Top of the world - Amazon S3€¦ · The town has the feel of Klondike gold-rush camp but is also...
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14 Travel August 2007 15 The journey to Svalbard was an experience in itself. The late evening flight from Oslo soon left the darkness of southern Norway behind as the plane flew due north towards the Arctic Circle and into the full glare of the midnight sun. As the plane approached Spitsbergen – the largest island in Svalbard – I looked down on a vista of black volcanic mountains and blindingly-white glaciers. From this far north the plane would have reached the Pole in just over an hour, but instead the pilots change course for the final approach to Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen’s main settlement. Although used to Shetland’s simmer dim nothing had quite prepared me for the 24-hours of sunlight that Svalbard, at 78 degrees north, enjoys for at least four months of the year. We land shortly after midnight but it might as well be midday. Once I have reclaimed my bags from the luggage carousel the first thing I reach for are my sunglasses. I am here to take part in a ten-day glacier-walking expedition and have arrived a couple of days ahead of the rest of the group to have a look around Longyearbyen and its surroundings before the trek gets underway. The town has the feel of Klondike gold-rush camp but is also surprisingly cosmopolitan and thriving. Environmental scientists from around the world rub shoulders in the town’s pubs and cafés with tourists, students and adventure guides. There is a school, a couple of museums, outdoor equipment stores, tourist shops, restaurants, a supermarket, a post-office, a hospital, a sports centre, a cinema and a university. There are even a couple of four- star hotels for those who want a touch of luxury before and after their excursion into the Arctic wilderness. At the town’s only bank a sign asks customers to leave their rifles outside the building. In the middle of the town reindeer can be seen grazing around the brightly-coloured wooden buildings, and Arctic foxes scurry under the network of insulated pipes that connect all buildings to a district-heating scheme fired by the town’s coal mine. The penetrating permafrost means that the town’s plumbing has to be above the ground. The rest of the party – a mixture of couples and singles in their mid-thirties to early-sixties – arrives the following day and we board a boat for the four-hour trip to Petuniabukta, in the heart of Spitsbergen, where we are to set up a base camp. On the way we see a good number of Svalbard’s sea birds, which are surprisingly similar to Shetland’s: guillemots, gulls, puffins, fulmars, kittiwakes, Arctic skuas, terns and eider ducks. From the boat we are shuttled ashore by dinghy along with heavy boxes of supplies. Once the tents are up, our guides Kristin and Henrik set up a tripwire around the camp and brief us on what to do if a hungry polar bear shows up at night. Theoretically, any breach of the tripwire will set off warning flares which should wake us and scare away the bear. If that doesn’t work, the guides are equipped with large-bore rifles and will shoot to kill if necessary. There are believed to be over 3000 bears in Svalbard (slightly higher than the human population of 2500) but in the summer months they tend to follow their natural Top of the world food source – seals – close to the drift and pack ice along Spitsbergen’s northern and eastern coasts. We didn’t see any, but on the last night of the trip an adult bear was shot by a guide some twenty miles from our camp after it got dangerously close to a party of day-trippers on a cruise boat. A photo of its bloody 700-kilo carcass makes it to the front page of the local rag Svalbardposten and, as the polar bear is a protected species, a police inquiry is launched. For the next few days we make a number of progressively harder day walks from our base camp in preparation for a four-day expedition across the Mittag- Lefflerbreen: one of Spitsbergen’s largest glaciers. Each day we walk for around twelve hours and take in the occasional Munro-sized peak, including Tarantallen, a dramatic double-arched pinnacle that resembles a spider which juts out from a nearby mountain ridge. The terrain is tough-going and almost every day involves strenuous glacier and river crossings. Around our camp the low-lying tundra is surprisingly fertile and colourful. A friendly reindeer spends most of his time nearby chomping the vivid mosses, and the stones are covered in bright green and orange lichens and purple saxifrage. One of the easier walks is to the abandoned Russian coal-mining settlement of Pyramiden. Named after the pyramid-shaped mountain above it, which is scarred with rusting mining equipment, the town was home to over a thousand miners until 1998 when the mine was suddenly closed down and the entire population evacuated to Russia. The desolate ghost town is similar to Spitsbergen’s other Russian mining settlement at Barentsburg, which – for the moment anyway – remains open. But the rumour among the Norwegian community is that