It's -7 degrees today – but with the wind chill it manages to be -38 degrees, which explains why I felt so cold walking back this afternoon. With the recent snowfall and the strong winds the topsnow is blown up and around, making every nuance of the moving air visible. Caught by the dusk and the street lamps, with the wind moaning and whispering around us as we walk up the valley, it's very beautiful.
Monday 25th February
Longyearbyen – the world's most northern town
Now, sitting as I am in front of a computer, lamenting the loss of the previous diary entry due to rtf formatting, I decided to browse Wiki. It turns out that as Longyearbyen is the world's most northern town it has many of the worlds most northern things... from cash machines to sports facilities to statues to banks. It's kinda cool.
Also, it turns out that it was named after a guy called John Longyear – and not, as I imagined after the glacier, which I figured was discovered before the town. Byen, as it turns out, is Norwegian for town – not by as I'd imagined.
The town, you see, is in the valley formed by Longyear, which currently resides just a little further up the valley than our barracks. In fact, just above Nybyen lies an intersection between two glaciers; the larger Longyearbreen and the smaller tributary glacier Larsbreen. Between the two, marking this intersection is a mountain known as Sarkofagen – and on Saturday we decided to climb it.
There was a surprising amount of people, especially since we set off at 9am. As Damien rightly suggested, the safest thing to do was to split up into smaller groups of maybe 4/5 people for safety reasons. So with a rifle per group, we split into 4 smaller ones – although we tended to merge slightly along the way.
We took the left side of the mountain, walking up Larsbreen glacier and following the contour back until it met the ridge – hoping to walk along it. We then 'planned' to walk back along the ridge and down the other side of the mountain, so that we came down along Longyearbreen.
I was out of breath before we reached the bottom of the Larsbreen moraine, which boded badly. I also have very little mountain climbing experience.
Luckily, Joe and Nick had uber-boots – and so could kick through the icy coating of some of the steeper slopes and make holes we could follow. The worst ascent was in fact the first, as we climbed the terminal morraine of Larsbreen.
On the way up we heard the barking of what was most likely an arctic fox – though 'barking' is probably the wrong word. It's actually the first sign of life I've had since I got here – discounting the pixel reindeer.
After we'd reached the relatively flatter surface of the glacier proper it was relatively less work – until the final ascent to the ridge. It seemed to take forever – but once we reached the top it opened into a surprisingly flat and relatively wide ridge – with amazing views of the surrounding mountains and the Longyear valley.
The snow was deceptively deep in places, and icy in some parts. A reindeer darted in front of us about 100metres ahead, which was quite surprising. The ridge got rapidly thinner as we walked along it, and we had to keep to the centre. The snow sloped up to the right, blown by the wind into an overhang. To the left, the bare rock had been exposed, blown clean of snow, shiny with ice. This meant the safest course was straight through the centre.
Once we reached as far was possible to the end of the ridge though the views were amazing – you could see right down the valley to Longyearbyen.
The walk back down to Longyear was much easier. We travelled down in a fine curve, walking along the top of Longyear and sliding down the terminal morraine. It was excellent. Another Wiki-gleaned fact is that the town was pretty much destroyed in World War II, and had to be rebuilt – maybe due to the economic importance of the mines...
This explains, possibly, the debris we saw down the mountains, in some places though I guess this could also be explained by avalanches. It was an awesome day, all told.
I saw a small footprint on the way back, though I'm not sure what animal made it. Another sign of life out here though. Actually this morning there were two reindeer grazing just behind our barracks – though I have no idea what on!
Thursday 21st February
How to dress for the Arctic winter…
Well, ok so maybe this journal won't be updated exactly daily... but to be honest, the days are settling into a strange kind of pattern so it would be boring to go through the same stuff every time.
Well, when I say 'days' I mean three days but still... Monday was the first day when our official lectures began. The routine is this: get up around 7.30am, set off to UNIS about 8.30am to arrive for 9.15am.
Lectures occur from 9:15am to 11:30am (with a short break in between) and from 1:15pm to whenever we finish. Essentially this is around 4pm/5pm-ish – though on Tuesday I didn't get back here till 7.30pm, so there's a degree of variability.
Wednesday is special – it's excursion day! We will hopefully have one excursion a week – initially to places a short distance away (say an hour or so scooter-ride) and then to places quite a long way away, which will take a few hours of scootering to get there. Weather permitting of course...
Now, before I jump into the tale of this week’s excursion I just want to fill you in on a couple of things I thought you might be interested in.
For example – how we get around the whole -25degree-ish temperature thingy. Essentially, this is done through wearing many layers.
