Daily weather changes and another ice station Oct 21 2026

This article is part of the series “2026-10: Fram Strait cruise KPH”.

18 October

Oh, what lovely weather we have on the ice station. After I have done my job, I take the opportunity to take a photo from the icebreaker Kronprins Haakon by drone.

Ice Station on the starboard side of RV Kronprins Haakon

That was 13:00. Six hours later, the weather has changed. It is snowing and the crosswind on the helicopter deck is so massive that I do not dare to step out more than one metre. I take a shot to the front and a very blurred selfie and go inside again.

19 October

As predicted, the weather has become worse. When I am on the deck again after lunch, wind speeds have increased to something between 22 m/s and 28 m/s and the temperature has dropped to -8 °C. So I take the selfie in the wind-protected hangar.

But I am in a luxury position. Most of my work here is computer work, done in the heated Conference Work Room. Others have a much tougher job. They are recovering a mooring. Although the cable is one of the shorter ones, it takes around two hours until the mooring is recovered, because the elements keeps tangling up the cable. This is outside work on deck 3, with overalls, helmets, balaclavas and goggles in storm conditions and wind chills below -20 °C. So, it’s not me who should complain about the weather.

Later in the evening, the weather becomes even more severe, with wind gusts above 30 m/s and temperatures dropping below -10 °C. A very good time to stay inside even when taking photos. So I take photos through the windows from the bridge. On the starboard side, the storm batters the ship with snow. On the port side, the snow swirls in all possible directions.

Snow storm in the dark – seen from the bridge

20 October

The next morning, the weather has changed again, this time for the better. It has become colder, with temperatures of -13 °C, but the storm is gone and so has the snowfall.

An ice station is planned. I will join it later, when the wind has decreased even more and it is a bit brighter outside. Although our position is -9.5° W, our ship time is Norwegian time and so sunrise is around noon. Around 10 o’clock, I stand on the ice with the drone I intend to fly. Will it work when it is still dawn?

The drone I use belongs to the Norwegian Polar Institute

Yes – it works! The ship provides a lot of light that illuminates the ice. Not only for working but also for the team on the bridge that is looking for polar bears. While their job is harder at dawn, my drone flies well, although it detects obstacles in the air that are not there.

When the sun finally rises, it is pretty spectacular. In high latitudes, it seems more to roll over the horizon than to lift up.

And the colours are incredible. The snow-covered ice floe we are in shows many colours but not white.

After lunch, the ice station is continued and have the opportunity for another flight. Some shots from the side:

Then I stayed outside to learn a bit about the calibration of the GEM2, an electromagnetic instrument that is used for measuring the thickness of snow and ice.

However, I do not fly the drone for leisure but to make orthophotos that show the ice situation from above. For that, I have to take many pictures and then – back on the ship – use both traditional image editing and special software to stitch the images together. The morning orthophoto was stitched together from 125 images, the afternoon one from 255 images. That took about an hour of processing on a fast computer.

Especially the latter photo has a good image resolution. Do you see the scientists out there with the GEM2 on a pulka sled in the photo below? It is taken from the orthophoto above.

The next day another ice station is planned.

21 October

… but never set up. First the visibility was too poor and then it was too windy. I couldn’t have flown a drone anyhow because first it was snowing and then, with rising temperatures, it was raining. So a lot of other work was done instead.

So – another ice station tomorrow? Actually, that’s planned. Tomorrow I’ll know a bit more.

A mooring, ice stations and the sun Oct 18 2026

This article is part of the series “2026-10: Fram Strait cruise KPH”.

16 October

The polar bear is gone. The dinner has been eaten. Now it is time to recover F12, another mooring which is underwater and has measured a variety of values for 14 months. The ship’s echo sounder has already located it, so it has “only” to be released from the ground. There is only one issue – there is a lot of ice and to recover the mooring, open water is needed. The helmsman has already circled the icebreaker several times to create an ice-free area. When the mooring is finally released, the air-filled buoy pops up in the water, just two metres away from the searchlight. Chapeau! I mentioned in the last article the joint effort that is needed to get such a mooring with more than 1800 metres of Kevlar cable equipped with instruments from the sea onto the ship.

