It is autumnal equinox, the beginning of autumn today. Despite of the unstable weather a friend of mine and I took a tour to Oldervik and took some photos. Yes, we got wet and the friend’s dog was not amused. The good thing about unstable weather: You have a good chance of interesting light situations and rainbows.
This article is part of the series “2024-08: Fram Strait cruise KPH”.
Wednesday, 21 August 10:36. It’s Annika’s and my fourth wedding anniversary, but I’m far away from her. I’m on the icebreaker Kronprins Haakon in the Fram Strait at 78° 50′ N, 12° 16′ W, that’s between Greenland and Svalbard. Air temperature is +0.2 °C, water temperature -0.1 °C. It is day 9 of the scientific cruise FS2024 of the Norwegian Polar Institute. Today I have found some time to write a blog article and also to publish it thanks to the fast satellite internet on board.
This article is about the journey, about the elements, not about research. I’ll come to this later in other articles.
Today the 2024 expedition to the Fram Strait begins. Short name: FS2024. 19 participants and 20 crew members are on board. Round 18:00 we leave the port, sail along the Adventfjorden and turn into the 107 km long Isfjorden. When we reach the open sea the sea gets rough and our ship starts to pitch and roll in the waves and not all people feel well. I have a cabin in the bow of deck 3 and the larger waves splash sea water against the port hole.
In the night the wind has calmed down. We are heading west and it is quite foggy. This year there is much less sea ice in the Fram Strait then usual at this time. Less ice coverage means increased air humidity and that results in fog.
It continues to be foggy, no need to take any photos of the sea. But in the afternoon the sun manages to fight its way through the fog. This results in two hours with blue sky and also in a phenomenon I never experienced before. A fog bow. As with usual rainbows the sun is in the back so it is not a halo. The water droplets of the fog are so small, that the colours are very weak and so the fog bow looks almost white.
Research as usual: Two mooring recoveries and several CTD casts, MSS casts, optical casts. The weather: also as usual. It is foggy again and it will stay like this the whole day.
It is not clear whether we will have any ice station on this cruise. The ice stations planned for yesterday and today have already been canceled due to the lack of sea ice and tomorrow it doesn’t look better. At lunch time at least the first chunks of ice have appeared. That’s a nice change in the uniformness of the foggy weather.
For days we have been checking the wind speed on windy that forecasted winds up to 40 knots for today. That’s 20 m/s. And the gale has already reached us. The waves have started to get larger with spray on the top. They splash against the few ice floes drifting around us.
In the afternoon all research has been cancelled because of the increasing wind and growing waves. After dinner I go down to deck 3 and into my room. We have average wind speeds of 22-23 m/s now. The ship pitches a lot and in combination with the high waves (I think, 3–4 metres) the port hole of my cabin is occasionally under water. These are some screenshots of a short movie I made with my mobile:
Now the ice floes are not gently drifting anymore but are at the mercy of the waves. Is the storm our friend and blows that one nice looking ice floe in the north towards us? Or will the swell break the ice into smithereens?
Half past seven – breakfast time. Wind has calmed down to 15 m/s. We are at 78°50′ N und 9°30′ W. I work a lot this day on my computer, hardly looking out of the window. We want to reach 14° W tonight. That’s not so so far away as it sounds, since one degree west means a distance of just 21.5 km at these latitudes.
At 18:30 all people involved in sea ice work meet up. That’s also the people doing “bridge watch” looking for polar bears from the bridge at deck 8. We get a safety briefing for being on the ice and then we see a presentation created by ice expert Henrik that shows the ice situation. There are two possibilities for an ice station for the next day.
It’s hardly believable – we are still in open water with less than 1% ice. But we have a fresh satellite image and people who know ice so I’m optimistic. If only the ice is stable enough.
At least there are some flat ice bergs around.
At 4 o’clock in the night I wake up. I know this noise, the vibrations, these movements. Kronprins Haakon breaks though the ice! I look through the porthole – we are in the ice! Despite the early hour I get up to take photos on the helicopter deck. It looks so different from the previous days.
Shortly after nine o’clock I take my mobile phone to make this photo:
And this means – after a year and two month I finally stand on the arctic sea ice again. I missed it, I just love this environment! Today’s mission: Flying a drone to produce images for a so-called orthophoto. But that is another story to be told a bit later.
This article is part of the series “2022-10: Autumn in Scotland”.
It’s 12 October, day 6 of Annika’s and my Scotland holiday this autumn. Today we want to hike round the Stac Pollaidh – or “Stac Polly” – a mountain in the Assynt region of the Northwest highlands. Its twin summit is quite prominent. We start our tour after lunch, where weather was supposed to get better. (And it was.)
Slowly we start hiking up following the excellent cobblestone path.
Technically our tour follows a circular path round the summits, but it climbs up almost on level of the east summit. The west summit is round 80 metres higher and needs a certain amount of scrambling and mountaineering experience that we lack.