Barentsburg is no longer economic to mine and is kept open by the Russian authorities for purely territorial reasons. After the First World War the Svalbard Treaty gave control over the archipelago to Norway, and the Soviet Union was given mineral rights which would be hard to re- establish if Russia pulled out completely. The loss of jobs at Pyramiden has been compensated for by the recent opening of a massive new Norwegian-run mine at Sveagruva. Although the melting of the polar icecap has become the most potent symbol of the dangers of global warming, it is a strange paradox that the main source of employment in Spitsbergen remains the mining of fossil fuels. The harshness of the Arctic winters has taken its toll on the state of the buildings in Pyramiden over the last decade and glaucous gulls use the windowsills of the neglected Soviet-style flats as nesting sites. The town had its own kindergarten, primary school, cat’s grave and greenhouses, as well as the world’s most northerly swimming pool, Palace of Culture and statue of Lenin. But the whole settlement is now in danger of being swept away by flood water as the gravel walls which guided rivers around the settlement have burst their banks and there is no-one left to maintain them. The day before our expedition to the Mittag-Lefflerbreen is designated a rest day and our guides insist that a sauna is the best way of preparing for the ordeal. We scour the shores of the bay for an hour or so and eventually find enough wood to start a campfire. Over several hours a large boulder is then heated to boiling point before being carefully transferred into one of the tents, now brought into service as an improvised sauna. The water spits and hisses as it is ladled onto the stone and sulphourous-smelling steam soon fills the tent. When it gets too hot to remain we plunge our gently -poached tingling bodies into the icy cold waters of the Billefjorden. The contrast in temperature from the steaming vapour of the sauna to the near-freezing seawater is a shock to the The Svalbard archipelago is one of the most accessible regions of the High Arctic, and its vast and impassive landscapes are breathtakingly spectacular, as Mark Latham discovered on a glacier trekking expedition last summer. The massive Nordenskiöldbreen which pours into the Billefjorden. Photograph by Mark Latham Our base camp on the shores of Petuniabukta. Photograph by Mark Latham
Transcript of Top of the world - Amazon S3€¦ · The town has the feel of Klondike gold-rush camp but is also...
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TravelAugust 2007 15
The journey to Svalbard was an experience in itself. Thelate evening flight from Oslo soon left the darkness ofsouthern Norway behind as the plane flew due northtowards the Arctic Circle and into the full glare of themidnight sun.
As the plane approached Spitsbergen – the largestisland in Svalbard – I looked down on a vista of blackvolcanic mountains and blindingly-white glaciers. Fromthis far north the plane would have reached the Pole injust over an hour, but instead the pilots change course forthe final approach to Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen’s mainsettlement.
Although used to Shetland’s simmer dim nothing hadquite prepared me for the 24-hours of sunlight thatSvalbard, at 78 degrees north, enjoys for at least fourmonths of the year. We land shortly after midnight but itmight as well be midday. Once I have reclaimed my bagsfrom the luggage carousel the first thing I reach for aremy sunglasses.
I am here to take part in a ten-day glacier-walkingexpedition and have arrived a couple of days ahead of therest of the group to have a look around Longyearbyen andits surroundings before the trek gets underway.
The town has the feel of Klondike gold-rush camp butis also surprisingly cosmopolitan and thriving.Environmental scientists from around the world rubshoulders in the town’s pubs and cafés with tourists,students and adventure guides.
There is a school, a couple of museums, outdoorequipment stores, tourist shops, restaurants, asupermarket, a post-office, a hospital, a sports centre, acinema and a university. There are even a couple of four-
star hotels for those who want a touch of luxury beforeand after their excursion into the Arctic wilderness. At thetown’s only bank a sign asks customers to leave theirrifles outside the building.
In the middle of the town reindeer can be seengrazing around the brightly-coloured wooden buildings,and Arctic foxes scurry under the network of insulatedpipes that connect all buildings to a district-heatingscheme fired by the town’s coal mine. The penetratingpermafrost means that the town’s plumbing has to beabove the ground.
The rest of the party – a mixture of couples andsingles in their mid-thirties to early-sixties – arrives thefollowing day and we board a boat for the four-hour tripto Petuniabukta, in the heart of Spitsbergen, where weare to set up a base camp.
On the way we see a good number of Svalbard’s seabirds, which are surprisingly similar to Shetland’s:guillemots, gulls, puffins, fulmars, kittiwakes, Arcticskuas, terns and eider ducks.