17 October

When there is ice, it’s an opportunity for an ice station. Again, this is teamwork. Besides the scientists on the ice, you need a polar bear guard with a rifle on the ice and three bridge watches on the bridge on deck 8 that are constantly observing the surroundings for polar bears, cracks in the ice, fog coming up, and other potential dangers. I handle the communication between the bridge and the team on the ice, and luckily nothing happens. The only thing I have to do is to keep track of the people who are on the ice.

There are my things: A bottle of water, my own binoculars (I have had them for more than 40 years), a VHF radio for communication and a notebook with a ballpen for taking notes.

I haven’t seen the sun for days, but now, while I am taking the second shift, the sun is rising from a low layer of clouds on the horizon. I can see its reflections in the windows on the other side of the bridge while the ice team works in the ship’s shadow.

For the rest of the day, I do computer work but interrupt it several times just to go outside and take some photos from the helicopter deck, which is on deck 6 at the bow of the ship. You never know how long the good weather will last. I am there while the sun is shining, I am watching the sllloooowww sunset, and I am there in the evening, when it is the ship that is illuminating the ice.

Ice on the Fram Strait, October 2026 III

Ice on the Fram Strait, October 2026 VII

I am already in bed when I see a post in our group chat mentioning Jupiter and Mars. I put my down clothes over my pyjama, put the helmet on my head and go out onto the “helideck” one last time for the day. The night is starry and there they are: Both Jupiter and Mars near the horizon, accompanied by many stars. But there are also big spotlights, which make the view somehow special. The stars are slightly out of focus, but I am showing a photo nevertheless.

18 October

Another day – another ice station. I will do the first bridge watch and then go onto the ice myself to fly a drone. Around 10 o’clock, the team enters the ice.

Two things are certain on an expedition with the icebreaker Kronprins Haakon. All meals are on time. Everything else may and will change. This time, it is a crack in the ice that I observe. I inform the team on the ice. I have to give several updates, because more and more cracks appear. After less than half an hour, both the team and their equipment are safely back on board, and the ice station is aborted. Between the first and the last of the following photos lie 18 minutes.

After lunch – the second try. I may join the team in the beginning, because, although the conditions for drone flying are not the best (mediocre visibility, low temperatures, high humidity), the winds will increase in the afternoon. It’s now, or never.

Fifteen minutes later, I am on the sea ice. At first, I let the drone fly at an altitude of only 2-3 metres for two minutes. I land it and check the propellers. Are they free and able to move? Is there visible icing? What about the battery? Luckily, everything looks fine. With a new battery I lift the drone up to 65 metres to fly a zigzag pattern to get a mosaic of photos to be stitched together later. The flying itself works pretty well, although I get some wind warnings on the display of my remote control. I have some minor issues with the camera gimbal and take another flight to get some backup photos. At the very end I take a snapshot of our icebreaker.

And a selfie or two. I am wearing a survival suit and a helmet from the Norwegian Polar Institute, a woollen sweater I bought in Longyearbyen two years ago and a balaclava knitted by my friend Christine.

When I have finished, I leave the sea ice. After redressing and a small break I take another bridge watch. Nothing happens, and so it should be. The exciting part comes thereafter. Are the photos – 126 in total – suitable for an orthomosaic? I mean, the single shots look like this:

Preview of the drone photos in Lightroom

An then, the relief: WebODM, the software successfully stitches together the photos.

Why does the image has this odd angle? Because it contains spatial data, so that it can be used in GIS systems. It is therefore aligned north. Here is a cropped version aligned parallel to the ship:

Will there be another ice station? I’m pretty sure. Probably not tomorrow, when we expect another strong gale, with wind speeds above 20 m/s. So I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, apart from one thing: all meals will be on time.

28 September – 1 October – the last days Oct 11 2026

This article is part of the series “2026-09: Canada”.

It was more than three weeks ago that our holiday in Canada began. We still have some days left, but we are on the home stretch. It has been a spectacular holiday with many more impressions than I had hoped for, and if I had to say what the best part was, I couldn’t give a single answer. Besides, I got to share it all with my wife Annika.

28 September

After the wonderful previous day, when we drove the Icefields Parkway we have another day at the Kicking Horse Mountain Resort, a ski resort 500 metres above the town of Golden, My plans for the day; a swim in a lake and an afternoon nap. But first: breakfast.

