My mom's visit!

We are always so thrilled to have visitors up here. Not just because we miss our family friends all the time, or because it's good to see new faces up here every once in awhile, but because we want so much to share our experiences up here with every one we love. So you can imagine we were very excited to have our first visitor from Canada. We know it's a very long trip to make (we have first hand experience here a couple times) and definitely not cheap, so we were happy to plan a fun-filled week with my mom while she was here.

First off,  for anyone who has ever been to Svalbard before you may know that it's fairly rare to be able to see Bjørnøya on your flight up and to see all of Svalbard from the plane. My mother had such an experience during her flight. The day that she arrived was the first beautifully, sunny day we had had in a few weeks. Autumn up here can be pretty wet, but for the week of her visit we had mostly sunny days.

I had to work a few of the days while she was here but I was able to meet for lunch everyday, always at Fruene, oh no wait we did meet at UNIS one day for lunch just to switch it up. :)

We took mom out to the Basecamp dog yard where she got to pet all of the stinky dogs and step in lots of dog poop, surprisingly she wasn't very afraid of the dogs and pet almost all of them, even the wild puppies and the grumpier old ones. Almost all the dogs love people and love to be pet by people so they're very friendly. But sometimes they jump because they get really excited you're close, so we all left covered in mud and crap. It was a great trip.

Two of the courses in my department at UNIS were planing a trip to Pyramiden by boat and I was able to sneak mom on the list of participants, so thank you UNIS. We had a beautiful boat trip up to Pyramiden with the guide talking a little bit about trapping history in Svalbard on the trip up.

Once we arrived in Pyramiden we were met by some of the local Russian guides who took us on a little tour of town, they talked about the history of Pyramiden and opened some on the buildings for us to go into. There was the community centre (kulturhuset) and the swimming pool/ training building, and the canteena.

The canteen was a building I hadn't yet been in. It was surprisingly so beautiful! There was a mural made of small glass pieces covering an entire wall. There were old plants that were now dead but had been preserved by the dry air. The kitchen in the back of the building was so massive, I've never been in a kitchen so big before.

We also took a trip out to the bottle house, which is a small building made of glass bottles. On the inside you can see all the bottle necks and the light is really beautiful from the inside.

 This is Nordenskioldbreen across the fjord from Pyramiden, it can be seen from pretty much all of town.

 Once back on the boat we had lunch and heard that there was a polar bear with two cubs on the other side of the fjord close to the Nordenskiold glacier, unfortunately we were not able to go over to see it because the ship cannot get close enough due to the shallow waters and the fog was coming in so we wouldn't be able to see anything. But she was close!

The trip back got to be pretty rough and nearly 80% of the passengers were getting sick, so the few of us who weren't were hiding upstairs trying to get away from all the seasickness. Our guide (and owner of the boat) poured us free aquavit, so we had a very nice trip back to Longyearbyen.

We went out to dinner at almost all of the restaurants, including Mariann's polarrigg (those of you who have never been to Longyearbyen should check out their website - she's a strange lady the owner) and we sat in the "winter garden," the dining room has a roof and one wall made of glass and there are a lot of plants inside. It's such a strange place. The food was really good though, we were all very impressed.

We also went on a little pub crawl around Longyearbyen, it was pretty short lived as it was only mom and myself drinking and we don't take too long to have enough.

We started at Mariann's polarrigg, then went to Karlsberger (the old man whiskey bar, that has no windows and is very small), where I had scotch of some kind (I'm sorry to everyone who cares but I always forget the names). Then we went to Svalbar and had some Norwegian beer. Mine was called Norwegian Wood. So clever.

 On the weekend we went for a pretty long hike,.It started with us making our way up to the top of Sarkofagen. We had amazing weather, with lots of sunshine and hardly andy wind. The view over Larsbreen (the skiing glacier in town) was so beautiful.

Once at the top we saw some rock ptarmigan hanging out Oskar and Ivar were pretty interested in them. And I tried desperately to get some good photos of the two of them chasing these birds. So funny.

 It was a pretty tight top and pretty steep cliffs on either side, but mom did great walking along the path and she even put a rock on top of the pile. The only time she flinched was when I tripped a little on my bag, you can't make sudden movements around her at such great heights!

