Wed
16 Mar
2022

Spits­ber­gen during the light win­ter, as it should be. Snow, ice and cold. The infa­mous warm air incur­si­ons with tem­pe­ra­tures abo­ve free­zing, rain and mel­ting snow had not yet occur­red this win­ter, to the delight of man and beast ali­ke.

Spits­ber­gen win­ter: pin­gos in Advent­da­len

Also to our delight, and we made good use of the oppor­tu­ni­ty, enjoy­ing the beau­ty of natu­re and life in gene­ral in Longyearbyens’s clo­ser and slight­ly more distant sur­roun­dings, on well known and les­ser well known rou­tes.

You always keep lear­ning in the Arc­tic. I found out that using a snow-cover­ed pile of stones at the foot of a steep slo­pe isn’t a good tool to stop a snow mobi­le after a rapid downhill des­cent. Lea­ving the snow mobi­le with the (hel­met-cover­ed) head first through the wind screen isn’t the world’s best idea eit­her. Not that I couldn’t have thought of that befo­re 😉 it wasn’t on one of the usu­al rou­tes.

But minor adven­tures like that just hap­pen when you are out in the arc­tic wild­ner­ness, and as long as not­hing real­ly hap­pens, bey­ond what can be fixed with a quick and easy repair, all is good. We enjoy­ed tho­se days. Here some impres­si­ons of the­se tours bet­ween Lon­gye­ar­by­en, Nord­manns­fon­na and Tem­pel­fjord:

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