Episode 12
A very dreary morning Saturday morning it looked as I peered out the port hole before breakfast. A quick trip to the bridge though boosted my enthusiasm as in front was a massive glacier terminal; this is Samarinbreen. One of the crew told me it was about 2 mile wide (3.2k’s), face up to 50m high.
After breakfast we set out in the zodiacs to get a closer look. Our zodiac was driven by Giles, the doctor on board. He had a close encounter of the glacial kind about a month ago when a massive piece of ice calved off about 150m from the zodiac he was driving and created some huge waves that the zodiac surfed out of the area. It was a very scary moment apparently: Now Giles is not keen to get too close to the ice face.
He gave us a really good trip around and we passed through the massive amount of brash ice. It is made up of thousands of pieces of ice of all sizes and can be very thick so that the zodiacs sort of plough their way through it with much crunching and bending of propeller blades. We saw a bearded seal pop his head up a couple of times and there were a large number of kittiwakes flying around and standing on the ice. Some glaucous gulls too: We cruised around for a long time looking at the ice and the caves and other formations. Every now and again there would be an almighty crash as a piece of ice somewhere along the face would calve off and fall into the water but oddly enough it is not easy to see where this has happened. The sound reverberates around so you can’t tell in which direction it has happened and there is so much broken ice from recent falls. A big iceberg is sitting on a rock; it looks like an ice castle. We made a short landing here and climbed up the rock that is made of silt rock that looks like slates laid vertically side by side. From this vantage point we got a good view over the brash ice and back to the ship. Only a few years ago this island and its ice castle would have been part of the glacier. Some of these glaciers are receding around 200m per year. Back on the ship we could get a good look at the area behind the glacier and could see that many smaller glaciers feed into this one glacier with this massive ice terminal.
From here we cruised along to another big glacier terminal, Hornbreen, and here the ship went is as close as practical and we slowly cruised along its length. On the land just before we got to the glacier a polar bear was spotted but I couldn’t see it. Our lunch was cut short when it was announced that another one had been spotted on a berg. When I made it up to the bridge he was no longer on the berg but swimming along near the ship. We watched him for a couple of minutes then let him go on his merry way. Last seen making his way through some more brash ice: They are very good and powerful swimmers and can swim hundreds of miles.
Later in the afternoon we were going to make another landing at an old trappers hut on Sophiebogen but just before we set off a bear was spotted near the hut. We were in the first zodiac to depart with Adam as our driver. Here there wasn’t only lots of brash ice but lots of shallows and rock islands, the islands are all marble, and so is the rock underneath. A good swell was running too just to make things a little more interesting and some swift currents were flowing over and around the rock that was at or just above water level. We made our way to one outcrop and found a place to put the zodiac into and Adam climber up the rock for a better look at the hut and the bear, well the bear turned out to be a rock, same colour but not as fearsome as the bear. After hearing this we thought the landing would be back on again, still, it was better to have a good look around so we continued on some way further with everyone on the lookout for anything that resembled wild life. Naturally Lyn didn’t contribute very much to that, but I could tell Adam when the water got really shallow as I was sitting right up front. Someone with sharp eyes, not sure who spotted a real bear this time asleep under a rocky overhang. Adam stopped the motor and we drifted in some way and got a really good look at him. After Adam radioed the other drivers they too came over and all went well until the last zodiac arrived and that was one too many for the bear so he upped and strolled off. Negotiating our way around the rock and the brash ice we keep track of him for a long way until he laid down again near the shore. The possibility of doing a landing at the hut one zodiac at a time was discussed with us watching the bear to begin with but I don’t think anyone actually got back to that place before the bear got up and wandered off again and we lost sight of him. The project was then abandoned. At this site there are a lot of small hills, ravines, caves, and even just rocks where a bear can be lying and be impossible to see. Others have been surprised by bears here even though they have looked for them first. We did see a couple of ring seals as we made our way back to the ship. Later in the day I got a good view of one of the many puffins flying about the ship
Two of the kayakers had a mishap on this last outing and overturned when they got caught between the shallow rocks and the brash ice, no one was hurt and they were wearing dry suits but they were still very very cold when they got back on board.
It is now Sunday and our last full day. Looking out from the flying deck I could see a lovely mountain with a sharp peak facing the fjord with very steep slopes, there was some mist over the higher parts and this gave it a very mystical appearance. It was drizzling with rain too, and we had another ship moored near us but couldn’t see anyone from it about. This is Alkehornet:
We climbed once more into the zodiacs and went across to land on the pebbly beach. There is a hut here is excellent repair and smoke coming from the chimney. At present there are a policeman and a scientist staying here. They are patrolling the area in a motorboat checking on the condition of the historical sites and making sure that nothing has been disturbed. This hut is also frequently used by the governor of Svalbard hence its good repair.
