Hornsund, Spitsbergen
Our first adventure was yesterday's arrival: encountering fog down to 200' above the runway, the pilot turned back and flew instead to Tromsø in Norway. After this 3-hour sightseeing diversion, our group flew back to find blue skies over Longyearbyen and within 2 hours of touchdown we were on board and away to sea. To celebrate, we made an evening cruise up Trygghamna at the mouth of Isfjorden, passing sheer seabird cliffs, reindeer leading calves across snowfields, plus gulls, geese and guillemots all under jagged mountain peaks and a bright sun.
That sun never set last "night", so we were still in sunshine when we stumbled up from our bunks this morning. We were just turning into Hornsund, a deep five-fingered fjord on the southwest coast of Spitsbergen. Scanning the shoreline as we passed the Polish research station, we found our first polar bear: a grimy grey individual loping along the beach. We kept pace with him as he left the shore, swam across the face of a glacier, climbed a gravel moraine, trudged across a snowfield and then continued along the beach of the next bay, with the easy, tireless stride of the born athlete. His route would take him straight to our planned landing, so to avoid any team athletics on our part, we diverted to the southern shore and a sheltered sunlit bay called Gåshamna (Goose Haven).
With our Zodiacs down, we were soon weaving in and out of scattered ice floes to reach the gravel beach. The minute we stepped ashore we were walking back in time: first an old trapper's hut from the 1930s, used over many seasons by hard men who spent 12 lonely months in this fjord, trapping and stalking Arctic foxes and polar bears. Alongside, the timber foundation and red bricks of a Russian scientific station set up in the late 1800s. Beyond that, the remains of English whaling from the early 1600s: trypot bases and the 20' jawbones of Greenland Right whales killed almost four hundred years ago. Our photographers fell to their knees to worship the miniature gardens of purple saxifrage, Svalbard poppy and moss campion. Our hikers took to their legs across tundra, moraine and snowfield for the whole glorious panorama of Hornsund. Three hours later, tired but happy, we clambered back aboard our loyal Zodiacs to return to the ship.
Now we steamed deeper into the fjord and once among the pack ice, eager eyes on bridge wing, monkey deck and crows nest scanned the floes for signs of life. As we shunted our way through the shifting pack, an escort of whirling kittiwakes darted down to seize fleeing fish. Eyes squinted, binoculars scanned, telescopes focused, and heads swiveled. This jumbled jigsaw of crumpled sea ice is the domain of the great white bear, where seals hunt fish in the silent world under the floes, and the bear hunts the surfacing seal. And we hunt the bear. Scan, focus, scan, search, scan again. Then - 1000 yards ahead, the telltale ochre movement among the pack: another bear! We followed its wanderings for an hour, and when we finally left it, our scanning scopes had located two other distant polar bears in the wilderness of welded pack ice, against a backdrop of rusty mountain ridges and gleaming white glaciers.
Our first adventure was yesterday's arrival: encountering fog down to 200' above the runway, the pilot turned back and flew instead to Tromsø in Norway. After this 3-hour sightseeing diversion, our group flew back to find blue skies over Longyearbyen and within 2 hours of touchdown we were on board and away to sea. To celebrate, we made an evening cruise up Trygghamna at the mouth of Isfjorden, passing sheer seabird cliffs, reindeer leading calves across snowfields, plus gulls, geese and guillemots all under jagged mountain peaks and a bright sun.
That sun never set last "night", so we were still in sunshine when we stumbled up from our bunks this morning. We were just turning into Hornsund, a deep five-fingered fjord on the southwest coast of Spitsbergen. Scanning the shoreline as we passed the Polish research station, we found our first polar bear: a grimy grey individual loping along the beach. We kept pace with him as he left the shore, swam across the face of a glacier, climbed a gravel moraine, trudged across a snowfield and then continued along the beach of the next bay, with the easy, tireless stride of the born athlete. His route would take him straight to our planned landing, so to avoid any team athletics on our part, we diverted to the southern shore and a sheltered sunlit bay called Gåshamna (Goose Haven).
With our Zodiacs down, we were soon weaving in and out of scattered ice floes to reach the gravel beach. The minute we stepped ashore we were walking back in time: first an old trapper's hut from the 1930s, used over many seasons by hard men who spent 12 lonely months in this fjord, trapping and stalking Arctic foxes and polar bears. Alongside, the timber foundation and red bricks of a Russian scientific station set up in the late 1800s. Beyond that, the remains of English whaling from the early 1600s: trypot bases and the 20' jawbones of Greenland Right whales killed almost four hundred years ago. Our photographers fell to their knees to worship the miniature gardens of purple saxifrage, Svalbard poppy and moss campion. Our hikers took to their legs across tundra, moraine and snowfield for the whole glorious panorama of Hornsund. Three hours later, tired but happy, we clambered back aboard our loyal Zodiacs to return to the ship.
Now we steamed deeper into the fjord and once among the pack ice, eager eyes on bridge wing, monkey deck and crows nest scanned the floes for signs of life. As we shunted our way through the shifting pack, an escort of whirling kittiwakes darted down to seize fleeing fish. Eyes squinted, binoculars scanned, telescopes focused, and heads swiveled. This jumbled jigsaw of crumpled sea ice is the domain of the great white bear, where seals hunt fish in the silent world under the floes, and the bear hunts the surfacing seal. And we hunt the bear. Scan, focus, scan, search, scan again. Then - 1000 yards ahead, the telltale ochre movement among the pack: another bear! We followed its wanderings for an hour, and when we finally left it, our scanning scopes had located two other distant polar bears in the wilderness of welded pack ice, against a backdrop of rusty mountain ridges and gleaming white glaciers.
