the colours in these upcoming icepics (haha! did you get it?) at all. The ice was actually this amazingly blue.

Oh! And all around on the sea ice you could see little black spots appearing and disappearing and reappearing. These were ringed seals, coming up for breath and trying not to be eaten by polar bears. Well, I didn't bring much of a zoom lens, so the pics below are already heavily cropped, but at least you can see it's a seal-like animal.

Easter - part II

It's Norway's national day today, I've walked in the parade, I've eaten cake and hot dogs and I've slept for four hours this afternoon. At this moment don't really know where to put myself, but I found some wine in the kitchen, and I'm just going to end up in front of my laptop ayway, so let's blog.

Easter part II, right. The following pics are from the beginning of easter when me and three others snow scootered to a UNIS student cabin close to Svea, one of the two Norwegian coal mines on Svalbard.

I can never decide whether the story of a picture should be under or over it. Any opinions?

Let's put text above for now.
So, this is Niklas,hacking up coal into smaller pieces that we could actually get to light up.

The cabin. No water, no electricity. Going for a piss in the night was interesting. Rifle over shoulder, long jons and down jacket, carefully looking around for polar bears when peeing.

Oh, and that mountain in the middle on the pic below, called Aspelintoppen, that's where we skied the next day. Didn't get all the way to the top though. It's about 1200 m high, we wen't up to about 900 m or so.

 Old, windblown polar bear tracks on the side of the mountain. From a mum and cub.

As far up as we went this. Mind you the last bit took forever! And my stamina is non-existant compared to everyone else on this arcipelago. I was so tired as we were to go down again, and the snow was hard packed, I lost my grip and ended up sliding sideways/backwards/forwards down half the mountain before I finally managed to stop. Felt like scary stuff at the time of sliding. Though got away with only some scratches on my skis. I need to learn how to ski better. I'm getting there mind you.

Anyway, back down on the sea ice we found this! That wasn't there when we went up. Fresh blood, like three metres of smudged blood.

And tracks! Polar bear tracks! No bear though. Anyway, it would have been a non-hungry bear which, naturally, makes them slightly less dangerous than hungry bears. Or so I would guess.

 Drove a bit further, and what did we find?

 Half chewed baby seal!

Lastly, scooters, skies, (relativelly) flat sea ice = Katja on skies behind scooter. Think she got up to 50 or 60 km/h. I'm sitting behind Amanda on the other scooter with the camera going click click click click click click having no idea of what I'm actually aiming at.