In and around Longyearbyen, September 10-15, 2014

A good 4 days to explo­re Lon­gye­ar­by­en and sur­roun­dings. The­re are end­less oppor­tu­ni­ties, pro­vi­ded the wea­ther is reasonable and you don’t mind a good bit of hiking.

Admit­ted­ly, we were not exact­ly spoi­led by the wea­ther. The grey cloud cover came fur­ther down than we wan­ted it to come; often, the visi­bi­li­ty dis­ap­peared behind whir­ling snow and the wind was strong and cold at most times. Hig­her moun­ta­ins such as Nor­dens­ki­öld­fjel­let (1053 Meter) and Troll­stei­nen (850 Meter) were accor­din­gly not an opti­on. But we went up Pla­tå­ber­get, a very popu­lar place to go for a good hike direct­ly to Lon­gyear­ben, for a lon­gish tour; next day, the tour over Gru­vef­jel­let, Lars­breen and Sar­ko­fa­gen was a tre­at for the hikers. The fos­sil coll­ec­tors made some good finds despi­te the snow cover in 500 met­res alti­tu­de. For the first time on one of our (Rol­f/­Geo-RG) tours, we could see the Dwarf Birch, a rather rare plant in Spits­ber­gen, which grows only at a few sites far away from the coast and accor­din­gly not in reach when you are tra­ve­ling by ship.

Wea­ther-wise, the least plea­sant day was Satur­day (13th, did it have to do with the date?). A per­fect day to visit both the Sval­bard­mu­se­um and the Airship/North Pole Expe­di­ti­on Muse­um. Both have extre­me­ly inte­res­t­ing dis­plays whe­re you can learn a lot, no mat­ter if you are in Spits­ber­gen for the first time or if you are an advan­ced arc­tic tra­vel­ler.

Don’t miss Rolf’s arc­tic blog for more sto­ries from the­se days in and near Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

Gal­lery

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

Video

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