Hin­lo­pen Strait I – 12th August 2016

Fri
12 Aug
2016

After the „ner­ve-wre­cking pas­sa­ge“ (accor­ding to the pilot book, Den Nor­ske Los) of Fran­k­lin­sund, which is lar­ge­ly shal­low and most­ly unchar­ted, and some win­dy miles down into Hin­lo­pen Strait, we made Murch­ison­fjord our first stop in this area. It is, of cour­se, at the same time still part of Nord­aus­t­land. One good reason for going the­re was mee­ting the smal­ler sis­ter ship Arc­ti­ca I, which had brought some sought-after goods from Lon­gye­ar­by­en inclu­ding fresh fruit and yoghurt.

The polar desert around Murch­ison­fjord is made up of very old rocks, which gives tho­se with some back­ground in geo­lo­gy insight in some of the very ear­ly chap­ters of the histo­ry of life on earth. Colo­nies of algae that around 800 mil­li­on years ago con­tri­bu­ted to the con­tent of free oxy­gen of today’s atmo­sphe­re, which we use for breathing and bur­ning fuels and cand­les. The­re is a group of geo­lo­gists on Arc­ti­ca I doing rese­arch on this, and they kind­ly gave us a short, but very inte­res­t­ing intro­duc­tion into their work.

Gal­lery – Hin­lo­pen Strait I – 12th August 2016

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

We got fur­ther insight into geo­lo­gy, a snow cave crea­ted by a melt­wa­ter river and a beau­tiful litt­le can­yon as we ven­tu­red out on land.

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