Breakfast in our apartment in the Glacier Mountaineer Lodge

We take the car to the Cedar Lake, a nice bathing lake nearby. First we hike to Astro Lake through autumnal forests. The way back is a bit longer than expected, and a chance to cool down in Cedar Lake, which has its own bathing jetty is mostly welcome. I spend some time swimming in the cold water, and back at the apartment I am shivering. Luckily, our apartment has a bathtub, which gives me my second bath of the day.

29 September

Oh, this is an early morning. For three weeks we have been spreading out all our belongings in our rental car, now everything is properly packed again, because today we have to return the car. Not in Golden, but in Calgary – 300 km away – by 10 o’clock. When we start, it is pitch black and it is raining. It takes more than an hour until I can distinguish the mountains against the cloudy sky.

Returning the car works like a charm. There is a dedicated lane off the road and the friendly staff wave us into a parking bay. We take our belongings, return the key, and that’s it. We take the number 500 bus into town and another one to our Airbnb apartment, leave our luggage and look for a place where we can return our deposit bottles that we collected over the past few weeks. They are not accepted in the supermarkets but in special bottle depots.

30 September

Today we want to discover Calgary. We take a bus to the centre and cross the Bow River, the very same river we saw in the Rockies three days ago. We return to the centre on the Peace Bridge and take a stroll through the Prince’s Island Park, located on a river isle. The combination of the skyscraper-dominated cityscape, the river and the autumnal trees has its appeal.

In town we drift through the streets, which are laid out in a grid with streets (St) and avenues (Ave). The number of skyscrapers is stunning. There are many with apartments, but it looks like the big ones with the mirrored façades seem to be mainly office buildings.

But of course there are other houses as well, sometimes contrasting with their modern siblings, sometimes just finding a small patch, where they stand like a dandelion on an asphalt road.

We enjoy our last dinner in the Taste of Yemen, where we get an incredible meal at more than reasonable prices. If I lived in Calgary, I would be a regular visitor there.

1 October

Time to fly home. After having the last breakfast, packing our belongings, taking the bus to the airport, leaving the baggage, waiting for the flight and then Annika and I leave Calgary, sitting side by side in the very last row of the aeroplane. I have set my clock forward eight hours to get back to Central European Summer Time again and try to sleep as much as possible. It is more than a series of naps. When I wake up for the umpteenth time, we are above the coast of Labrador. It is night and I cannot see any landscape, but I do see a faint green arc in the north. The first Northern Lights of the season.

27 September – Icefields Parkway Oct 11 2026

This article is part of the series “2026-09: Canada”.

27 September

My wife Annika and I have seen the Canadian Rocky Mountains on both our flights to Canada. We crossed them together on our way from Valemount to Jasper. We saw them again when we visited the Athabasca Falls the following day. We crossed them again in the opposite direction on our way from Drumheller to Radium Hot Springs. Today is the day when we want to drive the most famous road in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, the Icefields Parkway, part of Alberta Highway 93.

5:40 – the alarm clock rings. We want to get an early start, because it could be a long day. At 6:30, we start our journey. It is a chilly and starry morning with constellations like Orion and Canis Major in the east. Our first stop is not on the Icefields Parkway but on the road between Golden and Banff – Natural Bridge Lower Falls in the Yoho National Park. The river lies in the shade of the morning. While we are back on the road, the sun rises and illuminates the mountain peaks.

We drive to the car park at Lake Louise, one of the tourist hotspots but just turn around. First of all, the car park is already full, and then we’ve decided to skip the lake anyway (the parking fee alone is 42$). However, this is where the Icefields Parkway starts or ends, depending from your perspective. The air is cold, the car thermometer shows -4 °C. We drive north. We have had incredible luck with the weather. The last rain has brought fresh snow to the mountains, but now the sky is clear again and all the mountain peaks are visible. And yes – this is an especially beautiful road to drive ,and now, in late September, it is much less crowded than I expected.