The high cliffs at the top are nesting sites for a few species of birds and it is because of this that there is so much good food for the reindeer. The bird dropping leave nutrients on the scree slopes so that mosses and grasses can take root and grow. The slopes that the birds don’t fly over are free of vegetation. Of course, once there is something for the reindeer to graze on, they then leave their droppings and that adds to the nutrients so the vegetation improves.
Some reindeer had been spotted on the slopes and no polar bears in sight so we set off up the slopes to get a closer look at these animals. We were fairly lucky and got reasonably close to them. It was a small herd of 10 to 12 animals. Some big males with lovely ‘racks’ of antlers: Two or three of them had rubbed the velvet off the rack or were in the process of doing so with long bits of the velvet hanging down. Another couple had only just shed all the velvet and their antlers were a very bloody looking red. There was on fellow that hadn’t yet shed any of his velvet. The males shed their velvet at the beginning of the mating season, the rut, after that they will drop the antlers and begin growing new ones for next year. The females who have smaller antlers keep theirs for a further month or so but it isn’t understood why.
A couple of these males were having a bit of a spar their antlers interlocking but their heads never touched as the antlers kept them apart. It seemed to be a bit of a shoving match more than anything. In the group there were a few females too, one with a fawn that had no antlers at all but it stayed very near its mother. It must have been this seasons faun; there was another one that I think was a youngster too but it had very tiny antlers.
The mating season will start very soon, and the fauns are born in March so that they have the summer to grow and become independent. Here they have no enemies; the polar bear leave them alone because they run too fast, too much energy is used trying to catch one. These reindeer are much more stocky and chunky than those we saw in Alaska. They seem to have shorter legs and are a slightly different colour too. Both the Alaskan and Eurasian species have the same Latin name. The ones here are very fat now as it is the end of the summer and they must have enough fat to tide them over the winter months when food is scarce.
After lunch we watched as the ship made its way along Isfjorden to our last landing of the trip. The mountains changed formation, quite suddenly we were in a very old pre-Cambrian land formation with the mountains made up of a great many strata of sediments that have been laid down when this area was around sea level at a latitude similar to that of the Persian Gulf now. The mountains had flat tops, levelled by the ice sheet from the last ice age. The top part was sheer cliffs of maybe 50m with a great many strata of colours from fawn and yellow to orange, brown and even black. These cliffs where deeply eroded with steep gullies fairly evenly placed that gave the cliffs an almost rippled appearance. Below the cliffs the scree slopes are also variegated but with vertical stripes. The bare slopes are the fawn colour but the gullies are darker, tan and brown and red depending on the mosses and grasses growing there, under the bird cliffs the mosses are thicker and greener.
This is an old gypsum mine site. The gypsum was found just a few metres above sea level and was first mined in 1919 but then halted only to be restarted in 1930, but it wasn’t a success then either as the gypsum was found to be of a very poor quality. Much of the infrastructure is still there. The mine shaft has nearly all collapsed just the opening is visible; a the short rail line that ran to the shore on which the bins run, it is now falling apart. An old wooden ship is lying on its side, it was used to ferry the gypsum from the shore to the bigger ship. The fjord is too shallow to bring big ships right up close to shore. A small hut is all equipped with a few items that wouldn’t have been available at the time but we couldn’t go inside just look through the window.
Walking around the beach Eva spotted a fossil lying there, it looked like it was a shell. Further around were some bird cliffs but we found we couldn’t walk all the way as there has been a rock fall blocking the beach and the scree was still trickling down, so we went in the zodiacs round to the cliffs and saw some puffins, the late ones that haven’t left yet. These are funny birds to watch flying, they beat their wings really fast all the time as if they will fall out of the sky if they stop, which they probably would do. Not like the fulmars that glide of the air current.
Now our cruise is practically over, tomorrow morning we will be landing in Longyearbyen. It has been a wonderful cruise even if we didn’t get to see walruses or beluga whales. I really recommend this company, and its an Australian company, Aurora Expeditions. They do both Arctic and Antartci cruises, including one to the Ross ice shelf this coming February, one around Scotland, and are introducing a couple of new ones next year, one around PNG and another around the Kamchatka peninsular. Might look into one of them further:
© Lynette Regan 9th September 2007
A very dreary morning Saturday morning it looked as I peered out the port hole before breakfast. A quick trip to the bridge though boosted my enthusiasm as in front was a massive glacier terminal; this is Samarinbreen. One of the crew told me it was about 2 mile wide (3.2k’s), face up to 50m high.
