Black guillemot « Murray Foote

Lilliehöökbreen, Spitsbergen. Day 39. 6th August 2013.

From Tinayrebukta we sailed about twenty-six kilometres to the end of the neighbouring (fjord) Lilliehöökfjorden at Lilliehöökbreen. This is where a massive glacier comes out, twenty-two kilometres long and eight kilometres wide at the end of the fjord.

If you’re on a PC, click the image to see it at a much larger size and get a tiny snippet of the great majesty of the location.

Remarkable shapes in the details atop the glacier.

A distant view with a long lens.

A black guillemot taking off.

Kittiwakes.

Note the ship, which gives you an idea of the scale. It is 72 metres long. Click on the image for a larger size if you can’t see it.

The ship is also visible here. (Click to expand to much larger size).

An ice duck.

Sometimes the ice berglets can assume fanciful shapes. This is a selection from the previous image.

(Image expands to much larger size if you click on it).

Tinayrebukta, Spitsbergen. Day 39. 6th August 2013.

We had left Longyearbeyan the previous afternoon and sailed north up the coast of Spitsbergen during the night to a northern fjord, Tinayrebukta. We piled into the zodiacs in the early morning and within half an hour came across a pair of polar bears, mother and cub, who had been feeding off a reindeer carcase and weren’t at all concerned about us.

You can go on a voyage such as this and not see a single polar bear and we had jagged two in the first half hour.

This is the voyage. Up the coast of Spitsbergen, across to Greenland, down the coast of Greenland through the fjords and then down to Iceland. The red dots don’t all indicate stops. Many are intermediate points to simulate the route. There is also serious distortion here due to the Mercator projection. Spitsbergen (or Svalbard to use the less ambiguous name) is actually half the size of Iceland.

This is the voyage in Spitsbergen. Longyearbyen is at the bottom of the map. I have included the trip to Pyramiden. From Longyearbyen we sailed to Tinayrebukta (this post), Lilliehöökbreen, Hamiltonbukta and Smeerenburg, then departed for Greenland.