Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen. What, why, and how.
Spitsbergen. Voyage. Longyear
Spitsbergen. Ymerbukta
Spitsbergen. Esmarkbreen
Spitsbergen. Nansenbreen. Borebreen
Spitsbergen. Whiteout
Finally, the Spitsbergen’s weather god tiered and decided to change its tactics. At the night between April 29 and 30, the strong wind cleared the sky, and the temperature dropped significantly. We can start to move. However, we did need to understand first where we can move.
While I packed our stuff, my partner skied to the pass again and brought the disappointing pictures.
Here he is on the pass (with the corniche just under his feet) looking on Wahlenbergbreen, which was our goal.
Here is Wahlenbergbreen close up with all its numerous crevasses. It is absolutely clear, that if even we could desсent to this glacier, we cannot move along it, so there is no reason to do it at all.
The second pass also appeared to be unpassable – the vertical cliff with a huge corniche and numerous crevasses below.
This little black thing in the middle of a huge iciness is our tent. How small we compare with icefield.
Our tent closer.
Finally, only one way left for us – back to Borebreen and up along this glacier. The temperature decreases significantly, -12C at day time that together with strong wind and high humidity feels very unpleasantly.
However, the temperature fall brought another bonus together with nice visibility – the nice frozen crust was formed above the snow, so the skiing improved significantly.
Top of the Borebreen glacier – Geltepasset pass. On the other side of the pass, there is a Vintervegen glacier that flows into St. Jonsfjorden.
Map. The crosses mark Kjepasset pass where we slept so many days, Geltepasset pass, and another no-name pass to Wahlenbergbreen glacier. At this point we still wanted to reach Wahlenbergbreen in the hope that it becomes passable on its upper part.
Around Geltepasset.
We tried to pass to Wahlenbergbreen directly from Geltepasset to avoid altitude loss, but it was impossible, so we descended to Vintervegen.
We went down through gently-sloping part of Vintervegen and set our tent just before the steep slope.
May 1 demonstrated really spring weather: -12C and strong wind. Very cold. But sunny and nice visibility.
Surroundings of our night place.
The steep bent of Vintergegen in front of us.
Video. The first part- Geltepasset, the second part – the morning on Vintervegen.
The view from the glacier bend. Below Vintervegen joints Osbornbreen, and they together flow into St. Jonsfjorden.
The view of Osbornbreen didn’t make us happy. If the Wahlenbergbreen variant would fail completely, our only way is to Osbornbreen. However, it doesn’t look really passable in the part that we can see from here. That means that we should try to bypass this part by side moraine in the hope that upper part of the glacier is more passable and at least allows us to cross it to reach Vestre Osbornbreen, which looks better (at least from this point of view). If not, the last possibility is to cross the fjord and go by the seaside in the bear’s company in the hope to meet passable glacier that leads to the north. And that would be possible only if the fjord is under the ice (we cannot see it from here), that is not a fact.
Both variants aren’t pretty good, and if neither of them would work we would be locked on the Oskar II land. The icebreaker that took us here, left two weeks ago.
Mountains near us
Steep and icy descent brought new fighting with our sledges.
Our common direction was north-east, and because ragged glaciers already shifted us far to west, the idea to pass to Wahlenbergbreen still lived in our minds. So we decided to ascent through north-east part of Vintervegen to another pass to Wahlenbergbreen.
Here it is.
As soon as we started to move up, the wind increased dramatically. I should stopped from time to time to wait out especially strong flows.
Even in this cold ice desert, we saw the presence of life. Arctic fox traces crossed the glacier. Polar owl silently flew above us. Almost on the pass some seabird outrun us. It flew against the wind, very close to the ground, but pretty fast, and disappered behind the pass.
The pass showed that we should grave the idea about Wahlenbergbreen. The pass had the same vertical cliff on the other side as the previous ones. With a huge corniche, of course. Wahlenbergbreen here is ragged in the same way as below and remains ragged till we can see.
Video from the pass:
We turned and skied back to the place where we started the ascent to the pass. Here we set a camp. Very cold. -15C, at night the temperature dropped to -20C. Even with hot food in the stomach and chemical heaters, I spent half a night without sleep trying to warm myself.
Our GPS-track from the start to May 2.
To be continued…..