After breakfast we set out in the zodiacs to get a closer look. Our zodiac was driven by Giles, the doctor on board. He had a close encounter of the glacial kind about a month ago when a massive piece of ice calved off about 150m from the zodiac he was driving and created some huge waves that the zodiac surfed out of the area. It was a very scary moment apparently: Now Giles is not keen to get too close to the ice face.
He gave us a really good trip around and we passed through the massive amount of brash ice. It is made up of thousands of pieces of ice of all sizes and can be very thick so that the zodiacs sort of plough their way through it with much crunching and bending of propeller blades. We saw a bearded seal pop his head up a couple of times and there were a large number of kittiwakes flying around and standing on the ice. Some glaucous gulls too: We cruised around for a long time looking at the ice and the caves and other formations. Every now and again there would be an almighty crash as a piece of ice somewhere along the face would calve off and fall into the water but oddly enough it is not easy to see where this has happened. The sound reverberates around so you can’t tell in which direction it has happened and there is so much broken ice from recent falls. A big iceberg is sitting on a rock; it looks like an ice castle. We made a short landing here and climbed up the rock that is made of silt rock that looks like slates laid vertically side by side. From this vantage point we got a good view over the brash ice and back to the ship. Only a few years ago this island and its ice castle would have been part of the glacier. Some of these glaciers are receding around 200m per year. Back on the ship we could get a good look at the area behind the glacier and could see that many smaller glaciers feed into this one glacier with this massive ice terminal.
From here we cruised along to another big glacier terminal, Hornbreen, and here the ship went is as close as practical and we slowly cruised along its length. On the land just before we got to the glacier a polar bear was spotted but I couldn’t see it. Our lunch was cut short when it was announced that another one had been spotted on a berg. When I made it up to the bridge he was no longer on the berg but swimming along near the ship. We watched him for a couple of minutes then let him go on his merry way. Last seen making his way through some more brash ice: They are very good and powerful swimmers and can swim hundreds of miles.
Later in the afternoon we were going to make another landing at an old trappers hut on Sophiebogen but just before we set off a bear was spotted near the hut. We were in the first zodiac to depart with Adam as our driver. Here there wasn’t only lots of brash ice but lots of shallows and rock islands, the islands are all marble, and so is the rock underneath. A good swell was running too just to make things a little more interesting and some swift currents were flowing over and around the rock that was at or just above water level. We made our way to one outcrop and found a place to put the zodiac into and Adam climber up the rock for a better look at the hut and the bear, well the bear turned out to be a rock, same colour but not as fearsome as the bear. After hearing this we thought the landing would be back on again, still, it was better to have a good look around so we continued on some way further with everyone on the lookout for anything that resembled wild life. Naturally Lyn didn’t contribute very much to that, but I could tell Adam when the water got really shallow as I was sitting right up front. Someone with sharp eyes, not sure who spotted a real bear this time asleep under a rocky overhang. Adam stopped the motor and we drifted in some way and got a really good look at him. After Adam radioed the other drivers they too came over and all went well until the last zodiac arrived and that was one too many for the bear so he upped and strolled off. Negotiating our way around the rock and the brash ice we keep track of him for a long way until he laid down again near the shore. The possibility of doing a landing at the hut one zodiac at a time was discussed with us watching the bear to begin with but I don’t think anyone actually got back to that place before the bear got up and wandered off again and we lost sight of him. The project was then abandoned. At this site there are a lot of small hills, ravines, caves, and even just rocks where a bear can be lying and be impossible to see. Others have been surprised by bears here even though they have looked for them first. We did see a couple of ring seals as we made our way back to the ship. Later in the day I got a good view of one of the many puffins flying about the ship
Two of the kayakers had a mishap on this last outing and overturned when they got caught between the shallow rocks and the brash ice, no one was hurt and they were wearing dry suits but they were still very very cold when they got back on board.
It is now Sunday and our last full day. Looking out from the flying deck I could see a lovely mountain with a sharp peak facing the fjord with very steep slopes, there was some mist over the higher parts and this gave it a very mystical appearance. It was drizzling with rain too, and we had another ship moored near us but couldn’t see anyone from it about. This is Alkehornet:
We climbed once more into the zodiacs and went across to land on the pebbly beach. There is a hut here is excellent repair and smoke coming from the chimney. At present there are a policeman and a scientist staying here. They are patrolling the area in a motorboat checking on the condition of the historical sites and making sure that nothing has been disturbed. This hut is also frequently used by the governor of Svalbard hence its good repair.
