Day 8 – The free day. Part 2

[… continued …]

Reindeer

Reindeer

The three of us follow the road further. Only footmarks and tracks of snowmobiles are visible on the road. The old road goes along the flat top of a steep hill, and the new road goes a couple of meters above the sea level. In the middle there is the old trolly line. The weather is fine, sunny, there is no wind, only quite a frost. On our way we meet several of the Svalbard’s distinctive reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus)

After some time the airport is visible, and we are heading uphill. On our way a big bus passes us and it is soon followed by a minivan which stops and we are asked if we’re fine and where we are going without a guide. the woman reminds us that it is not the best idea to wander around ourselves, but also says that there haven’t been any polar bears seen in this area. We continue our journey, soon the entrance of the seed vault is visible, and Juris is already excited. Juris goes straight to the door, me and Agnese go along the road and stop at the sign “Svalbard Global Seed Vault”.

Seed vault

Seed vault

We are there now, the entrance is a big concrete building with steel door at the top of which there are many triangle-shaped tablets made out of bright metal and at the front of which there is a short metal grid bridge. We drink some tea, eat some sandwiches and head back to the town. We meet on the way the same reindeer, this time they are crossing the road. A bit further on we find another Geocache which surprised me with its originality. It was not hard to find as it was hanging in a ceramic bowl, and I marveled that it was still intact.

We get back to the trolly sorting station, and the kicksled are still here. Agnese sat down and we were sliding down the hill. I have not managed to learn to control them as well as some other guys. They are as a chair on rails which are extended backwards, on which one is standing and controlling the sledge. At the junction we switch places, but Juris meanwhile crossed the slope straight across the snow and soon was at the bottom of the hill. Me and Agnese pick up the speed. The road has a bend which was driven along perfectly by her, and behind us a car followed with a normal speed. That was such an experience!

On our way we stop by the same store to use the internet. The post cards here are cheaper than in the post office – 7NOK. In addition I eye some souvenirs and playing cards for my collection. Soon after that we are back home where we will be staying the last night. Some are already home, some others still out.

We find out from Anders that a polar bear has attacked Czech tourists. Later we find out a more precise information from Maija. In the morning the polar bear had looked inside a tent, taken one guy by its hand and dragged outside. Everyone had been surprised as the scaring device around the tent had not worked. They had shot with a revolver (as far as I understand they didn’t have a guide), but that only could injure the bear. The polar bear had run away and later people were following its tracks to kill it as an injured bear is dangerous. Since the new scaring devices are not always working, those who still have the old Norwegian army scaring devices which are no longer produced, keep them as treasure as those are said to be very reliable. Also the university is looking for better alternatives for such cases but so far they have not succeeded.

Lecture

Lecture

Juris is preparing to go to a museum and eats lunch before us. We are preparing our food and later will go to the same (university) building to attend a lecture about the Solar eclipse. On our way we meet Alīna and Edgars, who are coming from their guesthouse. Soon we are there. Also here we need to take off our shoes at the entrance, and then inside one can walk around in socks or slippers. The building itself is big and spacious. The auditory is already crowded, some have been timely to take the seats, some are looking for a place along the sides. We were warned that it’s not allowed to sit on the side-stairs due to fire safety rules. Then we find a place at the very front on the floor and find out that the 2 empty seats are free, so we quickly occupy those. From the middle I am passed my camcorder which I had given them from the side to film the lecture. Since I am in the front now, I will film everything from the front so that the talks get recorded better.

The following topics are looked at in the lecture: The safety measures for observing the Sun, how to observe it, how to use the eclipse glasses; which camera setup to use at certain eclipse moments; The structure of the Sun and the principles of its activity. We also found out about the Sun spots, magnetic storms and how the auroras originate. As one of the lecturers said, the greatest dream would be to see the total Solar eclipse here and an around an aurora. The lecture was cool, after it there was a time for questions and answers to them. At the reception there are eclipse glasses which we can get for free.

We head home and find another kicksled, and are pushing it to home as well so that it would be easier to move the bags in the morning. Kristīne un Everita have decided to go to sauna which is located close to our home.

Meanwhile I have firmly decided to photograph stars tonight and to try to catch the Iridium satellites which will fly over shortly before 2am, one soon after the other. At the same time maybe it will be possible to take a photo of aurora. Also others are interested, but they are going to sleep and asking to be woken up if the sky will be clear.

Before 2am Agnese decided to go outside to take a look, and came back with bad news that nothing is visible above. A shame, have to leave out photographing of Svalbard’s sky, but it is likely that I’ll come here again some day. Then we go to sleep, after all the greatest event of this trip which we came here for – the total Solar eclipse -, is happening in the morning! We hope for the best weather and that no clouds will interfere with viewing this phenomenon.
Good night!

Day 8 – The free day. Part 1

19.03.2015
The first morning in the new home. Juris quietly wakes me up and bit by bit we start to get ready for going to the seed vault. While we’re heating water and preparing breakfast the others are waking up one by one.