From the boat we are shuttled ashore by dinghy alongwith heavy boxes of supplies. Once the tents are up, ourguides Kristin and Henrik set up a tripwire around thecamp and brief us on what to do if a hungry polar bearshows up at night.
Theoretically, any breach of the tripwire will set offwarning flares which should wake us and scare away thebear. If that doesn’t work, the guides are equipped withlarge-bore rifles and will shoot to kill if necessary.
There are believed to be over 3000 bears in Svalbard(slightly higher than the human population of 2500) butin the summer months they tend to follow their natural
Top of the world
food source – seals – close to the drift and pack ice alongSpitsbergen’s northern and eastern coasts.
We didn’t see any, but on the last night of the trip anadult bear was shot by a guide some twenty miles from ourcamp after it got dangerously close to a party of day-tripperson a cruise boat. A photo of its bloody 700-kilo carcassmakes it to the front page of the local rag Svalbardpostenand, as the polar bear is a protected species, a police inquiryis launched.
For the next few days we make a number ofprogressively harder day walks from our base camp inpreparation for a four-day expedition across the Mittag-Lefflerbreen: one of Spitsbergen’s largest glaciers.
Each day we walk for around twelve hours and take inthe occasional Munro-sized peak, including Tarantallen, adramatic double-arched pinnacle that resembles a spiderwhich juts out from a nearby mountain ridge. The terrain istough-going and almost every day involves strenuousglacier and river crossings.
Around our camp the low-lying tundra is surprisinglyfertile and colourful. A friendly reindeer spends most of histime nearby chomping the vivid mosses, and the stones arecovered in bright green and orange lichens and purplesaxifrage.
One of the easier walks is to the abandoned Russiancoal-mining settlement of Pyramiden. Named after thepyramid-shaped mountain above it, which is scarred withrusting mining equipment, the town was home to over athousand miners until 1998 when the mine was suddenlyclosed down and the entire population evacuated to Russia.
The desolate ghost town is similar to Spitsbergen’s otherRussian mining settlement at Barentsburg, which – for themoment anyway – remains open. But the rumour amongthe Norwegian community is that Barentsburg is no longereconomic to mine and is kept open by the Russianauthorities for purely territorial reasons.
After the First World War the Svalbard Treaty gavecontrol over the archipelago to Norway, and the SovietUnion was given mineral rights which would be hard to re-establish if Russia pulled out completely.
The loss of jobs at Pyramiden has been compensated forby the recent opening of a massive new Norwegian-runmine at Sveagruva. Although the melting of the polaricecap has become the most potent symbol of the dangersof global warming, it is a strange paradox that the mainsource of employment in Spitsbergen remains the miningof fossil fuels.
The harshness of the Arctic winters has taken its toll onthe state of the buildings in Pyramiden over the last decadeand glaucous gulls use the windowsills of the neglectedSoviet-style flats as nesting sites. The town had its ownkindergarten, primary school, cat’s grave and greenhouses,as well as the world’s most northerly swimming pool,Palace of Culture and statue of Lenin. But the wholesettlement is now in danger of being swept away by floodwater as the gravel walls which guided rivers around thesettlement have burst their banks and there is no-one left tomaintain them.
The day before our expedition to the Mittag-Lefflerbreenis designated a rest day and our guides insist that a sauna isthe best way of preparing for the ordeal.
We scour the shores of the bay for an hour or so andeventually find enough wood to start a campfire. Overseveral hours a large boulder is then heated to boiling pointbefore being carefully transferred into one of the tents, nowbrought into service as an improvised sauna.
The water spits and hisses as it is ladled onto the stoneand sulphourous-smelling steam soon fills the tent. Whenit gets too hot to remain we plunge our gently -poachedtingling bodies into the icy cold waters of the Billefjorden.The contrast in temperature from the steaming vapour ofthe sauna to the near-freezing seawater is a shock to the
The Svalbard archipelago is one of the most accessible regions of the High Arctic,and its vast and impassive landscapes are breathtakingly spectacular,
as Mark Latham discovered on a glacier trekking expedition last summer.
The massive Nordenskiöldbreen which pours into the Billefjorden. Photograph by Mark Latham
Our base camp on the shores of Petuniabukta. Photograph by Mark Latham
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TravelAugust 2007 17
system but we joyfully huddle back to the sauna and repeatthe process a couple more times.