Then we walked down to the glacier and decided that we weren't tired enough and thought it was a good idea to cross Larsbreen and walk over gruvefjellet. There were about 7 melt water channels on the glacier,  non of which were very deep but we had to jump over them nonetheless, and that was pretty entertaining! Then we walked up to gruvefjellet and across the top. It is a a 3km wide plateau at the top and we were well in from the edge, but the view to the mountains across the fjord is spectacular. When we were almost to the other side, mom spotted some reindeer a little ways away. So we went over for a nice little visit and she was getting so close she could nearly touch them. I had to remind her that yes they are infact wild and please don't try to ride them.

She was also loving the meltwater channels in the glaciers, here she is walking in one in a very small hanging glacier that we walked down, but you should have seen her crossing them on Larsbreen, she was a pro! Watch this; now what do I do.

We then started our very long very steep and unstable footing trek down Vannledningsdalen until we reached our house. We were all a little muddy by the end of the hike and a little tired. Mom's pants were so dirty that she decided to leave them here when she left Longyearbyen instead of taking them home to wash them!

We also finished the visit with a nice night out at Huset. Our friend Sarah who works there took us on a little champagne tasting and mom got to see some of their cellar. Then we had a great many delicious wines to follow along with some limoncello and we finished the night off with a tasty old fashion. Because who doesn't need an old fashion at the end of the night?! All 6 courses of our dinner were delicious, but you've all heard that before :)

Thanks for coming up mom, We're really happy that you were able to make it up to visit and that we got to share some of Svalbard with you.

I know it was a lot of photos and quite a long story, but thanks for sticking it out till the end.
Much love.

Kapp Linné with UNIS

At the beginning of Septemeber I went to Kapp Linné with a hydrology bachelor course from my department at UNIS. As part of their course, they had a 4 day field work trip and as part of my position I was asked to help out with the logistics of the field work.

The week started off with a zodiac boat trip to Isfjord radio at Kapp Linné. I'm sure all of you know by now that Oskar and I love it there! So I was thrilled to join the course field work and stay at this hotel. The weather was not very nice on the trip out, it was raining a little and very windy, there was so much fog on the water that we couldn't see the mountains on the other side of the fjord, but it was a nice trip nonetheless. Once arrived at Isfjord radio we settled in and had lunch (of course the food was delicious) and then we went out for a small hike to a close by river and tried out the field instruments we had brought. We had a nice relaxing evening and headed to bed early.

The next day we left after breakfast and started our hike towards Linnévannet (the lake nearby).

 After two hours we reached the southern point of the lake and it was here that we all broke into our groups and took off to different points in the valley, some groups were continuing on to another lake, others were taking measurements on the river leading into Linnévannet and then my group was continuing on for quite a ways to reach the glacier that fed these lakes. So for another two hours we hiked until we reached the moraine. It was here we stopped and had a nice lunch before trekking up the moraine (not easy walking, as there are just loose sharp rocks cut by the glacier and no vegetation between them to walk on). After an hours walk on the Linné glacier, where the students measured the ablation stakes put there some years ago and marking the GPS coordinates of the front of the glacier, we started our hike back to Isfjord radio. For the better part of the day we had fantastic weather and beautiful views of the Linné valley, it was only the last two hours of our trip where the weather turned a little sour. We had lots of wind (nearly pushing me over) and some rain. Many of us were very tired and I would say the last 6 kilometers were pretty tough. We would start laughing about how we thought our feet hurt 6 kilometers ago, no now they really hurt!

We arrived back at Isfjord radio at 10:30pm after a 38km and 15.5 hour hike. Dinner was very good, and so was the beer!

 There were many river crossings, thank goodness for waterproof hiking boots!

The next day we didn't have any field work to do but we took a 15km hike down the coast to see some walrus that had been spotted there for a couple weeks. We were able to get quite close to the two walrus that were on the beach and it was really nice to see a few more playing in the water. Then it was back to Isfjord radio for lectures and calculations.

 Whale bones.

 Old man walrus with one tooth.

 The weather changes pretty quickly up here. You don't go anywhere without a rain coat in the fall.

The last day we were picked up by zodiac boats and because the wind had really picked up by the time we took off the waves were pretty high and it was a bumpy ride back. Though I would never complain because I can't, I get paid to do this.

Hope you enjoy the photos.

Thanks for reading :)