We see countless snowy mountains whose names I do not know. We stop at Bow Lake. At Bow Pass (2067 m) the snow is not above us but beside us. We take the walk to the Peyto Lake Viewpoint. We stop at Waterfowl Lake. We take the short walk to Mistaya Canyon. We look back along the road from the Big Bend Viewpoint. And then we arrive at the Columbia Icefield, where we can see the glaciers in the distance – both impressive and distressing, because the total area covered by the Icefield decreased by 18% between 1985 and 2018. (Geosciences 2021, 11(1), 19; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences11010019). We continue on to the Stutfield Glacier Viewpoint. Then it is time to turn around and drive the same way back. What a day! This has been another highlight on our trip to Canada, though by no means the only one.

And now – the trip photos.

Disclaimer: Some of the photo captions name the subject, while others name the place from which the photo was taken. I have done my best to use the correct names, but I might have got some of them wrong.

24–26 September – From dinosaurs to Emerald Lake Oct 10 2026

This article is part of the series “2026-09: Canada”.

24 September

My wife Annika and I are in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. The weather is nice. There is a Pachyrhinosaurus with two youngsters standing in front of us. They do not notice us at all. Perhaps that’s because they are made of plastic. They stand in front of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, and so do we.

The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology

The Royal Tyrrell Museum holds Canada’s largest fossil collection and is famous for its dinosaur fossils. I am the first to get in when it opens. I just run through the museum to take some photographs before other people get in the there. After that, Annika and I go through the museum, taking our time. This museum is awesome! If I lived here, I would definitely have an annual pass to visit it from time to time.

After the museum, we take the car to Horseshoe Canyon. We go for a longer walk here on the countless small paths that lead through this badlands canyon. Be sure to have water with you and make sure you can find your way back, because the many hills make the place a maze.

In the late afternoon, we have another destination, the Last Chance Saloon, Alberta’s oldest operating saloon. They are about to close, but we get in and can sit in this extraordinarily cosy saloon and enjoy the delicious food. I order a “Badlands Brisket Taco Bowl” and am surprised to discover that the bowl does not contain any taco, it is made out of taco. And the smoked brisket – wow!

If you are in Drumheller, your day may start with a dinosaur and it may end with one, too. This is Tyra, the World’s Largest Dinosaur, a roadside attraction that we have passed several times over the last few days.

25 September

Today we head to Radium Hot Springs, which lies on the other side of the Rockies. It is a longer drive of about 400 km. First, we follow the grid-like roads through the prairies, then follow the Bow River until Castle Junction.

There we leave Alberta Highway 1 first and then Alberta altogether. We are back in British Columbia, where our journey began almost three weeks ago. Something interesting is happening. It starts to rain. We have had dry weather for weeks; now there is rain with everything from “I’ll drench you with a drizzle, even if it takes half the day.” to “Buy yourself an ark.” In Radium Hot Springs, we check in at the motel and take a nap. When I wake up, I see animals looking like goats on the property. I take a photo of a mother with two lambs. These are, of course, a bit cautious but not shy at all. It is only now, while blogging, that I learn that these are bighorn sheep, which are quite famous in Canada.

After dinner (goulash soup at the Old Salzburg restaurant) we take a walk before heading home.

26 September

Today we head northeast to Golden, where we’ll have an apartment for three days. It is the only place we booked well ahead, because we want to visit the Rockies and accommodation there is ridiculously expensive. It is still cloudy, but the rain has mostly stopped. To be honest, I am glad about yesterday’s rain. With the drop in temperature, it might have snowed in the mountains. Hopefully it did.

The road follows the Columbia River, which is not a single river so much as a system of river branches, islets, oxbow lakes, and swamps. Sometimes we take the main road; sometimes we take the small gravel roads on the other side of the river.

When the clouds lift, we get a glimpse of the mountains. There is fresh snow on the mountaintops.

We pass Golden to visit Emerald Lake, which lies between Golden and the Rocky Mountains. We take a hike around the lake, slightly distracted by a chipmunk running back and forth on the trail not far from the car park.

Then we start our trail. Although the first half of the trail is very easy to walk, it takes a long time. I’m to blame because I wait for the sun to shine on a certain part of the mountains on the other side of the lake. Halfway along the trail, it becomes a normal forest path with small bridges, slippery tree roots and some mud puddles. I have bear spray within reach; Annika carries a bear bell. So far, we haven’t seen a single bear, and I’m happy about that. Of course, it would be cool to see one from a safe spot, but I don’t want to meet one in its forest.

