Category: Photos (page 1 of 2)

Crossing Denmark Strait

Motoring south and east out of Greenland, we battened down our belongings and prepared to spend long hours in our bunks, since the Denmark Straight had a reputation for being full of storm-driven waves and stubborn icebergs.

But our crossing was flat and easy, with temperatures so warm we left the doors out onto the decks open for hours at a time. It took less than the projected 36 hours before we arrived in Iceland.

In between packing bags, exchanging contact information, and settling our bar tabs, we celebrated our first genuine sunset with a round of photographs, and drank in the increasing darkness of night with relish.

Ittoqqortoormiitt Visit: Part 1

After leaving Svalbard on August 7, our only contact with humans not associated with the Polar Pioneer was a few hours of exploring a tiny town with a big name: Ittoqqortoormiit. (It’s not as hard to pronounce as it looks if you say it quickly: i-tok-a-tor-mit.)

It’s the youngest town I’ve ever set foot in, having been founded in 1924. Tourist ships visit two or three times in summer, and passengers come ashore to learn about local history and the traditional Greenlandic ways of life.

On the east coast of Greenland, overlooking the mouth of the Scoresby Sund system of fjords, this hamlet of less than 500 inhabitants is about as far off the grid as you can get. The Greenlanders who live here have electricity and satellite service including Internet connectivity.

But they have no running water or sewage system — the permafrost penetrates so deep into the ground that such infrastructure is impossible to construct. Dirt roads connect the colorful little houses and commercial buildings that climb up several hills in photogenic ranks.

Let Them Explore…Cake?

One of my favorite excursions in Greenland was what the Polar Pioneer‘s crew called “Gateau Point,” although I think the formal name for the place is Segelsällskapet Fjord.

The nickname was apt, since the definition for the French term gateau is “a rich cake, typically one containing layers of cream or fruit,” and the geological formations we explored were a visual feast.

They were also almost a BILLION years old! This was not the only stop where I wished we had had a geologist aboard who could have given us more information about these amazing structures.

Cabin 505

Our cabin, number 505, was on deck five. It was a quiet deck and very convenient: we went up one flight of stairs to access the bridge on deck six, and went down one flight of stairs to deck four to access the bar or go out onto the bow deck and load into Zodiacs. It was also easy to step out onto the stern deck for a quick photo opp or breath of fresh air.

Cabin 505

Our cabin was long and narrow but efficiently laid out with lots of built-in storage. I spent a lot of time sitting in my bunk reading and updating my journal, since the bridge was the only indoors public space with a good view.

Life aboard a moving boat is noisy. There’s engine noise, and sometimes noise from the crew or passengers moving around doing things, but also just a lot of creaking and rattling and groaning from the decks and bulkheads. Between the noise and the midnight sun, we were pretty sleep deprived by the end of the trip!

iceberg through porthole

Our window, or porthole, sometimes framed a lovely peek-a-boo view, but it was hard to see anything other than sky unless you were standing right by it. It didn’t open, but it sure let in a lot of light.

To the left in the photo below are two hanging lockers for our jackets and the life vests we had to wear whenever we went out in the Zodiacs. The built-in desk and some small shelves above were lined with green stuff you put under area rugs to keep items we put there from moving around as the boat swayed. We kept our rubber boots and outermost rain gear, which we always wore in the Zodiacs, in the corner by the door. The glinty things mounted on the wall in the right third of the photo are glass tumblers for toothbrushing etc mounted in a custom rack; we hung our name badges on them to remind us which to use. Out of sight to the right is a locker with a bunch of shelves where we stored electronics, camera equipment, hats and gloves, etc. There were two chairs that stacked up for storage that I sometimes pulled out when I got tired of sitting in my bunk.

Cabin Interior

Here is the interior of Cabin 505 as seen from the padded bench near the window.

I never sat at the desk to write, although I probably would have used it if it had been under the porthole instead of staring at a blank wall.

Cabin 505 bathroom

The bathroom was small but the layout was efficient. The bright orange pipe is the hot water for the shower — the orange served to remind us not to touch that pipe it was so hot! The shower drain is in the middle of the floor, and you pulled a shower curtain around you and the shower pipes to keep everything else in the room dry when the shower was in use.

Shipboard Life

Polar Pioneer

Polar Pioneer was our home for 13 nights and days. Our cabin was on deck 5, just below the bridge.

Our days usually started at 6:30 or 7:00 am with expedition leader Henrick’s cheerful greeting over the PA system:  “Good morning, good people.” Trish and I rolled out of our bunks groaning most mornings; a ship underway is noisy, and neither of us could get enough sleep most nights.

Our Deck 5 Cabin

Trish and I had a double cabin with two lower bunks and a private bathroom. There were drawers for storage under each of our beds and under the padded bench seat in between them. We had curtains around each of our bunks, plus a blind to pull across the porthole, and sometimes we needed all of that to escape the 24-hour light!

