University of Oulu, Finland Scout guild SOOPA solemnised its 5th birthday by trekking on Spitzbergen, the largest island. There were 17 students in two groups, Loma (for "Holidays") walking in valleys and Rämä (for "Reckless") ascending to the mountains and glaciers.
This is a collage of Rämä's journals.
We started our trek from the Svalbard EISCAT radar. The sky was cloudy, drizzling a bit, a couple of degrees Celsius above zero. The terrain was mostly nice - dry tundra with very scanty vegetation, in places also nasty fields of splintered rock. Here and there a persistent flower could be seen, purple saxifrage, Svalbard poppy, mountain avens. The furrows of the brooks are deep and steep, one might call them canyons. It's easy to see what happens when there is no vegetation to slow down erosion.
The stream flowing from Foxdalen was forded and a campsite chosen close to it. According to GPS our location is now 78° 09' 49'' N, 16° 12' 19'' E. We set up the tents, took the food outside the camp to keep the polar bears away and crept in our sleeping bags - except for the bear watch armed with a rifle, of course.
At lunch break a curious Svalbard reindeer came wondering our tracks. Adapted to the cold of the arctic winter, they look quite funny with their short legs and fat bodies.
We reached the Glöttfjellbreen glacier after clearing its huge end moraines. The lower parts of the glacier were unbelievably easy - as if we were walking on an inclined concrete floor. No climbing gear was needed.
We pitched the camp on a little patch of snow. Aki still had the energy to drag his snowboard an hour's ascend up a snowy slope, then sped down playing with avalanches.
On the top of the saddle a white mist covered everything. A precipice appeared from the haze, on the brink of which a cornice was lurking for a careless trekker. Far away one could discern the mountains on the other side and somewhere down below there had to be the ice of Lofthusbreen. We found a slope that looked safe enough for a daring glissade (if you couldn't see it, at least). Luckily, there were no avalanches.
We camped on a heap of moraine at the base of a mountain called Dröntoppen. Pasi soon found our first fossil, a beautiful leaf.
On the way back we found heaps of fossilised bivalves. It's funny where the sea bottom ends up.
In the evening we encountered bigger crevasses, perhaps 15 meters deep. One could still leap over them.
We set up the tents on boulders uncovered by the summer in between Nurken and Tronfjellet. The slab stones made a surprisingly comfortable underlay. As we were preparing the dinner, it got cloudy again, and the world shrunk into our little mound of rocks, all one can see around is white. Tracks of an arctic fox disappear in the fog. In the bear watch it's cold, the damp and icy wind chills to the bones.
It's nice to be in a valley again. The air smells green, sandpipers play broken- winged, protecting their nests, reindeer stare us curiously.
On a pingo (a ice-cored hill built by the permafrost) we saw a red figure. Behind it there were three tents - and the happily surprised Loma making waves, shouting and pointing either a hand or a rifle at us.
From the end of the glacier there was a spectacular view down to the valley. The sun was shining on the deep blue sky. The green lower slopes, the river meandering to the ocean glittering in the far west, the pingos with their sparkling centre ponds and the snowy mountains... beautiful!
On Steintaket a slope covered in boulders was followed by a steep rock wall. Svalbard isn't the place for rock climbing, everything you touch is broken to pieces. We struggled a while, then reached an academic agreement that the mountain wasn't worth of losses.
In the evening Rolle and I had a quick plop in the pond on the pingo. Quite fresh!
Even the National Board of Public Roads would be proud of the moraines of the Kokbreen glacier. The heaps of gravel covered several square kilometres. In the middle there was a stream of melting water, so strong that we didn't even think of wading it. Heavy stones whirled in the current, making a nasty sound. The water rushed from a cave below the glacier ice. We rounded it on the rope from a respectful distance.
There were lots of nesting birds in Gangdalen, too. I almost trod on a brooding Svalbard ptarmigan.
The clouds chased us and the weather cooled. The later it got, the more tired we grew. Anyway, we made the longest day's journey so far, 20.5 km.
In the north corner of the valley there was a hut. It was locked, of course, but provided some shelter from the wind. A nice place for the tents was found, too, and granted the honorary title "level as the roof of a Norwegian hut".
On the ice there was plenty of slush and water. We waded to the moraines on the west side, finding a decent campsite - and lots of fossils, leaves of ancient trees this time. We collected some coal and pieces of waste wood and enjoyed a rare luxury: a campfire by the glacier.
Longyearbyen is already dimly visible in the fog.
Loma was already waiting for us, having investigated all the shops in the town. Longyearbyen (population: about 1000) looks pretty arctic with the pipe systems connecting houses above ground and the decaying mine buildings on the dark slopes of the mountains around. There are signs on the shop doors: No Firearms Allowed. The Longyearbyen church is the northernmost in the world.
The airport terminal happened to be open that night because of a charter flight, so we could sleep inside. Our flight will take off at 7 am.
The trip we prepared for two years is now over, and it feels a bit odd. I might quote Nansen:
"Strange - there is always sadness on departure. It is as I after all couldn't bear to leave this bleak waste of ice, glaciers, cold and toil."