Tomorrow we will visit one of Western Canada’s most scenic routes, the Icefields Parkway, which crosses the Canadian Rocky Mountains in a north-south direction. Hopefully the weather will be as fine as predicted, and hopefully it won’t be too crowded.

23 September – Drumheller I – badlands and hoodoos Oct 8 2026

This article is part of the series “2026-09: Canada”.

23 September

After a night in the ~~village~~ ~~town~~ city of Red Deer my wife Annika and I continued our journey southeastwards. We are in the prairies now, which are dominated by farmland and large grain fields. While the terrain is slightly hilly, most streets are dead-straight. They go either north—south or west—east, making the map look like squared paper.

The fields can be huge from a Central European perspective. Sometimes there is an old barn, sometimes a grain silo and sometimes there is a pumpjack, because in Alberta oil is still being extracted. But mostly it is grain fields, some already harvested, some not yet.

Harvesters collect the grain, and lorries transport it, leaving a long track of dust behind. At one place we see a GrainsConnect plant with large silos for interim storage and a train to dispatch the grain further, most probably to the Pacific Ocean to be shipped overseas.

Of course I love the spectacular mountain views, the incredible rain forests with their old and mighty trees and the turquoise alpine lakes. But I also love the monotonous rhythms of these prairies. They are part of the Great Plains east of the Rocky Mountains, which stretch from Alberta and Saskatchewan through the USA into Mexico. (We didn’t drive that far that day ….)

You get into this rhythm of the squared patchwork, then you start to wonder what these fractal-like disruptions on the navigation map are, and all of a sudden you are in a completely different type of landscape – the badlands.

The plains are gone and now you are amidst these eroded mountains. Let’s hear, how Copilot AI describes the next image:

“Overall, I’d describe this as a well-exposed stratified badlands butte showing millions of years of sedimentary deposition and subsequent erosion.”

The area has sparse, desert-like vegetation on the sandy ground, including cacti like these plains pricklypears.

Then you drive further, a bit uphill and Bam! – you are in the plains again as if the badlands had just been a dream.

Now we are not far away from Drumheller, our destination for today, but first we have to check out the Bleriot Ferry, a cable ferry crossing the Red Deer River. The ferry operator tells us that we can (and should) use the ferry, that the road to Drumheller on the other side is closed, that we should drive there anyhow to the viewpoint, and that we could come back here thereafter. Sounds like a plan. We take the ferry – it is free, ignore the “road closed” sign and park on the small car park by the Orkney Viewpoint. And that’s an incredible viewpoint over the dusty Badlands – 72 million years old, the Red Deer River with its green, mellow banks and, in the distance the prairies. A perfect place to have a light lunch with bread, dips, and cookies.

We head back the very same way and take the ferry again. From there it is only twenty minutes to Drumheller where we’ll stay in a motel for two days. The town looks a bit like a dinosaur theme park – dinos everywhere! – because numerous dinosaur fossils have been discovered in the area, making it one of the most important paleontological regions in the world. The town is also home to the famous Royal Tyrrell Museum that we plan to visit the next day.

In the late afternoon, we take the car to Willow Creek, which is well-known for its hoodoos – geological rock formations created by erosion. Annika and I take a walk and gaze at nature’s art exhibition.

Before we drive back to the motel I want to take some better photos of the hoodoos, now that most other tourists have left. I take a first photo …

… and then slowly but surely the evening sun that hid behind a layer of clouds comes out and all of a sudden the hoodoos start to glow in the warmest sunset colours imaginable, as if they were glowing from within. I’m truly happy that I can experience that moment and that I have my Nikon at hand. This moment teaches me that if you want a good photo, look for a good subject; but if you want a better photo, wait for the light.

Early September in Tromsø Sep 4 2026

The first signs of autumn have arrived in Tromsø in recent days. I took some snapshots with my mobile while following the paths through the forest and the wet trods over the bogs. Still many birches are green but some are yellow and have starting shedding their leaves while parts of the undergrowth are bright red.

