More ice stations and back to the open water Oct 26 2026

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

22 October

After a day with drizzle and bad visibility, there is another ice station, starting around 78° 50′ N, 6° 15′ W. The first part is interrupted soon, because a polar bear shows up, forcing the sea ice team to go back on board and wait until this specimen of Ursus Maritimus has walked away far enough for the team to go back onto the ice.

After lunch I can go onto the ice for another drone flight. It is this flight that will teach me something about drone flying on the ice. It is cold, but everything goes fine. After flying I take a selfie and go back on board the icebreaker Kronprins Haakon. I enjoy the sun and take some photos from the helicopter deck.

When I get the first result of the orthomosaic – stitched together from more than 200 photos – I experience a surprise. The photo is – well – chaos. Perhaps because I added a wrong image? But the second and third attempts are not better.

Was it the GPS? Other sensors? What happened? To make it short: It was the drift of the sea ice. It was 0.4 knots this day, which does not sound extreme. Nevertheless, it is a drift of about 12 metres per minute and that adds up, when drone flying takes half an hour. Over the next two days I use some of my time to write a script to compensate for the drift by reading the position of the ship (which drifts together with the ice). And with this drift compensation, the orthomosaic creation finally works well:

23 October

Another day with an ice station. The ice team has it tough today with temperatures around -17 °C and a wind speed of more than 10 m/s. At the same time, it gets darker each day. Yesterday there were around three hours of daylight; today it is less than two and a half. Tomorrow it will be eighty minutes and then there will be polar night for almost four months.

In the afternoon I take another drone flight from the ice. Brrr! That’s cold. The second photo shows my caps and balaclavas drying – I wore them all, one above the other.

Cold weather stuff – everything was needed

24 October

For all those interested, we got a tour through the machinery spaces by maskinsjef B. I have a deep respect for the crew members working with these complex systems and who know so much about every technical facet of this icebreaker. I do not even try to tell you anything about it because I do not have the slightest clue about any of these components. Thanks for the great tour, B.!

At 3 o’clock in the afternoon, something strange happens – we are leaving the ice behind. The boundary between the marginal ice zone and the open water is like being cut with a knife. When I am on deck, it is already too late to see this cut. We have been in the sea ice for more than a week and I have grown accustomed (and fond) to it.

But it’s not for long; we return into the ice only hours later.

25 October

Some shots taken in the evening.

26 October (today)

Today we have the last ice station. It is pretty dark, the visibility is far from brilliant and it is drizzling. I get a message from A., who has discovered a rare guest in this region – a snowy owl sitting on an ice floe nearby. This is the best shot I get of it from deck 3.

A snowy owl on an ice floe in the Fram Strait

To my delight it clears up after a while and the drizzle has stopped. My last chance to go out on the ice again to take a series of drone photos for the sixth orthomosaic of this cruise. Despite the damp weather, the results turn out to be surprisingly good. (And yes – I used drift compensation again, because here we had a drift of 0.6 knots, which is 30 cm a second.)

Kronprins Haakon in the drift ice for the last ice station

In the afternoon, while I am playing table tennis with two researchers, we leave the ice again, this time for good. The rest of this week we will spend in open water (it’s fun to play table tennis in a ship that is slightly rolling) and continue with one of the main fields of this cruise that I haven’t mentioned yet: conducting CTD casts to measure Conductivity (and so salinity) and Temperature at different Depths. The oceanographers have already conducted 49 CTDs over the last two weeks and there will be many more. But that’s another story to tell.

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.

Into the ice, into the storm Oct 16 2026

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

14 October

After encountering a small ice field in the morning, we reach the marginal ice zone. So it looks like round 16:00:

Less than an hour later, it looks like this:

At six o’clock, people are standing on the bridge, peeking into the snowfall, driven by the increasing wind. A mooring is about to be recovered. It has been collecting data for more than a year, and now its release mechanism will be triggered by a so-called hydrophone, allowing the air-filled orange buoys to float to the surface and making the mooring visible. Then it has to be located visually so that it can be towed onto the ship. Not easy, when it looks like this.

The buoy is spotted, and now the long cable, equipped with instruments at different depths, is pulled onto the ship. Not easy, because ice floes drift along and carry the cable with them, bringing them close to the ship, until the cable is released. A new version of ice fishing.

This is a good example of teamwork. You need experts on deck doing the manual work, a helmsman steering the ship with Fingerspitzengefühl, people on the bridge spotting the next buoy, and good communication between these groups. The first activity is successfully completed, with a wow-effect.

Watching the sea ice illuminated by the ships spotlights has its own beauty. I still cannot get enough from these views.