The high cliffs at the top are nesting sites for a few species of birds and it is because of this that there is so much good food for the reindeer. The bird dropping leave nutrients on the scree slopes so that mosses and grasses can take root and grow. The slopes that the birds don’t fly over are free of vegetation. Of course, once there is something for the reindeer to graze on, they then leave their droppings and that adds to the nutrients so the vegetation improves.
Some reindeer had been spotted on the slopes and no polar bears in sight so we set off up the slopes to get a closer look at these animals. We were fairly lucky and got reasonably close to them. It was a small herd of 10 to 12 animals. Some big males with lovely ‘racks’ of antlers: Two or three of them had rubbed the velvet off the rack or were in the process of doing so with long bits of the velvet hanging down. Another couple had only just shed all the velvet and their antlers were a very bloody looking red. There was on fellow that hadn’t yet shed any of his velvet. The males shed their velvet at the beginning of the mating season, the rut, after that they will drop the antlers and begin growing new ones for next year. The females who have smaller antlers keep theirs for a further month or so but it isn’t understood why.
A couple of these males were having a bit of a spar their antlers interlocking but their heads never touched as the antlers kept them apart. It seemed to be a bit of a shoving match more than anything. In the group there were a few females too, one with a fawn that had no antlers at all but it stayed very near its mother. It must have been this seasons faun; there was another one that I think was a youngster too but it had very tiny antlers.
The mating season will start very soon, and the fauns are born in March so that they have the summer to grow and become independent. Here they have no enemies; the polar bear leave them alone because they run too fast, too much energy is used trying to catch one. These reindeer are much more stocky and chunky than those we saw in Alaska. They seem to have shorter legs and are a slightly different colour too. Both the Alaskan and Eurasian species have the same Latin name. The ones here are very fat now as it is the end of the summer and they must have enough fat to tide them over the winter months when food is scarce.
After lunch we watched as the ship made its way along Isfjorden to our last landing of the trip. The mountains changed formation, quite suddenly we were in a very old pre-Cambrian land formation with the mountains made up of a great many strata of sediments that have been laid down when this area was around sea level at a latitude similar to that of the Persian Gulf now. The mountains had flat tops, levelled by the ice sheet from the last ice age. The top part was sheer cliffs of maybe 50m with a great many strata of colours from fawn and yellow to orange, brown and even black. These cliffs where deeply eroded with steep gullies fairly evenly placed that gave the cliffs an almost rippled appearance. Below the cliffs the scree slopes are also variegated but with vertical stripes. The bare slopes are the fawn colour but the gullies are darker, tan and brown and red depending on the mosses and grasses growing there, under the bird cliffs the mosses are thicker and greener.
This is an old gypsum mine site. The gypsum was found just a few metres above sea level and was first mined in 1919 but then halted only to be restarted in 1930, but it wasn’t a success then either as the gypsum was found to be of a very poor quality. Much of the infrastructure is still there. The mine shaft has nearly all collapsed just the opening is visible; a the short rail line that ran to the shore on which the bins run, it is now falling apart. An old wooden ship is lying on its side, it was used to ferry the gypsum from the shore to the bigger ship. The fjord is too shallow to bring big ships right up close to shore. A small hut is all equipped with a few items that wouldn’t have been available at the time but we couldn’t go inside just look through the window.
Walking around the beach Eva spotted a fossil lying there, it looked like it was a shell. Further around were some bird cliffs but we found we couldn’t walk all the way as there has been a rock fall blocking the beach and the scree was still trickling down, so we went in the zodiacs round to the cliffs and saw some puffins, the late ones that haven’t left yet. These are funny birds to watch flying, they beat their wings really fast all the time as if they will fall out of the sky if they stop, which they probably would do. Not like the fulmars that glide of the air current.
Now our cruise is practically over, tomorrow morning we will be landing in Longyearbyen. It has been a wonderful cruise even if we didn’t get to see walruses or beluga whales. I really recommend this company, and its an Australian company, Aurora Expeditions. They do both Arctic and Antartci cruises, including one to the Ross ice shelf this coming February, one around Scotland, and are introducing a couple of new ones next year, one around PNG and another around the Kamchatka peninsular. Might look into one of them further:
© Lynette Regan 9th September 2007
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