29th October '22 | Postcards by Fabienne
Where the sun sets for 4 months
Hej, hej,
She is gone. The sun will not rise again before 16th February next year. Well, luckily I will see it again in December when I am back to Germany. Unless during hikes, we have not seen the sun for more than three weeks because it would not make it into the Longyearbyen valley anymore. The daylight and twilight colours during these past weeks were just so beautiful, and especially during the days before the last sunset, there were pastel colours all over. It is super difficult to capture them, but here are some shots which I took with my phone during a morning walk this week:
During the past weeks, the daylight length decreased drastically. And now during the days since the last sunset, darkness creeps in FAST. You can imagine it being similar to the light conditions and atmosphere that you experience after sunset. While it usually lasts 1-2 hours in central Europe (also known as “the blue hour”), this timeframe of twilight was much longer here during the last weeks and – is all what is left since the sun set on Tuesday. But this window of 5-6 hours of twilight is decreasing extremely quickly now.
What happened this week? Well, our new course in “Risk, Technology and Human Performance in Arctic Operations” started on Tuesday. So far, it is interesting and has taught me two things:
I am glad I never had the aspiration to become a technical engineer
Humans should not try to live a modern life up here, and neither should they start industrial activities
So, what did my week look like:
Monday: Spent the whole day working on, researching for, brainstorming and writing emails for my master thesis
Tuesday: We could call this one “A day in my life up here” since it represents so much that each day there is something unexpected happening. Since it was the last day of sunset, I decided to go on a morning walk to the beach before classes. The light was magical! But then, I found a poor fish entangled in a net and washed up to the shore. I was entirely stiff from the cold. The felt temperature was around -17 that day. I had to take off my mittens to pull on the net and its ropes, but my fingers froze instantly. I needed to get help from a worker in the harbour to take out the nets, which were frozen to the ground. Then I nearly missed the start of the first lecture and just realised that somewhere in the net removal action, I lost my airPod headphones. So I used the lunch break to walk back to the beach, but as I had expected, the flood had already covered the area. Bye bye, my dear headphones. I decided to cheer myself up with a quick husky cuddle and coffee to go 😊 And the best thing: I just went back to the café after lectures again since we had a brainstorming meeting with the student ambassadors.
Wednesday: Maybe let’s forget about this day. We had off since only the new students were going to the shooting range, and I had high motivation to make progress on my master’s thesis topic and maybe even start working on my CV. Well, all of this was gone when I woke up, but instead of just accepting it and doing something else, I spent the day trying to push myself to get something done and was entirely frustrated when the evening came.
Thursday: Full day of lectures, then I did some filming of the student equipment hand-out (will create some YouTube videos for the universities’ account together with two student ambassadors).
Friday: Lectures, but during the lunch break, I got to meet with the inspiring Heidi Sevestre, a French glaciologist who I got to know during the ArcticPASSION assembly in summer. If you speak French, check out this lovely children’s book which she just published!
Saturday: Today, I will join the other two student ambassadors and we will do some video recording around Longyearbyen “downtown” to show future students how it looks like and in the evening, I work a s voluntary bartender at the Blues Festival. Yes, there is a Dark Season Blues Festival up here happening this weekend!
Sunday: Cozy day chilling (no, no master thesis topic anymore, I submitted a work-in-progress theme and keep my fingers crossed for positive feedback from a research institute that might have a project for me). But I might edit some YouTube videos for UNIS :)
Well, now I wrote so much about what was going on this week, but I still want to share with you some pictures from the last “daylight hike” we did last weekend. It was actually the same route up to Sarkofagen and onto Longyearbyen glacier that we did in August with the course.
Everything is totally different now, covered in snow and ice. I was a bit intimidated about going out hiking in the snow and cold. So, I brought A LOT of clothes which I also needed in the end. The hike up to Sarkofagen was all fine.
However, on the top, the wind was super strong, and I got really cold and had difficulties getting warm again, even when we made it out of the wind.
On the side of Sarkofagen, we went into an ice-fall – a frozen waterfall. It was absolutely surreal and stunningly beautiful. I have never seen walls of ice in all different kind of shapes.
I sadly did not take too many pictures there since once I took off my gloves, my fingers got stiff instantly. Probably because I was so cold already. So I started sprinting up and down the ice-fall channel to get my body temperature up again.
We also used different techniques to ensure our water was not freezing in the tubes – though mine already has some isolation. The trick I learned was always to blow the water back when you are done drinking (until you hear the water bag bubble) and then close the valve at the mouthpiece to make the pressure keep the tube water free. Then I kept the mouthpiece stuck into my buff next to my chest.
After lunch, we continued our hike and stepped out onto the Longyearbreen glacier.
It looks so different covered in snow. Beautiful but different, and I am thankful I got to see the ice without snow back in August. We planned to look for some of the melt-water channels and caves and see if some of them were accessible without ice-climbing equipment. We used a hiking pole as a snow probe (to ensure that we are not falling into a snow-covered channel). Walking on a snow-covered glacier differs greatly from a pure icy glacier.
We found a channel that looked safe to explore without further equipment.
We carefully walked to the side and then down into the channel. It was so much fun and an amazing experience!
Afterwards, we went into a rock cave which was now safe to explore due to the rocks being fully frozen.
By this time, my feet were frozen since my hiking shoes are not really made for snowy/alpine conditions. I learned afterwards that a good trick is to put plastic bags around your feet (wearing wool socks underneath). Well, now I know for the next time, but I might also invest in some better hiking shoes in the future.
Stay warm and cosy!
/ Fabi ❆⇞