The weather, however, worsens. At 21:10, the wind speed reaches 20 m/s for the first time that day, and the temperature is dropping as well. It is snowing, and each snowflake leaves a bright trail, like a meteor. How will the weather be like tomorrow?

15 October

Over night, it has become even colder and windier. The temperature -10 °C and falling, and the wind speed is above 20 m/s and increasing. Ice floes cover the ocean. Now I’m glad, I brought my warmest down parka with me.

Two CTD casts have been completed today, but then it became too stormy to continue. I go onto the helicopter deck to take some photos, but the wind is so strong, that although I never thought it could actually happen, I’m afraid of being blown overboard. I can’t see much because I’ve pulled up the fur-trimmed hood of my parka to protect myself from the cold, and the wind blows the fur in all direction closing the hood even further.

In the evening – well, I managed to get a shot from the side of the ship, where I was slightly sheltered from the storm. When I went around the corner to the helicopter deck, I had to seek shelter because the storm was too strong. I took a selfie, but in a sheltered corner so that I could stand steadily and avoid getting frostbite on my hand while using my mobile phone.

16 October

At the risk of repeating myself, the weather looks even worse. I wake up at 5 o’clock, and the temperature is -15.4 °C with a wind speed of 26.2. That’s a wind chill of -32.6 °C. In mid-October!

If you have read this article so far, you might get the impression that I am here as a photographer, but I’m actually here as a data manager, and I spend a lot of time at my computer in the Conference Work Room. I just don’t write too much about my computer work here. I am making good progress, but the distractions are there, for example, the frost patterns on the outer windows. This one looks like a jellyfish made of ice.

Right after lunch I go outside once more, this time to the ship’s stern, where I had a better protection from the wind. Oh, how I love watching the sea ice gently drifting by or being crushed forcefully by the ship.

Ok, back to work. I’m almost finished with the day’s work when the others in the room suddenly jump up and disappear. A polar bear has been sighted in front of the ship. It takes me some time to put on my face mask, helmet, down parka, down pants, gloves, and boots, and to mount the big telephoto lens. Only then can I take some photos of the bear in the distance. It approaches at first, but then turns right and trots away.

18–19 September – The Canadian Rockies and an unexpected interruption Oct 4 2026

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

18 September

Only reluctantly do we leave the Summit River Lodge in Valemount. It is a wonderful place. We fill all our bottles with the delicious well water, pet Cookie, the cat, and say goodbye to our hosts. Today we will continue to Jasper where we booked two ridiculously expensive bunk beds in a shared hostel room. But hey, it’s Jasper, one of the places that every single tourist seems to visit and we are lucky we found accommodation for less than a thousand dollars a night.

We take Highway 5 and then Highway 16 east, which leads to Jasper. After a turn we see a huge, striped mountain with a snowy top ahead. It is Mount Robson, with 3954 m, the highest summit of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. On the way there, I find a nice spot by the Robson River to take photos.

We stop at the Mount Robson Welcome Centre where people take pictures of this massive mountain too.

About 60 kilometres further east we cross two borders. The first is the provincial border between British Columbia and Alberta, the other is the time zone border. I will not try to explain the Canadian time zones here. They are independent of the provinces and several changes have been made this year. Pretty confusing. Let’s keep it simple: We set the clocks forward by one hour.

We pass Jasper and take a side road to Medicine Lake and Maligne Lake. Medicine Lake is special because it is not a normal lake, but rather part of the Maligne River that disappears underground. The water level varies greatly over the year. This time of year it has a pretty low water level. At the southern tip the lake is mostly empty and reveals large sandbanks, interrupted by small but fast-flowing streams.

The next lake – Maligne Lake is one of the iconic lakes in the Rockies. I guess the main season is over because we can always find a parking space, even here we have to wait just a few minutes.

We stroll along the shore to find a good bathing place but maybe the best one is near the tourist centre. There we change into our swimming clothes and walk into the lake. And we walk and walk. The lake is so shallow that I finally just lie down in the water to get wet. When we come back to dry ourselves a moose is approaches. We already heard about two local moose in this area and the signs indicate that we should not approach wildlife. But what do you do when the wildlife is approaching you? We grab our things and move back on the way to keep our distance. When the moose turns I take some pictures. The moose makes calling sounds. Is it looking for its mum?

At the restaurant – already closed we meet a couple from France that has been travelling around Canada for almost two years. Like the Canadians we met in Likely they also recommend visiting Drumheller. We are shown some photos of an impressive landscape. Maybe we manage to visit it later.

