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HomeArctic blog: Jan Mayen, Spitsbergen → Drift ice – 05th and 06th June 2019

Drift ice – 05th and 06th June 2019

It is ama­zing how quick­ly things chan­ge here: just yes­ter­day, Dans­ke­gat­tet was com­ple­te­ly ice free, and now the­re are floes of loo­se drift ice, so we stay away from this part­ly shal­low pas­sa­ge and keep to the outer side of Ams­ter­damøya.

Drift ice around the nor­thwest cor­ner of Spits­ber­gen. That is how it used to be – just that it used to be well into July in the old days and not just in the begin­ning of June, as it is now.

We pass one field of drift ice after the other, and some of the off­ly­ing islands: Fug­le­son­gen, whe­re we hear the cra­zy laugh­ter of the thou­sands of litt­le auks, and Klov­nin­gen. Later, we reach the ent­rance to Raud­fjord. Den­se drift ice ever­y­whe­re, and the who­le map is still fro­zen solid, at least accor­ding to the ice chart. After a litt­le Zodiac excur­si­on, we take off and move out, as we don’t want to spend a cou­ple of weeks here.

Mean­while, the drift ice around Ams­ter­damøya has beco­me so den­se that the pas­sa­ge back to open water takes more time than plan­ned. This is gre­at – natu­re is in con­trol! We spend one more night, just drif­ting in an area of open drift ice, and then it takes about half a day to navi­ga­te through Smee­ren­burg­fjord and Sør­gat­tet.

Gal­lery – Drift ice – 05th and 06th June 2019

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

From the­re, we fol­low the west coast to the south. Ever­y­thing here is grey today. In the evening, we reach Prins Karls For­land, whe­re we visit a group of pret­ty acti­ve wal­ru­ses to round the day off.

Gal­lery – Drift ice – 05th and 06th June 2019 – 2

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

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last modification: 2019-06-17 · copyright: Rolf Stange
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