Also Maija who is hosting us, is up. We talk about many things, then I ask her whether she has seen a polar bear at all -? She replied affirmative and told that she had faced one in summer – some weeks after starting the studies here. They had gone to camp in groups outside the town as part of the studies and the polar bear had woken them up in the morning by starting the alarm system. But that didn’t scare the polar bear, and it continued to search for food. The had fired a flare gun which doesn’t hurt the bears, just to scare them off, but that hadn’t helped and it had continued with scavenging and eating. As a result they had fired 17 of the flare guns! Soon the helicopter appeared which they had called out and that finally scared of the polar bear who run away. Everyone got through unharmed but with a big shock and experience. It had been very serious but now it’s possible to tell with a smile on. She said that some people who have been living here for a long time haven’t seen any polar bear, some spot one occasionally, and others meet one soon after arriving here. To see a polar bear is a rare happening and to get attacked by one is even rared.

Me, Agnese and Juris are preparing for a long walk to the seed vault along the old road which is accessible to snowmobiles and pedestrians (armed as it’s outside the town). Anders will also come with us till some moment and then will leave for his own errands in the town. Also the others have their own plans. Some are walking in the town, some are resting – this is the free day, so everyone can do whatever they want.

We will visit the post and the supermarket before going to the seed vault as it has a free wifi. Using the internet Agnese does the things she wants to do in time and Juris is also using the opportunity. Meanwhile I browse the shops. I’m curious on what is on offer here for an active lifestyle. While exploring the shop I concluded that here is almost everything that would be needed to be in winter freeze and summer. Diverse equipment is available starting from cutlery to mountaineering. The clothes are offered in a good variety. There is also Hero Go pro camera and its accessories. If one doesn’t have special requests, one can come here without almost anything and come here to shop, but there is one “but” – the price. The price is as in Norway, but there is also a positive side to it – there are no taxes included in the price since there are no taxes here. If one has a lot of money, it is possible to go on shopping spree. It is more complicated with the alcoholic drinks as you can only buy a limited amount. If you have arrived by plane, you can present your ticket to buy some, but the locals are given a special card to mark how much you have bought.

Agnese finished to use the internet and I to browse the shops. We are going to the post and find out the prices for the post cards. Tomorrow they are issuing a special stamp in honour of the Solar eclipse. The stamp will cost 20NOK.

The northern-most sundial

The northern-most sundial

The four of us are going to the seed vault and pushing the acquired kicksled. We cross a bridge and go to see the sundial which is the northern-most and showing time the entire day when it’s the midnight sun here. The time of the sundial matches that of the mobile phone. We sign in the guest book, take many pictures of the sundial and check on how it is here with the shadow of the mountain and where we should observe the eclipse. We concluded that the place is good and it should be possible to see the eclipse between two mountains.

We are heading for the old road and see an old snow bulldozer as well as a cable trolly which has been put out for public to see. Soon we notice on a wall of a building something familiar from one of the previous eclipse trips – an Australian road sign with a kangaroo! It’s not so hot here, however, and there are no kangaroos either.

Cable trollies

Cable trollies

Then we stop at the old sorting place of the cable trollies which come from four directions and the old stanchions are still standing in their places. That’s the history of mining that is kept here as historical heritage, and the old houses are not allowed to be pulled down either. A part of the sections with cables and trolleys is preserved. There is also a GeoCache here. For some time we are looking for it by the description where it should be located, but soon after we find it a bit further away. Meanwhile Anders takes photos. He is not coming further and will go back to the town.
[… to be continued…]

Day 5. The mountain, the cave and the canyon.

16.03.2015
The morning started similarly to the last 2 ones – with guys leaving the guesthouse at about 7:15am to eat breakfast in the building across the street and ladies following them at around 7:45am. It is worth to get up that early even when the trip of the day starts at 10am – the sooner after 7am you go, the more food choices for the breakfast you have.

At 10am Katja is looking for all the hikers. There will be 7 of eclipse-tour team and 2 other people from the guesthouse next doors. But she only manages to find one of them – we will later learn that the other one has not arrived yet due to plane not flying in last nights’ storm.

Today we will have 2 four-pawed companions as the lady who is joining us is taking her dog Santos along. And Katja’s dog Miro is coming as well, of course. We pick up a flask with hot water for each of us and choose a type of “space” food for the lunch on the hill. Our guys were nice enough to put the girl’s flasks in their bags as well. :)

We start the same way as 2 days ago – across a frozen river, up a hill, only to learn that we will need to do that once again because Kristīne has decided to turn back for health reasons and we need to escort her back to the polar-bear safe area within town’s boundaries. We are fine as our guide has a rifle, but Kristīne obviously doesn’t have one.

Meanwhile I had found a brilliant technique to get up the hill – just need to look down all the time (easy with hood covering the sides) and imagine that it is flat. All the strength needed to move the feet would come (in my imaginary world) from lifting the foot with the snowshoe out of the snow. This worked the best when there was somebody walking in front of me as then it was even easier to disregard the slope because of the embossed footprints.