The schedule for the rest of the day went something like this:

7-8 breakfast buffet

8:30 on deck to get into Zodiacs for an outing

12 back from our outing in time for a delicious hot lunch

1-2 find a spot in the bridge to enjoy the view, get out onto the bow for some sun, or curl up in your bunk or the bar with a book or to edit your photos

2:30 back on deck for another Zodiac outing

6:30 squeeze into the bar for a re-cap of the day, often including a mini-lecture by one of our experts on some highlight we saw

7:30 dinner

8:30 wander from bridge to bar to observation decks taking photos and talking to fellow passengers

MIDNIGHT belatedly remember that the sun doesn’t set here at this time of year and it’s time to try to get some sleep

dining room

Meals were served in two dining rooms that mirrored each other on port and starboard with the serving galley in between. Seats were not assigned, so we chose different dining companions for every meal. During and between meals, coffee and hot water for tea or cocoa was always available, and we could help ourselves to cookies and fresh fruit at all times.

The food, including the vegetarian fare that I ate most days, was excellent.

view from the bridge

The bridge had the best view through these amazing large windows. It was open to us at all times, but we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the interior, and we had to stay quiet so that the helmsman and other crew could concentrate on their work. There was limited space in the bridge, but most passengers were good about taking turns and letting other people take their stations.

the bow deck

The bow deck was a popular spot to catch some rays and look for wildlife when we weren’t moving very fast.

lifeboat muster station

The muster station for the lifeboat on the stern deck made a nice outdoor viewing area protected from the wind, although there was no place to sit.

Jenna on top deck

The view from the very top deck was spectacular, but the wind generated by the boat’s own motion usually made it too cold to stay for long. Here I am enjoying the sun while the captain picks our way v-e-r-y slowly through a fjord full of icebergs.

My Favorite Finds at Paradise Bay and Eskimo Bay

When we landed at both Eskimo Bay and, earlier in the trip, Paradise Bay, most of my shipmates headed off on a hike. A few of us stayed with Carol and did a casual surface-survey near a few of the houses.

Carol takes notes

Carol takes notes on each find: its location, its condition, a description and photos. She can review notes from past visits to track what has changed at a site.

We hoped to find artifacts that Carol hadn’t seen before, and she was also looking for artifacts noted on previous visits, to see how they were weathering.

wooden stick

Wood is incredibly scarce in this tree-free zone above the Arctic circle. This sharpened stick would have been especially prized because of the knot near one end, which was believed to have supernatural meaning.

It turns out I have a good eye for that sort of thing.  Although I don’t have the patience to make a career of it, I found it fascinating to walk slowly and carefully, bent over to scan the ground for anything that looked like it might have been fashioned by a human hand.

Since trash was disposed of by heaping it just outside the houses, there was a surprising amount of broken bone scattered on the surface of the earth.

tooth sockets

A line of holes on this piece turns out to be the tooth sockets in part of a jawbone of a small mammal. Note the other shards of bone around it.

The primary tool for shaping bone was a bow-driven drill — the people who lived here hundreds of years ago didn’t have saws or knives — so I concentrated on looking for small, perfect holes.

round holes

These perfectly round holes were also created by a person. This shard that Carol found seems to have been part of something larger, or perhaps it was a practice piece.

sled runner

This other piece I found at Paradise Bay was probably part of a sled runner. Cord made of animal skin or sinew was laced through the holes so the piece could be lashed to the bottom of a sled.

Also at Paradise Bay, Robyn found a harpoon head. The notes and photos Carol takes of each find are eventually entered into a database that other archaeologists can access.

At Eskimo Bay I made my favorite find: part of what Carol thinks was an amulet! The striking slot-like hole first caught my eye, and when I got down closer I saw that the thin piece of flat bone was decorated by a pattern of lines formed by holes that were not drilled all the way through.

That night back on the ship, Carol used her photo and computer to do a digital re-creation of what the larger piece might have looked like. She thinks this is the upper part, and that another section would have hung below it, but we have no way of knowing what it looked like, or what meaning it carried.

To have found this delicate work of art, held it in my hand, and  imagined the lives of the people who created and used it hundreds of years ago was one of the highlights of my trip!

Bone Treasures in Eskimo Bay

I’ve been fascinated by archaeology since childhood, so getting the opportunity to explore a largely undisturbed site like the settlement at Eskimo Bay was one of the highlights of the trip for me.

With about 45 of us clustered around her (the kayakers arrived a bit later, in a sort of second wave), Carol pointed out the house remains. She coached us to look at the ground and walk gently around the settlement —  never-before-seen artifacts weather out of the ground every season, and it would be easy to crush one before it was even recognized.

She talked a bit about what life was like for the inhabitants, and pointed out features that made the site an ideal village location: a nearby stream, the flat shore good for landing kayaks, and the sheltered nooks and crannies that the people used as work shelters and lookouts.

snow knife

Carol points out a snow knife that has begun weathering out of the ground. Some of the knife is still embedded in the ground, so she covers it with a few flat stones between visits to protect it.

After a bit of searching, Carol found a couple of flat rocks that she remembered from her last visit to the site a couple years ago, and carefully moved them aside to reveal a bone implement — a “knife” used to harvest packed snow to be melted into water. We clustered around, oohed and aahed, and took photos.

snow knife closeup

The snow knife is fashioned from the jawbone of a musk ox. I associated snow knives with igloos, but Carol explained this knife was used to harvest snow or ice to be melted into water.