While we are driving back to Jasper the VW Tiguan displays a warning: “Check the coolant level.” That doesn’t look good. We stop the car for a few minutes but the same warning pops up again. We open the car’s hood and, sure enough, there is hardly any coolant left. The French couple passes and stops to help us. We realise, that there is a leak in the hoses. As usual, we don’t have any mobile coverage at all. All passing people are helpful, but no one has coolant or distilled water. It is the French couple who stop a camper van from Virginia. The camper van has Starlink. In the end , they are the ones that help us. Slowly we continue our drive back to Jasper with the camper van following us as a backup. We are lucky, we make it as far as the crossing near town and gratefully wave goodbye to our helpers. To all of you who helped us or tried to help us: you are great people.

In the hostel it takes some effort to communicate with the Avis customer service, who provided our rental car. They cannot understand the situation that we have a breakdown but do not need any roadside assistance. But finally, we learn one thing: Avis has an office in Jasper.

19 September

Did I sleep well? No. It was very noisy both inside (the metal separations between the bunk beds droned loudly every time someone was touching them) and outside (a lot of drunk people were shouting and quarrelling until night). But that’s not important. What is important is to get a replacement for our rental car. To make a long story short: none of the numbers provided got us any help, but the one employee in Jasper did.

First we have to wait in the queue for quite a while but before lunchtime we have a new car, a Kia Sportage. Will it be a good replacement for our VW Tiguan? We’ll see. Annika has already filled out the extensive paper form. We move all our stuff from one car to the other, return the old car key and here we are – having our mobility back. We were extremely lucky that the car broke down near Jasper, that we made it back and that Avis has an office there. So we don’t have to change any plans and are ready to leave Jasper just a few hours later than planned.

Today we will head east for a few days but our next overnight stop, Hinton, is near, so we want to drive a bit of the Icefields Parkway first. This part of the Alberta Highway 93 is most famous for its view of glaciers, mountains, and lakes and a “must-see” for many tourists. Today we want to drive to Athabasca Falls – not on the main road but on the older road 93A on the other side of the Athabasca River. Here we are almost completely alone. We stop at one of the pullouts and have our lunch by the river.

The river is beautiful but the trees clearly show that there have been forest fires in this area as well. Many trees have black, burnt bark and I am not sure whether any of them will survive. Nevertheless new saplings with fresh leaves are growing between the black trunks.

We stop at another pullout and walk to the Athabasca River near the waterfall. Even here we are almost alone. We can see the tourists on the official trail on the other side. We go to the shore – on our side, this is possible – and look at the turquoise water of the river and the steep rocky cliff on the other side.

Less than 200 metres further on is the official car park. Even here we get a parking space almost immediately. Together with other tourists we follow the trail. Sometimes I have to wait a minute until all selfies have been taken, then I get the good spots to take my own pictures.

This was our preview of the Icefields Parkway. Now it is time to turn and leave the Canadian Rocky Mountains for a while. We take Highway 93 and turn east onto Alberta Highway 16. There we pass a slope behind a lake with a lot of quaking aspen trees. The leaves turn bright yellow in autumn, a bit like the birch trees at home.

As we leave the Rockies behind, something strange happens: it gets cloudy. We haven’t seen clouds for days and almost had taken the blue sky, the sun and the fact that our rain gear stayed untouched for granted.

When we arrive in Hinton it reminds me of a western town from the movies. Yes, the streets are paved, the horses were replaced by pickup trucks long ago and the houses are not of wood anymore, but the rows of houses and the spacious roads and the overall layout of the town evoked this image. We check in into our hotel and walk to the Filipino restaurant Pinoy Kusina where we eat Tapsilog, a dish under the label “All day breakfast”. On our walk back we can see the Rockies in the west and even the sun peeps through the clouds.

Two days in Malangen Jun 11 2026

Yesterday and today our department “Miljø og kart” MIKA at the Norwegian Polar Institute had a two-day seminar on the Malangen peninsula.

We travelled there by bus while in glorious real summer weather. Two photos I took from the bus:

Between the last presentation in the afternoon and dinner we had a few hours off. A group of us headed to a spot by Lake Nikkavatnet and I went round the lake with a colleague. It was a beautiful walk of about 2 km, revealing another facet of Northern Norway: Forest and lake – with snowy mountain ranges on the horizon.

During the night the weather changed completely. This morning it was about ten degrees colder and it was cloudy with occasional rain showers. Therefore the view from the bus on the way back was quite different:

Bergen reloaded Jun 3 2026

On Sunday I flew to Bergen once more. While it had been sunny a few days ago, it now presented itself as Bergen is known for: rainy.

It was not the normal rain with raindrops falling from above. It was more like an omnipresent moisture coming at you from all directions. Invisible to the eye but you get wet anyway.

On Monday I went to work. I went from the hotel in the centre to the Port of Bergen, where it took me a while to find the entrance and then to get on the list for a day visit aboard the icebreaker Kronprins Haakon.