It is still cloudy, but the sun starts to peek more and more through breaks in the clouds. Quite soon the views are impressive, from hazy tones of dark grey against the light to circular views that seem to cover the whole Assynt region. Harsh mountain tops – nunataks in the ice age – hilly landscapes – countless lakes, and to the west: the sea.
The ascent gets a bit steeper, the cobblestone path zigzags up the mountain. The passing clouds constantly change the landscape’s appearance. Again and again I have to look back for the views.
Finally we arrive at the junction to the east summit. It is not far to climb it and it rewards with a scenic 360° view, only interrupted by the higher west summit. Stunning! Me meet a local that shows and names all mountain massifs and tops around. Wind increases and we are pretty glad about our windproof clothes.
It’s hard to leave this beautiful place but finally we leave the summit and walk back to our circular route. The first part is near perfection, then it gets quite muddy and slippery. But the views are still awesome.
The more we loose elevation the more we approach our starting point. We can see the harsh rocks of the west summit and partially hidden behind the east summit that we just had visited. The sky is bluer than and Stac Pollaidh looks friendly. Other mountains in directing sun however look sombre and almost hostile.
We reach a last sheep gate and shortly after arrive at the parking place.
Two photos in portrait format – they never blend in with my other landscape format photos. The first is from the ascent, the second from the descent.
Shortly after we have arrived at the car it is starting to rain. Wow, that’s perfect timing! And beyond that it rewards us with one of the most durable double rainbows I ever saw. Intensely it is shining for more than 40 minutes while we are driving to our hostel in Inchnadamph. Even when it gets dark the sun still is illuminating a cloud blanketing a mountain.
Along with our day on Isle of Lewis’ west coast this day is definitely one of my personal highlights of our holiday. Thank you Annika for planning the tour and sharing the experience!
This article is part of the series “2022-10: Autumn in Scotland”.
It has been years, since Annika and I were on holiday outside of Fennoscandia. This October we enjoyed a ten day journey to Scotland from which I just arrived in Tromsø yesterday.
For this article I chose 2 photos for each day. Some more articles will follow later.
I landed in the late morning and have the rest of the day strolling through Edinburgh. Blue sky – so it can actual stop raining in Edinburgh ;-). In the evening I wait for Annika who is taking the tram from the airport. Now it is raining. Finally we are together.
We have pre-booked train tickets to Inverness where we will spend three hours before taking the coach to Ullapool. Well, in theory. The trains do not go the whole way due to heavy rain flooding. The rest is operated by replacement buses. So much to rain in Scotland. In Inverness we catch the connecting coach to Ullapool and have even time for a pizza.
After two travel days we want to be outdoors and look for the hiking trail to the hill Meall Mor after a hand-drawn sketch. We find it. From the top we have a view to the town, the hills and mountains in sun, clouds and rain.
After breakfast we take our backpacks through rain and heavy winds to the ferry terminal just to learn that the ferry has been cancelled because of the gusts on the Minch – the straight between Ullapool and the Isle of Lewis. Luckily the afternoon ferry runs according schedule and we arrive in Stornoway at nine o’clock. Scotland premiere: We hire a car. Annika is driving. Left-hand traffic in darkness!
We explore Lewis by car. Great that Annika is brave enough to drive in Scotland (I’m not). Read the article The west coast of Isle of Lewis about this day.
From Gearrannan Village we take a small way back to Stornoway. In the bogs you can see traces of peat mining. We give back the car, take the ferry back and are watching the elegant aerial manoeuvres of the Northern Gannets. In Ullapool we receive another car that we have hired for the next two days.
We start exploring Assynt, the region north of Ullapool. Read the article Stac Pollaidh about this day.
Finally – our first bath! At Achmelvich beach. I will write more about this day later …
It is time to give back the rental car and travel back to Edinburgh. First by coach, then by train. This travel confirms my theory that Scottish coaches and trains are designed solely for transport, not for comfort.
Short ones, long ones – all holidays comes to their end. Annika takes me to the tram, again it’s me travelling first. What a wonderful holiday. Thank you, Annika!
If you live in Northern Sweden and love snow, and it rains in the end of February …
… look for the rainbow!
Photographers note: click on the image to get a better version. This photo is not made for jpeg compression.
Yesterday evening. We are at Storbacken near Vuollerim in Norrbotten, where we visit friends. They live in a house by the large river Luleälven. It’s a bit chilly outside but we still sit there, enjoy the fresh air and try to ignore the first mosquitoes.
I haven’t planned to take pictures but the warm evening light on the forest on the other side of the river becomes more and more intense. Two whooper swans paddle along the river. And finally, half an hour later there appears a rainbow and hovers above the Luleälven like a huge airy bridge. Beautiful!
This morning. I sit in the living room while the fire in the fireplace warms up the room. Outside it’s 3.5 °C and it has been raining the whole night and the whole morning. That’s two of the many sides of Sápmi, the region of the Sámi people.