Your base layer is like a pair of tight-fitting pajamas, made of fine wool. On top of those – if it's really cold – you'd wear another pair of trousers (jeans, tracksuit bottoms, etc) and then you'd wear salapets (really thick wind-proof insulated trousers) on top of that. Then you have a couple pairs of thick socks and walking boots under that. On top of the thermal top I mentioned you'd wear a thermal polo top (again, only if it's really cold) then a microfleece.
On top of that you then wear your thermal windproof jacket. Then of course you have a couple of pairs of gloves – in my case a thin cheap pair, then a base layer glove then the proper glove on top of that if it's uber-cold. Then a hat, and a face masky thing – incredibly useful when there's wind. Wind is cold!
Now, the thing about putting on that many layers when you're inside is you become extremely hot very quickly. Whilst this proves your clothes are working, it's always a relief to go outside into the cool air. Which is not something you'd think would be the case really – but hey. And when you come inside you have to take everything off, which can be a problem.
All buildings have cloakroom places for boots, some – like UNIS – have a place for coats. But in most cases you have to take off your boots, coat, hat, face-mask/balaclava, gloves, backpack and (in my case) camera and then carry these around with you while you go.
Occasionally you can dump glove-like things in your backpack – but that's generally full of extra layers, thermoses, tripods etc. This is like asking to lose things – though I've only lost one thing so far which I'm hoping will turn up. But it's still something to consider, and I thought an interesting aspect of life here you may have wanted to know about.
So... excursion one.
It was to a glacier called ScottTurnerBreen, named (unsurprisingly) after a guy called Scott Turner. Breen is Norwegian for glacier. Our lectures for this week are about the mass balance of a glacier, which is essentially calculating 'what goes in' vs 'what comes out'. If more goes in it’s accumulation and the glacier grows, if less it's ablation and the glacier shrinks.
We were going up to this glacier to measure its mass balance. We were traveling via combination of skidoo-pulled sleds and a big tank-like thing that can travel across anything but only at 20kmh. On the way there I was lucky enough to be in the front of the tank thingy where it was quite warm! I actually fell asleep – but then I do so in most moving vehicles – and the window was blocked by the snow pulled up from the treads as the wagon moved along.
Behind this there were the 4-stroke scooters (driven by us) pulling three sleds with 4/5 people on each. It was very cool – though some of the scooters had trouble on the steeps hills and got driven in or tipped over.
When we reached the glacier there were two reindeer on the slope of a nearby hill. Unfortunately, they weren't that near.
It was hard to pick out the glacier when everything else was covered in snow. Only a brief rocky interlude on the slope signaled the terminal moraine and if you looked at the slopes you could maybe pick out the lateral ones...
It was about -16degrees with few winds although it did start snowing considerably later on. We were lucky – Monday was cold and windy and Adam said the wind-chill made it almost -40 degrees which is kinda scary. (No wonder my face was cold on the way back to Nybyen!).
Once we'd reached the glacier we split into three groups. Two would perform the readings on the surface and the other would go in the ice-cave... and we'd rotate.
Taking measurements involved digging large holes in the snow. Basically we were digging down until we reached the previous summer surface, which you cold generally spot quite easily because it was a layer of hard ice.
The holes were about a metre and a half to two metres deep. It was quite hard going, though Adam and Damien dug much more of our hole than I did. After the hole was dug we'd take temperature measurements from the snow down the section, both which should increase with depth. It was quite cool – though rapidly becoming freezing when a snow-cloud settled over us and made everything white.
Luckily, just as we'd finished most of the measurement-taking our group was called to go in the ice cave – so off we went.
Damien said, "Man it's gonna be hot in that cave - it's gonna be minus one or something!"
Indeed, it was lovely and warm inside the ice cave. This would be a cave inside a glacier, which is not something I had considered existing before, but is totally cool. It formed when a melt-water stream on the surface of the glacier eroded downwards, then the top got covered in snow and ice.
The only way we could access it was through a hole in the surface of the glacier, with a kinda igloo like structure built on top of it. Once we'd donned hard hats and got little head-torches, we descended down the various ladders, which is no mean feat in a scooter-suit by the way, and our surroundings were transformed.
I don't know if any of you have ever been caving, though I imagine you've seen some of those nature programmes which show limestone caves... An ice cave is amazingly similar, but made of ice. And before the profoundness of that statement hits you, I want you to consider icicles instead of stalactites and stalagmites, white walls glistening like they're covered in a million tiny diamonds, semitransparent silk-smooth walls... floors spread like glass beneath you.
You couldn't walk, and if you slipped there was nothing you could grab onto on the walls for support. If you knocked your head on the ceiling you were met with a pretty tinkling of breaking icicles.
