Spitzbergen via Norway - Longyearbyen Page

The hiking day. I got up at 07:15 & Avis, who’s hike did not leave until 11, somewhat later. I booted up & we were bussed to the end of the road heading South out of Longyearbyen. Then, there was glacier gravel for a short way & a large wash with many streams, some of them quite fast, as it had been raining recently. This, we had to cross. We were accompanied by three guides with 7.62mm (half-inch) rifles & two with dogs, one of which was a fractious bitch & not his. Later on the glacier, I had quite chat to him about the differences from Alpine conditions, which were considerable. The guides did chuck extra rocks into some of the streams to help people get across but these were often ‘rock n roll’.

Negotiating the wash

Looking back to Longyearbyen

A Local

We slogged up & down moraine until we got to a flattish patch just below the glacier. There were fossils there & we had a hunt, which I suspected was a way of resting us.

Crummy crumbly moraine	Very little plant life
Fossil plant leaf	The edge of the glacier	One of our guides/guards

Then, after crossing the glacier exit stream, we went out onto the shallow snout of this stagnant glacier & wandered up it for a bit. We turned round & started back the way we had come.

Ken on the glacier

Party on the Longyearbyen Glacier

Coming off the glacier

Above the wash, we stopped & were served tea or coffee & smoked raw seal meat on thin Norwegian bread with sour cream. This was all right. The ship's escort was Mark Shortland, the Magician, who did a card trick during this but I noticed that he had ‘sat down’ somewhere, probably while helping people across a dodgy place, of which there were many! Some people had more difficulty with the wash going back, as it had even more water in it but it was a short walk back to the road. Some of us elected to walk back to the ship, in order to see more of Longyearbyen. This took about an hour & Longyearbyen is no way an attractive place. There was evidence of the mining around & the last major building is the coal-fired power station. Amundsen tied his airship up to the mast, now a listed building. I was back to the ship in time for some lunch, though.

The Arctic Walk

Avis did this. They were driven West to a sort of gravel desert, close to the sea & with a river running through it. Everyone in Longyearbyen is armed & the guides were two girls with dogs & muskets. Because it is pre-1946, the crashed German aeroplane is a heritage item. There were some flowers struggling through the gravel, over which the party rambled for 90 minutes.