To the Arctic, part 5: Landfall and vegetation

NOTE: I scheduled a big Caturday Felid post, but, as occasionally happens, it didn’t automatically post. It will be up about 1.5 hours after this one.

This post occupies one day of our trip in Svalbard, again traveling around the big island of Spitsbergen, where’s there is a lot to see.  And again it was one of those lovely days when we had activities both in the morning and the afternoon. this time two short hikes on the land.

First, a map of the Big Island of the archipelago showing our travels. Spots 3 and 4 mark where we were on this day: Woodfjorden (yes, a fjord) in the morning, back to the ship for lunch, and then another hike (and a drinking opportunity) on a branch of Woodfjord, a “subfjord” called Liefdefjorden.  These sites are shown in the second map below from the official Spitsbergen website.

This map was sent to us by the ship to document our peambulations. Each pointer is one stop:

The first hike was on land at the northernmost fjord, Woodfjorden (point 4 above).  There were no animals to see, but plenty of plants, many in bloom. I can’t pinpoint where we landed, but the fjord itself is described this way in Wikipedia:

Woodfjord is a fjord on the north shore of Spitsbergen island in the Svalbard archipelago. It is the fourth longest fjord in the Svalbard archipelago with the mouth facing north adjacent to Wijdefjord, and goes 64 km (40 mi) into the island, west of Andrée Land.

Random photographs. First, the terrain, rather barren and gray. The only life you can see in this photo are the orange lichens.

Our ship in the fjord (we took Zodiacs ashore):

One of our naturalists/guides from the ship. Since you never know where there’s a polar bear, and they can appear quickly, they always carry guns:

But there were plants aplenty, if you looked down.  I loved this mossy plant; the moss is not really moss, but, we were told part of the flowers. I wrote down the name but now can’t find it. If you know Arctic flora, please ID it.  We did not step 0n any plants as they take a long time to grow this far north (here we’re about 79°30′ North latitude):

 

Another flower I can’t identify:

And yet another unknown:

And another (these may be color variants of the flowers two photos above:

Lichen is everywhere, and since it grows so slowly in this climate, you don’t touch it or step on it.

We were asked to guess what this is. Do you know?

It’s a trap to catch arctic foxes (their pelts went for good money years ago). Apparently the ladder bit was propped up with heavy rocks in the slats and bait was put underneath. The foxes would take the bait, spring the device, and, yes, get SQUASHED TO DEATH.  Apparently this was an efficient way to get pelts without marks, as shooting the fox would make a hole in the fur. OY!

Kayakers in the fjord below.  They prefer to paddle than to land and see what’s ashore. I don’t really get the thrill of that, at least in a place like this, but when we got to see the birdies a few days later, they had a huge advantage (except they were pooped on more readily). Note the glaciers across the fjord:

A panorama with the ship before we returned for lunch. Click to enlarge:

After lunch and a short rest, we put on our rubber boots and headed back to a different landing spot, this time on Woodfjorden.  This one had a trapper’s cabin. The landscape was similar to that of the morning.

Here’s a group following single-file behind the gun-toting leader, which prevents falling off a cliff and also stepping on plants. Our rubber boots, which were high, prevented us from getting very wet as we crossed the creek (you have to put them in a scrubbing machine when you enter the ship to avoid contaminating either the ship or the land).

A lovely flower; I don’t know what it is!

. . . and a predatory bird, which flew off as I photographed it. What is it? A skua?

After hiking around, and in truth seeing little that was new (but still enjoying some exertion), we went to the trapper’s cabin, called “Texas Bar”, described this way by our itinerary:

Texas Bar is a trapper hut in Liefdefjord, not actually a bar at all. It was built in 1927 by Hilmar Nøis and Martin Petterson Nøis who spent 38 years of their lives on Spitsbergen. The cabin remains in very good condition. Now it mainly serves as a point of reference and shelter from polar bears. Inside, there is a stove, firewood, cooking utensils, two beds, a first aid kit, and some food items.

Men of Sea adds this (and a photo of the cabin:

Despite being very modest and resembling more of a sturdy shed than a proper dwelling, the cabin remains in very good condition. It now mainly serves as a point of reference and shelter from polar bears. Inside, there is a stove, firewood, cooking utensils, two beds, a first aid kit, and some food items. It has become a tradition for visitors to use the supplies left here, but in return, they should also leave something for the next guests. It is mandatory to sign in the Guest Book and take a picture. Opposite Texas Bar there is a bay where yachts can anchor safely.

We didn’t use any of the “supplies.”

Photo below from Men of Sea (for some reason I didn’t take a picture of the cabin). Note the rifle.

A quick photo of the inside, as there was a line to see it. There are some recent “supplies.” You have to be stalwart, I think, to spend any time there, much less a long time. It was bloody cold, and we were there in the summer. (I expect the residents didn’t overwinter there).  Two beds, some shelves, and a table are pretty much all it has. I wonder how they entertained themselves—or perhaps they slept after arduous days of killing foxes.

They served us shots of hard liquor at the end of the walk in a real bar in front of Texas Bar, but, as usual, I had no appetite for alcohol when I’m traveling. (I think I had one beer the whole trip, and given that booze was free on the ship, that tells you about my strange change of habit on the road, though I never drink very much under any circumstances.)

Back to the ship for dinner, and here are the evening menus (I suspect I photographed them and then headed upstairs to the cozy buffet). Click to enlarge:

The menu has two pages and, as you see, you can really pig out. This is served in courses, not as a buffet, which makes it more formal. Wine is of course free, and I tasted a bit; the quality was generally high.

My desserts (plural) in the buffet upstairs. The eclair was especially good.

Some post-dinner reading and then to bed, for I wanted to arise early as we headed north to point (5) on the map above—the furthest north our ship (and everyone on it) had ever gone. We were going to the edge of the sea ice until the ship could move no more.  That proved to be the most exciting day of the trip, as you’ll see in the next installment. Not only did we go way north, but we saw the most amazing thing of the whole trip: a polar bear gnawing on the carcass of a sperm whale that had somehow made its way onto an ice floe. Pictures in the next edition!