Today I left Tromsø behind for four weeks. I flew to Oslo and will spend the night in a hotel near the airport. Tomorrow I’ll fly to Amsterdam where I’ll meet my wife Annika and then we head for our furthest journey yet. Canada for four weeks! British Columbia and Alberta. I’m very excited, a bit nervous and pretty curious how it looks like.

Mountain tour on the Ullstinden Aug 30 2026

The weather forecast looked good for Saturday which was yesterday, so my friend Christine and I decided to do a mountain tour on Mount Ullstinden on Tromsø‘s mainland. We met at her place, had breakfast and drove to the car park, the very same where our tours to Trollvassbu start.

This time we head north-east. The unmarked path leads over several bogs and some parts are pretty wet and muddy.

We cross some stretches of birch forests and the ground gets drier. Even at this early stage, we have wide views of the mountains and valleys to the south and west.

Some parts are covered with Arctous alpina whose leaves turn bright red in early autumn. The colour can be pretty intense and although the birches have hardly turned yellow they give the mountain landscapes an autumnal atmosphere.

In the north we can see Grøtsundet, which connects Tromsøya to Ullfjorden and so to the open sea in the north. Here the Hurtigruten ships can continue to Skjervøy, the next Hurtigruten port in the north. The Hurtigruten ship we see however is probably an expedition cruise ship because the ships from the north arrive in the night.

I am a bit confused. I thought Ullstinden was the mountain we already headed to on the bogs but I was wrong, our destination is more to the west. Here we see the first reindeer, first just a couple, then more groups – they are at least fifty. Since they stand more or less on our trail we slow down and give them a head start.

While we wait and watch, the wind picks up a little. It is carrying a lot of willow seed with it and against the sun it looks like a late-summer snow shower.

We turn left now following the red-painted rocks that mark the trail up. The Hurtigruten ship is out of sight but the view of Grøtsundet is still there, including the island Nipøya and the mountain Istinden with its glacier in the background.

The terrain gets rocky. We cross a broad but shallow mountain stream with green patches of moss and the “high alpine” part of our mountain tour starts.

The slope is covered with rough, angular rocks. Sometimes there is a tuft of grass or a small ground-cover plant but moss and crustose lichens dominate the sparse vegetation.

I took the selfie at an altitude of 800 metres. In Bavaria you have towns like Oberstdorf or Bayrischzell at those altitudes, here in Tromsø you are in desert-like Arctic alpine terrain.

Finally we reach reach the summit of the south-western summit of Ullstinden (in some sources called Stortinden) at an altitude of 1078 metres. We drop our backpacks, drink some water and share some chocolate. We have been completely alone for the whole tour, but now a young woman is approaching. It is her taking the photo of us. Thank you, unknown hiker!

Ullstinden Panorama, taken from Ullstinden (a.k.a Stortinden) – 1078 m

The view from the peak is absurdly spectacular, almost unreal. To the southwest we can see the slope we ascended. To the west, behind Ullsfjorden we can see the northern half of the Lyngen Alps. Also to the west, more than 600 metres below us – the lake Riehppejávri or Storelvvatnan with its intense turquoise water. To the north, the other summit of Ullstinden – 15 metres higher and there are other fjords and snow fields and mountain ranges and two eagles and … . I am speechless.

I take some photos. For the one with the lake I have to lie down, because there the terrain is much steeper than the comfort-zone part of me likes.

I even try to take a series of shots for a panoramic photo (thanks, Martin for your inspiration!) but I’m not content. I should have taken more time to find a better angle.

Panorama, taken from Ullstinden (a.k.a Stortinden)

I was glad that I took my trekking poles with me. I hardly use them, but my knees appreciated it when I was descending about 950 metres in altitude. I have eaten the chocolate, I have drunk most of the water but now I had another weight to bear: A quartz rock of about one kilo that I found on the way up. Until it has found its final place in my apartment it stands on the coffee table and reminds me of this exhausting but pretty spectacular mountain tour.

Thanks for the great hike, Christine. Takk for turen!

A late summer overnight stay at Bjuröklubb Aug 22 2026

Thursday afternoon. It is just before the bus stop that I discover the first fly agarics of the year. I have walked about 3.3 km from our home in Obbola to the nearest bus stop. From here it’s half an hour’s bus journey to Norrlands universitetssjukhus, the hospital where I meet Annika.