In the many places you had to crawl. It would take five minutes to travel five metres as your hands and feet slipped beneath you with nothing to grip onto to pull yourself forward.
Compared to the precarious nature of walking it was by far the fastest option, though it made it difficult to see ahead. Sometime you really had to lie along the floor and crawl army-style along it until it became high enough again to kneel.
It did occur to me sometimes how scary it would be if the batteries died in my head torch. It was small compared to most of the others and if somebody rounded a corner ahead of me, the light really dimmed. It would of course be pitch black without them.
Sometimes, when the walls were thin and high, the best way to walk was to actually lean against the walls for support. On the way back, coming down some of the gradients we'd walked up, the best method of travel was to slide, which was brilliant. Many people slipped over. When rounding a corner the floor would slope upwards gently.
Imagine if you took a photo of a river, with little undulations. It was like that but glassy smooth... anyhow I managed to slip, spin and end up on my back, which was quite funny. I was low enough to the ground not to hurt myself. It was like rolling over... The other time the guy behind me slipped and just took my legs out from beneath me. We were both ok, and though I landed hard I just bruised my elbow.
The formations were amazing. The walls were ribbed because of the dripping water, and some of the icicles were shaped like fins. They were huge too. The winding passages sometimes opened out, with huge chandeliers of ice above our heads and along the walls.
In one place the narrow passage opened to the left high up to reveal another cave that went far back into blackness. In places there were layers of sediments, strange and rough compared the ice and a welcome grip for walking.
The ice itself was crystal clear; when you knelt you could see the 'bed' of the stream, beneath maybe two inches of glassy ice. The walls and floor were the same... it was amazing. The end of the cave was a small frozen waterfall, rising five metres above us then continuing back. These drops apparently punctuate these kinds of caves. It was awesome.
Unfortunately, the temperature gradient within the cave meant my camera fogged up, which was very annoying.
We emerged from the cave to find a group of dogsleds and huskies. Longyear has a fairly impressive tourist industry, and though there's an ice cave near Longyear it's a little wet and had been damaged by the many tourists who go there.
Another option is to be taken with dog-sleds up here and then led through the caves, which is what these people were doing. They went into the caves just after our third group, leaving the dogs and the sleds just sitting there on the snow. I went up kinda close to take some pictures - but I didn't go to close because I didn't want to excite them and make them think they were getting ready to go again.
This turned out to be an excellent plan, as when some of the tourists emerged the air was filled with the exited barks and squeals and yelps of 20-odd exited huskies demanding to run.
After some husky pictures and final measurements, it was time for both us and the huskies to leave. The light was fading fast, and though the snow had stilled a little the wind was back.
I rode in one of the sledges on the way back, which was actually really fun – if cold with the wind. My face-mask had a hole in it. I could feel the cold of the wind against my face as we were waiting to leave.
Sledding was cool. The sleds quite simple constructions, frames and seats and a little suspension. So it was necessary to brace if the sled went over ruts in the tracks or rocks and things and often impossible to see them coming. You also had to be careful to lean on slopes to prevent the sled tipping over. It was however very very cool!
My outer gloves had actually frozen solid in the snow, and my inner ones were wet from the ice caves and the melting power of my hands. After the hour-ish ride back, I was definitely ready for the warmth of indoors, and the orange glow of Longyear was very welcoming. It's amazing how much the colour stood out even after those few hours in the monotone of the glacier and the snow. It was an awesome trip. Now I can say I've been inside a glacier, which is just awesome!
It is also worth noting this – there was a factor 6 earthquake last night, about 100ish miles away - and I slept through it…
I actually woke up about half an hour before it happened (about 4am), so by the time it started I must have been in a deep sleep. Damien also slept through it and Anne said it took 10 minutes of shaking before she woke.
But seriously, people were talking abut the shaking walls and things falling off their shelves; beds banging against the walls... everything.
This would be notable on its own, but it's even better because of the seed vault.
Next week they're opening the 'seed vault' – a place they're putting all the seeds in the world to keep them safe incase there's a nuclear war or for posterity something. We actually passed the place on the way up to the shooting range on Thursday. Essentially, they're put here in Svalbard because it's meant to be safe – and then there's a factor 6 earthquake a week before it opens!
Oh, and another piece of fun for you… There was a Polar bear spotted near Longyear. It was in fact spotted by a (proper) dogsled team, as they were on the shores opposite the town. That would be pretty much where we took the scooters last Friday.
The dogsled team had apparently circled in order to avoid it, only to return (eventually) to where they had started and find the Polar bear's tracks following their own... scary!