We ventured out to the remotest parts of Spitsbergen, the island of Kvitøya in the northeast of the Svalbard archipelago, not far from Russian Franz Josef Land. This is where Salomon August Andrée, Knut Frænkel and Nils Strindberg reached land for the first time again after a balloon flight of 3 days and more than 2 months of marching across the drifting ice. They started to get ready for the winter, but died all after a short time for reasons which we will never really find out for sure.
It needs a lot of luck to get to this place. Even today, Kvitøya is often surrounded by ice, and when this is not the case, then the surf is often going high on the exposed coast. And when this is not the case, then there are often some polar bears hanging around. The way from the shore to the place where Andrée, Frænkel and Strindberg had their final camp is short, but not easy to walk.
Today, we are lucky! It is a bit foggy, which fits the atmosphere of this desolate place perfectly well.
A beautiful day in a beautiful area at the end of the world, in a little bay in the remote northeast of the remote Nordaustland. Seemingly empty polar desert, full of colours and structures.
After some hours of sailing in unknown waters near rocky islands, we reach a bay with a huge glacier and many icebergs. Walrusses are in the water every here and there, and then we discover three polar bears who are crossing the fjord. A mother and two first-year cubs. They swim between the icebergs before they climb up the steep slope.
The weather is really on our side! The first thing is a pretty rare landing on Waldenøya, a small and remote island, in a mirror-like sea today. Definitely a place that does not see a lot of visitors! Walter Wellman was stranded here for a couple of weeks with his expedition in 1894. We sit on the rocks and enjoy the sun and the undisturbed view to the north pole.
It is sunny and calm all the way up to Rossøya, so we enjoy a Zodiac cruise around this islet, Svalbard’s very northernmost one. Further north, there is just water, liquid and solid, and the north pole. A rare sunny day in these latitudes!
An evening excursion to Phippsøya does not yield walrusses, as we had been hoping for, but a polar bear. Which showed up on a pretty short notice as we had just gone ashore. Alex, who was scouting the terrain, had the pleasure to discover the bear, which had been sleeping in a terrain depression, at a rather uncomfortable distance, but it was not at all interested in us and turned its attention to a rather rotten carcass of a walrus. We went back into the boats and enjoyed the views in safety for man and beast. A great day on 80 degrees north!
A calm night at anchor, great! Hiking over Blomstrandhalvøya is at least as great. The coastal scenery is really varied and interesting, especially if you know some of the hidden places beyond Ny London.
Then we set course to the north. The wind is a bit less than expected, but enough to fill the canvas, so we enjoy a silent crossing under sail and a sky the colours of which are changing back and forth between grey, silver and even blue in places.
It is great to be out for a full, long day in Spitsbergen’s beautiful nature. And the warm springs far inland in Bockfjord are fascinating. A great destination for a long hike! We spend hours getting there, hiking across tundra with plenty of flowers and a river plain that looks like kind of a wadden sea. After an extended rest with some food, we have soon reached the fields with the sinter terraces. Nature has indeed created some very impressive pieces of art here! All this comes with a stunning background: a mighty wall of dark-red mountains, some huge moraines and rugged mountains.
Of course there was also the option for walks within a „normal“ scale. There are also warm springs close to the shore, and another walk went to a nearby glacier.
The weather forecast is promising for the far north, so we set course northeast in the evening.
Time is just flying in the summer arctic. Nothing too amazing going on in Longyearbyen. Somebody managed to park a car in a pond next to the road in Adventdalen. One is tempted to ask: why? I don’t know. Nobody was hurt, at least. Some tourists thought that huts in the wilderness are principally open for everybody. This is not the case. It took the police to get this message across in this given case. It also took the police to convince two female tourists that you have to leave the boat when the trip was over even if it did not meet your expectation. People in Longyearbyen don’t know if they should laugh or cry sometimes. In yet another case, the police found vertebra of marine mammals in some tourist’s luggage at the airport. Not good. One day, when MSC Meraglivivia was in the harbour, the number of peole in Longyearbyen tripled.
Soon we will take off with SV Antigua. Time to check a huge pile of equipment, sort stuff, repair some items, replace other ones. So time is flying as usual, and suddenly Antigua is in the harbour. An immense pile of equipment needs to be carried on board and then it is already time for take-off. Welcome on board and here we go! We are steaming against a breeze out of Isfjord and then turn into Forlandsund. Spitsbergen, here we come!
Gråhuken! We are not far from this famous cape as we wake up. A light breeze is blowing from the northwest, but not too much, it is not a problem to land and we are happy to pay a visit to the famous hut where Christiane Ritter wintered in 1934-35 (she immortalized her adventure in the book „A woman in the polar night“). I have got a very special reason to be happy to get to this hut now, and today’s visit is indeed humbling and touching. More about that later.
In a later stage of today’s landing at Gråhuken, a polar bear turns up. It is a safe distance, and he (or she) turns around and moves away as soon as he (or she) gets aware of us. So do we.
An excursion to one of the small islands in Liefdefjord turns out to be a visit to an arctic paradise. Colours, structures, birds. Plenty of them.
Eine ruhige Nacht vor Anker, herrlich! Mindestens so herrlich war die Tour auf der Blomstrandhalvøya. Die Küstenlandschaft ist sehr abwechslungsreich, vor allem, wenn man ein paar bestimmte Ecken kennt. Es gibt nicht nur Ny London, sondern noch so ein paar richtig schöne, versteckte Stellen.
Dann setzen wir Kurs Nord. Der Wind pustet zwar nicht ganz so fröhlich wie erwartet, aber immer noch fröhlich genug, um die Tücher zu füllen, und so genießen wir die Stille unter Segeln und einem Himmel, dessen Farben zwischen Grau, Silber und punktuellem Blau oszillieren.