We take her car, heading north to a well-known place: Bjuröklubb. The first time I went there was 25 April 2010, just three days after I moved to Sweden. The last time I was there was with Annika on 28 June 2024, when we rented the cabin Spanarstugan for an overnight stay.

Since we both have Friday off and the weather forecast looked promising, we have hired the cabin again at very short notice. Luckily it was free. After a 120-km drive, we arrive there, carry our things up the last 250 metres on foot and there we are again: at one of my favourite places, having the large cabin for ourselves and everything we need for a tasty outdoor dinner.

After dinner we go up the hill to the lighthouse Bjuröklubbs fyr which, despite its age, is still active. From here you have a unique view of the sea and, weather permitting, beautiful sunsets.

As the sun sinks lower and lower, the light gets warmer and warmer and it takes a while for the sun to set behind the distant, flat hills in the north.

An hour later it has become darker and the stars are out. The pine trees appear as black silhouettes and the lighthouse has started its work.

The next morning the weather is still clear. A small sailing boat is already out at 6 o’clock. Where does it come from, and where is it heading?

Today is Annika’s and my sixth wedding anniversary and I’m not only blessed to have Annika as my wife, but also glad that we are here together and the weather is nice and the hares are running and the birds are chirping and the butterflies are fluttering around and that we can even have breakfast outside in the sun. But before that: New day – new photos!

Stone field and pines – typical for Bjuröklubb

After lunch, Annika is picking berries while I am walking and climbing to the old lighthouse Bjuröklubb Nord Östra, an abandoned leading light situated by the sea.

I unscrew a hook that locks the metal door, open it and peek in. While the windows still retain their colours, the light source is long gone.

On my way back I meet Annika in the sun. She is still collecting blueberries. Although the warmth of the sun makes it feel like a summer day the bright red leaves on the blueberry bushes show that autumn is near.

Meanwhile, the café has opened. Time to buy some ice cream. After I have finished mine, I try to take photos of the many, many butterflies. Anyway, that’s not easy because I left my big Nikon camera at home and my small Sony camera is a bit picky when it comes to focussing on such subjects. These are the best shots: European peacock (Aglais io) – painted lady (Vanessa cardui) – small tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae) – red admiral (Vanessa atalanta).

A summer overnight stay at Blåkollkoia cabin Jul 5 2026

The weather in Tromsø for the weekend didn’t look promising, but for Friday it did. I leave work just after lunch so that Annika and I can hike up to Blåkollkoia cabin together. At half past one I park the car in Tønsvik. From there, it is an 8 km walk up to the cabin. The first 2½ km we follow a gravel road that leads to some private cabins.

Then the road turns into a marked hiking trail. It leads through fern thickets and birch forests; it crosses grassy plateaus and bogs with cotton grass.

It is perfect hiking weather. The air is not too warm, but the sun is quite strong and we are glad about the occasional wind cooling us down. There are hardly any mosquitoes, but plenty of flies seem to fall in love with us and follow us everywhere.

Below the cabin we use the bridge to cross the river Goahtevuomieatnu/Tønsvikelva. We were here in August 2024 and took a bath; now the river carries a lot more water.

Then we arrive at the cabin. It is locked and we use the key provided by DNT (Den Norske Turistforening) to enter. We have booked two beds in Room 2.

I go outside several times to take photos, while the sun is slowly sinking lower and lower. It is still polar day in Tromsø, so the sun won’t set. I sleep a bit but after midnight I am out again enjoying the beautiful scenery that is illuminated by the low sun in warm colours.

The next morning the scenery is quite different. The sky is overcast, some mountains hang in the clouds and it has started drizzling a bit.

After a two-course breakfast (fried spaghetti and muesli), Annika and I pack our things, clean the cabin with the other guests and start our tour back to the parked car.

First it is just overcast, then it becomes foggy and in the end, when we are on the gravel road again, it starts to rain.

Luckily, a friend of ours lives nearby. Here we can change into dry clothes and we get hot soup and coffee. Thank you, C. for the food and good company! A perfect ending for a great hiking tour that took less than 24 hours.

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