Hinlopen Strait
During night we have sailed south into Hinlopen Strait, that separates Spitsbergen from Nordaustlandet. This can be treacherous water with strong current and wind bringing in pack ice. But with modern technology like day-fresh ice charts, and an icemaster captain, our journey is safe and great fun.
The day started early with two polar bears near a glacier, at a far distance. In the next bay we found some fast-ice and another distant bear. However, moving out from the fast ice we suddenly became aware of another bear moving towards us. This turned out to be the highlight of the day, as the bear, a young male, approached the ship until he was almost touching the bow. This was probably the best time for those using point-and-shoot cameras, as the pro photographers suddenly ended up with too big zoom lenses on their SLR cameras. The bear slowly walked away on the fast ice, totally unaffected by us—a perfect encounter with the King of the Arctic.
As we sailed further into the pack-ice we passed more bears, but they were all distant. Our goal before teatime was Austfonna—the third largest icecap in the world after only Antarctica and Greenland. The face of the icecap is 105 miles long, but on the west side it is only 30-40 feet deep. And with a front with the same height as it goes deep—this indicates it is not a tidal glacier but resting on land.
After dinner we made a late landing at Torrellneset. This is one of the famous haul out sites for walrus, because it has a beach easy accessible for the walrus to haul out and great numbers of clams and mussels, their preferred food. Another important factor is that it is ice-free right now. Those three factors make Torellneset a great spot for walrus viewing. And this time we were able to look at the walrus from land, instead of in Zodiacs as we did yesterday. Some of us had a nice hike before we went to the walrus. The difference between the barren east side, where we are now, and the greener west side, where the Gulf current brings warm water, is really great.
