Isfjord – 24th Sep­tem­ber 2015

Thu
24 Sep
2015

The last day of this trip with landings, incre­di­ble. For a while, you think you still have got the who­le voya­ge ahead of you, and then the days are sud­den­ly fly­ing.

Today, first thing is to find a good play­ground for the gla­cier group. Ide­al­ly some crev­as­ses in easy ter­rain, so Falk can install some ice screws and ropes and peo­p­le can rope down. We find a good spot on Esmark­breen and it works well, ever­y­bo­dy is later coming back with a smi­le on their face.

The tun­dra group is taking a more silent approach, hiking 6-7 kilo­me­t­res over morai­nes, wet­lands and tun­dra on Erd­mann­flya, enjoy­ing the pan­ora­ma, some reinde­er encoun­ters, the soft colours of the autumn tun­dra and thin­king a bit about the immense time sca­le of earth histo­ry. A 46 m long rope makes it easy to get a good idea of it.

We cross Isfjord under full sail. What a beau­tiful view! Com­pared to that, some other ships look like floa­ting green­hou­ses …

For our last landing in Coles­buk­ta, natu­re has tur­ned the light on again, full power, tur­ning the old, long-aban­do­ned Rus­si­an sett­le­ment into an arc­tic red light quar­ter. Too beau­tiful for a lot of tal­king. I wan­ted to talk about the histo­ry of the Rus­si­an sett­le­ments in Spits­ber­gen and the Spits­ber­gen trea­ty, but that does not real­ly work. Colours and light are just too breath­ta­king.

Gal­lery Isfjord – 24th Sep­tem­ber 2015

Click on thumb­nail to open an enlar­ged ver­si­on of the spe­ci­fic pho­to.

In the later evening, we go along­side in Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

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