Meanwhile one of the other guides, Gary, retrieved a cache of bone artifacts that have been gathered over time and set them out on a lichen-covered boulder for us to admire.

worked bone with lens cap

This site is particularly rich in worked bone artifacts. In the past the artifacts have been added to a cached collection as they were found, and the collection is displayed for visitors.

delicate ends

I find the way the ends of these delicate pieces were worked intriguing. Are these tools, ornaments, game pieces, amulets…?

practice piece

Here’s a bit of bone I found with holes drilled through. Ancient Inupiak did not have metal knives or saws. A line of drill holes would perforate bone or shell so they could snap it into pieces. Maybe this was a practice piece?

Sea Ice is Polar Bear Habitat

We were disappointed not to see polar bears during the couple of days we explored Svalbard. Our next stop was Greenland, and I didn’t expect to see much fauna there. Wildlife is heavily hunted, so animals run away from the sound of engines.

But a sharp-eyed guide spotted motion amidst the sea ice as we approached the northeast coast of Greenland, and it turned out to be a lone polar bear. For about fifteen minutes his curiosity won out over his fear. He swam from one ice floe to another close to the bow of the Polar Pioneer, peering and sniffing and cocking his ears at us as we trained our lenses on him.

In the afternoon we had a more fleeting encounter with a polar bear family. The mother was obviously frightened by our appearance and kept her two cubs moving quickly away from us, so we did not try to prolong the visit.

These were our only encounters with polar bears during our 13 days afloat.

 

Icebergs Evoke Reverence

Cruising amidst icebergs in a Zodiac never got old during our Polar Pioneer trip.

The water was always calm, and our mood at the outset was generally reverent: a combination of awe at how these beauties come into the world, appreciation of their beauty, and gratitude that we were some of the privileged few in the world to lay eyes on them.

Bundled up in numerous layers of clothing, eight passengers sat lined up on the black rubber pontoons of the small boat, cameras in hand. The guide driving the boat stood at the stern and steered, periodically stopping the boat to kick a chunk of ice out from under the outboard motor’s propeller.

We craned our necks this way and that as we skirted large bergs and circled smaller ones. Cameras whirred and people ducked out of the way of each others’ photos. For minutes at a time the only words spoken were “Wow!” and “Oops, sorry!” when one of us ducked the wrong way and spoiled another’s shot.

After fifteen or twenty minutes, we got used to our remarkable situation: our butts a couple of feet above almost-frozen water, ice cubes as big as houses floating just boat-lengths away, the nearest other humans hundreds of miles away across an icecap or an ocean. Relaxing into our “new normal,” we started to point out to each other icebergs that were shaped like ducks, or sharks fins, or the Loch Ness Monster, our hushed tones gradually rising in volume.

For the next ninety minutes the guide maneuvered our inflatable boat into the best possible photo angles while simultaneously fielding our questions. When our guide couldn’t answer one of our inquiries — Why are some icebergs blue? Why is that one so pockmarked? Is it true that 90 percent of an iceberg is under the waterline? — he or she would call the other guides on the radio to tap their specialties. As time passed our voices and laughter got louder, and our faces and bodies got proportionally colder.

Around the two hour mark the guide would ask if any of us were cold. After ten or so minutes of denial, someone would finally admit they were starting to feel the chill. A couple of others would agree. The rest of us would confess that we wouldn’t mind access to our bathrooms, or that it must be getting close to lunch time.

With a knowing smile the guide would turn the nose of the Zodiac towards the Polar Pioneer.

And a reverent silence would again descend upon us explorers.

Not All Glaciers Look Alike

During Polar Pioneer’s explorations of the coasts of Svalbard and Greenland on our August 7-20th 2016 cruise, we sailed past dozens, perhaps hundreds, of glaciers. They were so varied in size, form, and even color that we never tired of looking at them…or taking photos!

A glacier forms when snow falls (and does not melt away) year after year after year and compacts into ice under its own weight. Over time this ice moves like a frozen-solid river, pushed along by its own weight. The glacier slides along on meltwater created by the friction of its movement over the rocks. The ice wears away chunks of mountain over time, forming miles-wide fjords and smaller u-shaped valleys.

When the enormous tongue of ice reaches water, it starts to float. The floating leading edge of the glacier moves faster than the ice still resting on the ground. Giant cracks and chasms are created as the waterborne part pulls away from the main body. Periodically huge blocks at the leading edge break off altogether as icebergs.

This “calving” of icebergs sounds like thunder, so loud that the thrum of a Zodiac’s 55hp motor is no match for it. We heard the sound again and again as we cruised along glacier faces, but we only saw a few calvings.

This was partly because the direction of the sound is deceptive as it bounces off water, mountains, the glacier front, and the icebergs all around our boat, some of which were the size of city blocks. And partly because the glacier fronts are miles wide, so it’s impossible to watch more than one small section.

The action is over in an instant, and unless you’re very close to the new iceberg, you can’t even make out its bobbing and rolling as it finds its new equilibrium.

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