78.56760° N, 12.40540° E
We are on the deck of the 80 ft Kamak boat, in a fjord on the North Western coast of Svalbard. We are waiting for the dinghy to take 4 of us and drop us to the shore, for the second ski tour of the day. We had our life vest on and our backpacks.
4guys from of our group have already been dropped, along with one of the guides ,Carlo.
It’s windy and cold.We get inside the boat. It feels warm and is comfortable.Than we hear on the radio -the dinghy’s motor has fallen in the water!
We keep waiting. Not sure for what…
10 min later , Albi, the other guide, is instructed by the captain to go in a kayak to the shore.
Why?
The group that was dropped had no weapon to defend itself against polar bears.
You see, in Svalbard there are more 3,500 bears . It’s mandatory to carry a weapon.
Albi gets on the Kayak, and Yan, the captain shows him how to paddle!
Albi has no experience with Kayaks.
Miracuosly, Albi makes it to the shore, without falling in the water. Likely he would have drowned if he were to fall , because the dinghy was disabled and it would have taken some time for the boat to reach out to him.
Well, luckily we learned the lesson that none of us should be on the sea ice without a rifle.This is after all where the polar bears are, close to their favorite meal -the seals. And we saw the seals….
But it should be no surprise that we did not follow this rule. After all, our group, the 8 of us -have never been there.
The guides ? Ditto. And the boat crew just got to Svalbard 10 days before us.
What made this trip really special is the fact that we got stuck, in the sea ice.This year there was the most sea ice in the last 20 years.
A little crossing of a water channel that should have taken 2 -4 hours ended up taking more than a day and a half.
We were surrounded by sea ice, and icebergs.And it was windy , with bidg swells. Frankly, they are kind of ominous.
The concern was that the wind and the swells could have pushed one or more icebergs into the boat… luckily we did not have a Titanic even.
On top of it, the boat satellite communication system went down. It didn’t help that a solar storm took place …
Still, pushing the ice away from the boat with big poles was exhilitaring
Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago and located in the Arctic Ocean, 600 miles from the North Pole. The global seed vault is located in Spitzbergen, the main island.
60% of its territory is covered by glaciers.
It is the land of midnight sun. There was light 24 hours a day.
We got to sail on the west coast, and every night we would anchor in a different fjord.
The dinghy would bring us to shore, and we climbed up the rugged mountains and got to ski down with incredible views of stunning glaciers in front of us.
Some days we braved winds of 40mph.
Surprisingly we had good snow.
We got to see seals, walruses, arctic fox and reindeer. We saw a fresh track of a young polar bear , however we did not encounter any bear. Another team saw a bear 2 days days after us in the same spot that we were.
We also braved the frigid Arctic waters. Yes, we went in for a dip.
The boat was comfortable, yet the living quarters were very tight , to say the least. But no complaints about the food though.
And what about the fallen dinghy motor? It was pulled out from ythje water , and repaired.
The time flew on the boat .Hard to believe we spent there 8 nights!
The whiskey we brought with us helped.
Alon, Joe , Ed ,Marc, Dema S , Garett , Jeff and Jerry particiapted.
It was guided by Albi and Carlo.
The boat crew was French -Yan the captain, Guillame the first mate and Olivier the chef. We started and ended in Longyearbean.
It was a true adventure in the heart of the Arctic, and we experienced firsthand the raw power and unpredictability of nature.