I normally associate saunas with spas and luxury hotels.To have one in the middle of the Arctic tundra was a trulyelemental and invigorating experience.
The next day we set off with heavy overnight packs forthe Mittag-Leffler glacier. It should have been the highlightof the trip but low cloud descends almost as soon as we setfoot on the Ragnarbreen, the first of the glaciers that wecross that day. To make matters worse one of the groupwho is not used to wearing crampons has a sore foot and isat the end of her tether.
Soon after reaching the Mittag-Lefflerbreen I feel asharp yank on the rope as the woman ahead of me falls
through a snow bridge into a crevasse. I unsuccessfullyattempt to plunge my ice axe into the hard blue ice of theglacier but the rope and the combined weight of 13 peoplehas taken the weight. A quarter of an hour later, aftersetting up an elaborate pulley mechanism, Kristin andHenrik manage to pull a bruised and shivering Gillian outof the crevasse and we resume our slow plod across theglacier.
After twelve hours of walking in freezing fog weeventually clamber on to a nunatak called Heclastakken inthe middle of the glacier where we set up an advancedcamp. The rocky outcrop is in the middle of a five-milewide sea of ice surrounded by dark, brooding mountains.
When the mist clears we get tantalising glimpses of thesurrounding mountains, whose strangely stratified andpointed peaks give Spitsbergen its name. In the distance isNewtontoppen. At 1717 metres it is the highest mountain inSvalbard.
The plan had been to spend the next couple of daysbagging a few peaks, but the next day Marisa’s foot showsno signs of recovery. Our guides use a satellite phone tosummon a helicopter but the thickening fog makes arescue mission impossible.
There’s nothing else for it and we decide to abandon theexpedition. We pack our tents and re-trace our steps acrossthe glacier back to base camp, which we reach shortlybefore midnight. Dinner is served in the early hours of themorning.
A couple of days later the boat from Longyearbyenarrives in the bay to pick us up for the journey back to
The woman ahead of me on the rope as we crossed the Mittag-Leffler glacier falls into a crevasse. Mountain guides Kristin and Henrikeventually managed to pull her out.
Photograph by Mark Latham
Our base camp was a four-hour boat ride from Longyearbyen.Our equipment, including rifles to ward off polar bears, was thentransferred to shore by dinghy. Photograph by Mark Latham
The northernmost bust of Lenin and me in the abandoned Russianmining settlement of Pyramiden.
Useful websites: Svalbard Tourism: www.svalbard.netUK trekking company High Places organises 13-daysummer expeditions to Spitsbergen from £1670, notincluding flights: www.highplaces.co.ukGetting there: SAS operates daily scheduled flights toSpitsbergen and flies from Oslo and Tromsø. Budgetairline Norwegian is to resume flights from Oslo toLongyearbyen from March 2008.
Worth getting hold of before you go:Spitsbergen, Franz Josef Land andJan Mayen by Andreas Umbreit.Third edition, published inpaperback by Bradt Travel Guidesat £14.99.
This recently-updated andcomprehensive 288-page book bypolar travel expert andLongyearbyen resident AndreasUmbreit is the only general guidespecifically about Svalbard. It alsohas chapters on the even moreremote Arctic territories of Franz Josef Land and JanMayen. The book includes separate sections aboutSvalbard’s geography, geology, climate, flora, fauna andhistory and is a mine of practical information on touroptions, accommodation and travel.
civilisation. After ten days in the wilderness the simplepleasure of a hot shower has never seemed so beguiling.Once we have scrambled on board the Langøysund, theship’s crew prepares a delicious barbecue with Norwegianpancakes and ice cream for desert.
On the way back to Longyearbyen our boat passes closeto cliffs of nesting seabirds as well as the massiveNordenskiöld glacier, which calves into the fjord on theopposite side of the bay from our camp. As the boatapproaches the 100ft-high sheer ice wall of the glacier amuffled cracking noise rends the air and a sizeable chunk ofice from the glacier crashes into the sea.
The ship’s barman scoops up some of the thousand-year-old ice from the sea and mixes it with evening cocktailswhich are served on deck to celebrate the end of the tour. Asthe fulmars dart their way past the bows of our boat wesavour our gin and tonics and toast the guides for bringingus to this magical place.
Mark Latham