Our first day out and away from Longyearbyen! Our first stop is Ny-Ålesund in Kongsfjord, a gradual transition from civilisation to wilderness. The village is calm today, goose families are feeding on the tundra between the houses. While we walk around, Alex gives a talk about the past and presence of Ny-Ålesund, I give a talk about Roald Amundsen and all the north pole expeditions through the centuries and as we happen to meet Marten Loonen, leader of the Dutch Arctic Station, we even get the latest news about Barnacle geese, Common eider ducks and their rather unrelaxed relationship to polar bears that look for food on the breeding islands of these birds in Kongsfjord.
We sail up Krossfjord in the afternoon, land at Camp Zoë, an old Rudi-/Mansfield-hut and do various walks and hikes in the tundra and up the hills. The surrounding mountains are very impressive. We share the tundra with reindeer, ptarmigan and a lonely polar fox and enjoy the view of some white horses on the blue water of Krossfjord.
An evening visit to Tinayrebreen is the icing on the cake on this day, a Friday the 13th. It is Anke’s and Christiane Ritter’s birthday today. Happy birthday!
Way 300 in Longyearbyen was closed for all traffic after a landslide close to the cemetary. This road connects Skjæringa (the part of Longyearbyen where church, Sysselmannen etc. are located) and Huset.
The Sysselmannen has now opened Way 300 again for pedestrians and bicyclists. Motorised traffic is not permitted. This is valid until further notice from the Sysselmannen.
On July 2, the traditional shipping company Hurtigruten celebrates its 125th birthday and at the same time gives a present to the environment: From today on Hurtigruten wants to banish all disposable plastic from its ships. No plastic straws, no stirrers in plastic coffee cups, no plastic lids and not a single plastic bag should then be found on the ships.
This is only logical: ship travellers witness the pollution of the oceans with plastic waste every day. Most of the plastic in the oceans comes from fishing, but plastic bottles, plastic bags or other everyday plastic articles also end up on Norway’s beaches by the ton and too often end up in the stomachs of seabirds, fish and whales.
Plastic waste in Mushamna/ Spitsbergen
The ban on disposable plastic articles will be effective across the entire Hurtigruten fleet, i.e. both on the legendary postal ship route from Bergen to Kirkenes, as well as on cruise ships in polar waters and in all land-based facilities and also on Spitsbergen.
Hurtigruten’s ambitious long-term goal is even to become the first plastic-free shipping company in the world. Even if there is certainly still much room for improvement in the cruise ship industry in terms of pollution and CO2 emissions, the ban on disposable plastic is a welcome step in the right direction.
Soon free from diposable plastic: Hurtigruten museumsship in Stokmarksnes
A landslide from Platåberget crossed the road near the cemetery in Longyearbyen a few days ago. Nobody was injured and the event was not seen by anyone, as far as known, but the road from the old museum to Huset has been closed by the Sysselmannen for safety reasons until further notice.
It is not the first landslide in this area. Previous events had triggered a debate to move the cemetery to a safer location near the church to prevent it from possible damage, but no decisions have been made so far.
Smaller landslides as the recent one are generally a common and well-known phenomenon on slopes like the one near the cemetery. They may occur anywhere on similar slopes in the field, especially in the early summer, after the snow melting period. Landslides of this type are normally not too fast, so hikers should be able to move away and into safe territory without difficulties. But the danger potential has to be considered for example when putting up a tent, and there are other types of landslides and mudflows that involve more water and higher velocities. In June 1992, a scientist was killed by a torrential slush avalanche in Liefdefjord.
Hiking on one of Patagonia’s many remote islands.
And yes, we are fairly confident that this Patagonia adventure was not the last one of its kind, there is still so much to discover! We have no dates fixed yet, and it won’t happen as early as the next austral season (2018/19), but we’ll return to Patagonia, no doubt!
But first, I’ll soon return to Spitsbergen! So my arctic travel blog will get new stuff regularly from July onwards.
Less than a week after the polar bear visit to Kapp Linné, which made it big in international media, another polar bear was seen near a settlement in Spitsbergen. This time, it was Longyearbyen, the main settlement.
The bear was seen for the first time Friday evening in Adventdalen close to the old airstrip, some kilometres southeast of Longyearbyen, walking to the settlement.
Soon, the Sysselmannen was on site with the helicopter, the polar bear had already come quite close to town. Scared away by the helicopter, the bear moved to Hiorthhamn, opposite of Longyearbyen. Later, when the bear was seen swimming in Adventfjorden, a group having a party with a fire on the beach in Longyearbyen was evacuated – a safety measure without any drama, the bear was not seen anywhere near the site.
Polar bear in Adventfjord, not far from Longyearbyen (archive image, 2014).
The polar bear was seen for the last time Saturday around noon on the way into Sassenfjord. Since then, its whereabouts are not know, and the authorities have closed the “case” until further observations may be made and reported by anyone in the field.
It is said that the bear was a large male. There were no situations dangerous for humans or the bear.
The case shows how important it is to be alert and prepared also in the area close to Longyearbyen.
18 intense days in Spitsbergen on SV Antigua, a 3 mast sailing ship – a dream voyage for arctic enthusiasts! Now there is the chance to join us on our voyage in July (12-29, 2018). Fully booked since long ago, two beds in a double cabin are now available again after a cancellation.
This trip will be German speaking … you don’t have to be able to write poems in German, but if you have basic knowledge good enough for everyday communication, then – welcome!
Spitsbergen under sail with Antigua in July 2018: two beds in double cabin available.
So – get in touch an welcome on board! Click here for more information about this voyage.