East coast of Spitsbergen: Crollbreen

Croll­breen is a “small”, unknown gla­cier on the sou­thern east coast of Spits­ber­gen. A remo­te coast which is hard­ly ever visi­ted by peop­le. The coas­tal waters are com­ple­te­ly unchar­ted and the­re are defi­ni­te­ly some shal­lows, so access from the sea is not easy. This is, if at all, then some­thing for small, robust boats with expe­ri­en­ced skip­pers on fine wea­ther days whe­re you can make a slow, care­ful approach.

This is what we did in 2018, and it was exci­ting to have a clo­ser look. Croll­breen was shown with a gla­cier front at the sea on all maps, but it has retrea­ted stron­gly in recent years, so it is not ter­mi­na­ting at the sea any­mo­re, but in a lagoon.

On the north side, the gla­cier front is res­ting on land, so the­re is no steep cal­ving ice cliff any­mo­re.

This makes altog­e­ther for a young, dif­fe­rent land­s­cape, which came into exis­tence only in very recent years due to the retre­at of the gla­cier, wit­nessing the chan­ging cli­ma­te. May­be we were inde­ed the very first peop­le to walk along the beach of the lagoon? You have to be very care­ful when you say that you are the first one to have done some­thing in Spits­ber­gen, but in this case ..? Pos­si­ble, at least. If you have been the­re befo­re, plea­se let me know 🙂

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