Dear friends,
It’s almost our sixth month in the Arctic now.
We feel very lucky that we can stay in Hornsund all year and observe changing seasons, spectacular Aurora Borealis almost every day (since it’s a polar night). We had many visitors during summer but since October there’s only ten of us.
Winter up to now is rather mild, thus, we have some difficulties with water sources – lake, from which we took water all summer, is dry and frozen (until late spring) and there is not enough snow around the Station to collect and melt in our 2 m3 container. All snow is being blown away by strong winds so the only way to have water is to pick glacier ice from the shore, 600 meters from Station. Breaking big growlers into pieces and then, loading it on a tractor is a big effort for us but pays of – shower had never been so fancy – who else can shower in heated ocean-scented glacier waters? Well, it’s fun, but we’re really looking forward for snow– we’d like to try our snow scooters out and ski!
Recently we had few polar bears visits and we’re aware of them only thanks to our dogs that are loudly alarming us. One of our dog became somehow famous few weeks ago (svalbardposten.no/nyheter/en-hund-etter-villdyr), because of polar fox encounter next to the doghouse. Fox did not survive and was taken to Longyearbyen for rabies tests.
On 6h of Dcember we had visitors from Norwegian Church during the yearly Christmas visit to Polish Polar Station together with catholic Polish priest from Tromso, Longyearbyen pastor and dentist that helped two of the winterers with their teeth problems. You can see how the visit looked like at: http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/distrikt/troms_og_finnmark/1.7913457. Beside presents, mail, fresh fruits and vegetables they brought us a lot of warmth!
Since it is a Christmas time, we’d like to wish you all White and Merry Christmas, lot of fun during holidays, happy New Year with millions of opportunities to visit Arctic! Stay warm!!