We went higher and higher, and the view backwards got better and better. On the contrary to our first hiking day now there was no fog and no snow falling. After a brief time of walking over some rather flat snow field at the top of one hill we arrived at a steeper slope. At the top of that we could see the natural stone construction which gives the name to this mountain – Trollsteinen. At this point the wind had picked up and it got harder to walk up. The higher we got, the stronger was the wind blowing. During the strongest gusts all we could do was to stay with our backs against the wind and support ourselves with the walking poles. We got to a place where the ridge narrowed and decided to turn back. It would not be safe or smart to continue in this wind and some of us had started to get cold.

The walking down was much faster but not much easier due to the steepness of the slope. Only Alīna and Edgars seemed to not notice the decline and were going arm in arm like a married couple on a very casual walk. At one point I decided that going down on one’s bottom should be much faster. I figured out how to not let the spikes of the snowshoes touch the ground and soon had caught up with everyone. Unfortunately I hadn’t fastened my gaiters before that and got some unwanted and cold snow in the boots.

Then we arrived at two red poles which marked an entrance into an ice cave. Katja shoveled of a layer of snow from the covering board and soon we were one by one sliding in a hole. Nobody except Katja knew how deep it is and whether it’s possible to get out again. A few metres down and we were in a narrow but long cave with ice walls. A good place for lunch – the “space” lunch from pouches again.

After the lunch Katja decided on a different route down. We went inside a small canyon, an amazingly beautiful one. I wanted to take pictures every time I went around a corner. The canyon alone would have been worth a climb up! Some skiers were going down as well, worked much faster for them.

Some more oh-s and ah-s in the canyon and then we’re back home. Dinner, the daily presentation (reading out loud) of the yesterday’s story, some games of Uno and the day is well lived.

Day 2 – The arrival day

Those 7 of us who came to Oslo last night spent it in the Gardemoen airport which is claimed to be one of the top 10 European airports for sleeping. There were several options ranging from the floor to nice-looking cushioned stools in one of the cafes. However, the cafe area appeared rather busy and it would take long time to wait till everyone has left. So we went for some shorter space along 3 seats in a row of chairs on the 2nd floor for 3 of us, and a quiet corner on floor for the other 4. I opted for the chairs and spent a very peaceful and not at all uncomfortable night,

On the other side of security control it turned out that Longyerbyen flights are on the international schedule rather than the domestic. I believe that might be because Svalbard is not part of Schengen zone while Norway itself is.
We met Anders at the gate. Some (unsuccessful) attempts to fix the map on the homepage and I had to leave the internet behind. That’s not too bad as we were supposed to have wifi when airborne! We are flying Norwegian airlines after all, and they have free wifi on board. Except that the wifi experience this time was not the best. It took a long time to open google, and it was impossible to open gmail. Some Norwegian newspaper webpages worked better, however. So no success with the map again.

We landed a couple of hours later in a snowy place next to a body of water, Longyearbyen. The mountains are not comparable to Alps, but so close to the sea they are still impressive. To get a better first impression 5 of us had decided to walk from the airport to the guesthouse. The others would go by bus (75 NOK) and take all the suitcases and large backpacks with them. The walk to the town centre is 4.5km, and to our guesthouse it’s 7km in total, so not impossible at all. Technically there’s a risk of polar bears between the airport and the boundary of the city (first 3km), but the risk of being hit by a car is in fact greater, so we didn’t worry about that much.

Polar bear sign

Polar bear sign

Jeans were perhaps not the best piece of clothing to wear for the walk as we had a head-wind and we were longing for some skiing-trousers which had gone along with the suitcases by the bus. On the positive side, we saw some reindeer and enjoyed the walk in other ways. We were not the first ones to reach the “Polar bears around” road sign, so our sticker was only about the 10th on that road-sign pole. But we have now marked our presence :)

We are living in 2 guesthouses which are located next to each other. Ours was said to have one public pc with internet connection. That sounded as a great potential for wifi to me, so I had taken a router with me to try to set it up. In the real life there had been some improvements and there were wifi routers in our building. Unfortunately having a router and having a wifi are two different things, as it wasn’t working. After some educational exploring we attached the power cable from my router to theirs and got the wifi signal. Later on when talking to the receptionist, we found out that this access point has been the previous wifi they have had and now they have a new system to connect to if we want internet. With one bar signal strength out of five in our building on good times that was not really usable, however, and the fact that they are supposedly working on improvements didn’t help either. So we were happy to use their old one without them noticing.

The guesthouses are nice. Both of them are very clean and warm. There’s a kitchen with all the pots, pans, plates and cutlery, a fridge, an oven and a stove and even a dishwasher. Thus we have a very good setup to prepare our own food which we have brought with us from Riga. However, just before the dinner there’s some fun going on outside – a snowmobile jumping show was a part of a restaurant opening celebration and our kitchen windows were perfectly positioned to see it. We went outside for a closer look and got a welcome drink on the house in the new restaurant.

This had been a long day, so after some cozy chatting around dinner table we went to sleep to be ready for a hiking trip on the following day.