We approached dawn. Nose pressed against the aircraft window gazing down across the glaciated mountains and sea ice now illuminated by the first glints of the midnight sun, the enormity of what we were about to do started to sink in. Amongst all places on earth, its a hard task to find more than a handful that are less forgiving than here. Bitter wind, minus 20 degrees, crevasses, the constant risk of avalanche, and all in the back yard of one of the few predators on earth who consider humans as food. Everything here is trying to kill you.
Our stated plan, was to cross the Spitsbergen icecap by ski to reach the abandoned Soviet mining outpost of Pyramiden on the north side of Billefjorden. By making the 90km journey under our own steam, rather than with an organised tour as is the popular option these days, we’d hopefully save ourselves a few quid, learn a bit more about what it takes to exist in these extreme conditions and have total free reign around the town when we got there, especially with respect the vast coal mines in the south facing mountain side that overlooks the now deserted city. With a snowmobile drop off from Longyearbyen, the main settlement to the head of the glacier, we estimated it would take us 3 and a half days of skiing to make Pyramiden, with one full day in the town and a further half day to ski 7 klicks south to the edge of the frozen sea where we were to be extracted by icebreaker and taken back to port for a much deserved beer and burger.
The pack-out for this one was a bit more involved than the usual. Layers and layers of cold weather gear, 7 days worth of food and cooking gas, ice axes, crampons, crevasse rescue gear, avalanche transponders and probes, an expedition tent, satellite phones, flare pistols, 2 large calibre rifles and a trip wire system for polar bear defence, all loaded 2 pulkas so we could drag it across the ice on our skis.
The danger of bear attack here is extremely real, and it’s actually illegal to leave the settlement of Longyearbyen without a means to defend yourself. The Mauser ‘98s we had managed to pick up were absolute antiques, still bearing the nazi Reichsadler from their days in service back in the second world war and we had to put a few rounds of 30.06 down-range at the Longyearbyen gun range to make sure they still worked!
They actually shot pretty straight considering their vintage, at least good enough to hit a giant charging animal at 40 yards, and with a few modifications to stop the barrels filling up with snow and ice when we made it out on to the glaciers (finger of a latex glove or a rubber jonny works wonders) we were pretty much ready to roll.
Longyearbyen, the departure point for our endeavour and pretty much the most northern settlement in the world, is a strange town indeed. The omnipresent wooden pylons of the old coal gondolas that crisscross the hillside ensure you’re never too far from a reminder as to why anyone would want to build a town in such an unlikely place, but with only 1 mine still left open solely to provide coal to the new power station here things are really changing.
The former coal mining hub is having a good go at reinventing itself for the age of mass tourism, but it doesn’t seem to have been as well marshalled as the literature would have you believe. Many of the locals, mostly former miners and their children are a bit pissed off that their once unspoilt quiet home in the high arctic is now too expensive to live in with all the homes turned into Air BnBs and the streets constantly buzzing with snow scooters. Everywhere you go, the signs on the shops, pubs and restaurants remind you where you are with a picture of a polar bear and 78˚ sign, and it gets pretty old, pretty fast, even for a visitor. The locals must have had it up to their necks.
The days preceding our departure were mostly occupied with fixing supplies, equipment and transport services, but we managed to get a quick look in to one of the ancient mines on the hill side, donning the crampons and ice axes and hacking our way up the mountain side.
I was half expecting to be able to get in to the mines themselves, but the permafrost eats everything here, and the adits were either collapsed or completely full of ice and frozen earth.
Still, there were a few nice bits and bobs lying around.
With the total lack of darkness, you totally loose track of time here. The sun ‘sets’ and then rises again about 20 minutes later, and before we knew it it was 3am.
The next day, on 4 hours sleep, we met our 2 drivers who would get us out to the ice cap. Taking three snowmobiles, me driving one and them taking the other two with X and T riding pillion (with a plan for the drivers to tow the third machine back from the drop point on the sled trailer), we hit the tracks, flying up the valleys of Spitsbergen to the Rabot Glacier to begin our journey across the icecap.
For three and a half days we skied and camped in some of the most brutal temperatures I’ve ever experienced. It was so cold the gas in our gas cookers froze solid, leaving only a tiny amount of flow coming from the nozzle. To get things going, we had to heat one gas bottle on another to evaporate the solidified condensate to get a proper flame so we could boil snow for water.
The polar bear watches were particularly testing (you can’t just all go to bed and cross your fingers that you won’t get eaten). Up for a three hour rotating shift in midnight blizzards, clutching a frozen rifle and peering into the whiteout for approaching teeth and trying to stay warm in the 8m x 8m flashbang trip wire fence. In those circumstances of total sensory depravation you start to go a bit doo-lalley and we all reported having random hallucinations, X seeing random mountains appearing on the horizon and me seeing tiny white dots in-between all my frantic movements to keep my body temperature up. Just pacing like a cartoon soldier worked for a bit, but the close confines of the bear alarm trip wire system we’d set up didn’t allow for anything much more exciting than jogging-on-the-spot, star jumps, and a busting a casual bit of disco. Jogging on the spot and doing the Saturday Night Fever dance with a loaded WW2 rifle at 3am on a Tuesday morning, I’d have forgiven any hungry polar bear for giving us a wide berth and assuming his potential meal had all got new variant CJD.
The last day of our crossing finished with a spectacular decent of the Nordenskiöldbreen glacier and on towards some huts we’d seen on the map near Kapp Napier, a small headland currently surrounded by sea ice directly opposite Pyramiden on the other side of the Fjord. We couldn’t pitch a tent down here, the risk of polar bear attack was enormous, so we slogged on to the huts, clocking up a 50km day by the time we reached them at around 1am.
Pro tip - icecream is pretty much the only food you can take at these absurd temperatures that tastes better than it does at home.
Our stated plan, was to cross the Spitsbergen icecap by ski to reach the abandoned Soviet mining outpost of Pyramiden on the north side of Billefjorden. By making the 90km journey under our own steam, rather than with an organised tour as is the popular option these days, we’d hopefully save ourselves a few quid, learn a bit more about what it takes to exist in these extreme conditions and have total free reign around the town when we got there, especially with respect the vast coal mines in the south facing mountain side that overlooks the now deserted city. With a snowmobile drop off from Longyearbyen, the main settlement to the head of the glacier, we estimated it would take us 3 and a half days of skiing to make Pyramiden, with one full day in the town and a further half day to ski 7 klicks south to the edge of the frozen sea where we were to be extracted by icebreaker and taken back to port for a much deserved beer and burger.
The pack-out for this one was a bit more involved than the usual. Layers and layers of cold weather gear, 7 days worth of food and cooking gas, ice axes, crampons, crevasse rescue gear, avalanche transponders and probes, an expedition tent, satellite phones, flare pistols, 2 large calibre rifles and a trip wire system for polar bear defence, all loaded 2 pulkas so we could drag it across the ice on our skis.
The days preceding our departure were mostly occupied with fixing supplies, equipment and transport services, but we managed to get a quick look in to one of the ancient mines on the hill side, donning the crampons and ice axes and hacking our way up the mountain side.
I was half expecting to be able to get in to the mines themselves, but the permafrost eats everything here, and the adits were either collapsed or completely full of ice and frozen earth.
For three and a half days we skied and camped in some of the most brutal temperatures I’ve ever experienced. It was so cold the gas in our gas cookers froze solid, leaving only a tiny amount of flow coming from the nozzle. To get things going, we had to heat one gas bottle on another to evaporate the solidified condensate to get a proper flame so we could boil snow for water.
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