The ice cave in Lon­gye­ar­breen

Thu
18 Apr
2019

Snow melt – 4 weeks too ear­ly

Curr­ent­ly – today it is 18 April – I get the impres­si­on that Spits­ber­gen is real­ly mel­ting and flowing away. The snow melt has star­ted, seve­ral weeks to ear­ly. This April will wit­hout any doubt be the 101st month in a row with tem­pe­ra­tures abo­ve the long-term avera­ge.

But more about that later. One effect of the wea­ther is that I have some time to wri­te again now. It has been a while ago …

Ice cave – 4 weeks ago

… that we went to the ice cave in Lon­gye­ar­breen. The­re are ice caves here in pret­ty much all gla­ciers, and the one clo­se to Lon­gye­ar­by­en are popu­lar places to visit, both by tou­rists with gui­des and by locals. You can dog-sledge or ski to the ice cave in Scott Tur­ner­breen in Bol­terd­a­len, you can hike to the one on Lars­breen, also with snow­s­hoes or on ski, and you can get to the one on Lon­gye­ar­breen with a wider ran­ge of trans­por­ta­ti­on means, here also inclu­ding snow mobi­le or snow cat.

In the ice cave in Lon­gye­ar­breen (mid March).

The ice caves are actual­ly melt­wa­ter chan­nels, but they usual­ly fall dry during the win­ter sea­son (melt­wa­ter flow may occur at any time of year, so be careful). Then they can be visi­ted. Depen­ding on the “ter­rain”, this can be easy or dif­fi­cult. Some are so nar­row and steep that visi­ting them may be impos­si­ble, at least for nor­mal peo­p­le, others are more visi­tor-fri­end­ly. In any case, an ice cave is a fasci­na­ting expe­ri­ence!

Ice cave in Lon­gye­ar­breen.
Usual­ly I don’t post too many pic­tures of mys­elf, but I do like this one 🙂

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