My pocket was full of cards – one for my hotel room, one visitor card for the port, one for the ship.

One of the instruments on the bridge is a radar used for sea ice navigation. On this day an engineer from Sea Hawk was installing additional hardware that delivered the radar video signal and additional data such as GPS and gyro to an auxiliary network. My responsibility was the other half: the laptop and the software to read and store the data. And so my workplace looked like:

After some hours of work the “radar” laptop showed the same data as the large overhead display on the bridge. The engineer calibrated the scan streamer unit and I used the rest of my working day to catch one hour of radar data as an example. As expected the amount of data was immense: about 74 GB per hour.

Radar view on the Laptop (Software: ScanView, dspnor)

Then it was time to head back to my hotel in Bergen, the city with about two hundred days of precipitation a year. Even the shops here reflect the omnipresence of rain.

Tor te rest of the day, I was a tourist and took some tourist photos in Bryggen, the famous historic quarter.

Hill hike III – Ruksesvárri May 16 2026

Today I did my thrid hill hike within 8 days. After Trehørningen (283 m) and Nattmålsfjellet (296 m) I chose Ruksesvárri (470 m) today. Most people refer to the mountain by its Norwegian name (Rødtind), which more or less means the same as the Sámi name: red mountain peak. Like the other hills Ruksesvárri is located on Kvaløya.

I park the car in Storelva, put on my rubber boots and shoulder my camera backpack. From there it’s about one kilometre along the river Stuorajohka/Storelva until I leave the wide gravel hiking path and branch off. From now on the track may be wet and – looking at Ruksesvárri – snowy.

I hike up, following the track. Soon it vanishes under the first larger snow field.

The track is less muddy than I remember but wet, because the snowmelt turns everything into a brook, even the boardwalks. Further up I see that under sand and water there is blank ice. However, it is the only patch I see.

I look back. To the south I can see the island of Håkøya and mountain chains in more or less all directions.

The further up I go, the more the terrain is covered in snow. The barren sections show, how popular this hike is: the track is several metres wide.

Now I am above the timber line and snow dominates the scene. Mostly it is good to walk on and I do not sink in too much, but there are some nasty holes, especially above the mountain brooks, where you can easily break through up to your thighs. I’m on a gentle slope, angled at 10–15°.

I reach the saddle below the peak. In summer the path gets steeper and rockier, now all I can see is the peak and snow. The snowy slope is pretty steep.

I wasn’t the first one today. I met an elderly man who was already on the way down. Perhaps it’s his footsteps that I follow now on the way up. At the steeper part I use my hands as well. Then I reach the top plateau, cross another snow field and stand on the surprisingly unimpressive peak.

The impressive part are the views, especially to the west and the north.

At the tall cairn from where I can see Kaldfjorden meet the open sea is my turning point today. If I had skis or at least snowshoes I would continue. Without then, it’s time to return.

This hill walk was 7.2 km long. Elevation gain and loss: about 500 metres.

The weather is still sunny while I am editing the photos. In one of the photos I can see a small figure – the man who passed me on my way up. On his left side he has something blueish. I magnify the photo to 400%. It’s a pair of blue snowshoes strapped to his small backpack.

Hill hike II – Nattmålsfjellet May 14 2026

Today I decided to hike up another small mountain. It is called Nattmålsfjellet and is 296 m high. As Trehørningen it is on the island of Kvaløya.

I park my car and soon I am out in nature in Northern Norway. High mountains, covered with snow. Open birch woodland, the birches still bare. Small lakes and ponds, halfway covered with snow and ice. Small mud bogs with wet patches. And views of the fjords and the open sea. All under a blue sky with temperatures above 10 °C.

While this pond looks freezing cold, it is inhabited by common frogs. They have already spawned and large clumps of frogspawn are floating in the water.

It does not take long and I am on the summit, marked by an impressive cairn that looks half as high as the mountain itself.

I decide to take another way down. This brings me near the village Ersfjordbotn, but I stay above to follow a track that leads around Nattmålsfjellet which brings me back to my car. Before I leave the village behind I pass this artefact that clearly shows that I’m hiking in nature but not in the wilderness. Someone had mounted a satellite antenna on a small ledge. The cable leads downwards, probably to one of the houses.

First the track leads through some wet mud bogs but then it winds through an open landscape with views of the boggy grasslands below and the snowy mountains above.

After seven kilometres, I am back at the car. Elevation gain and loss – round 330 m.

Side dishes

After the hike I drive further west to the lake Kattfjordvatnet. Most of it is still covered with ice, but I don’t think it will stay long. Even the snow line rises with each day. This however is no argument for the locals to stop doing alpine ski tours and they always seem to find a snowy patch by the car, to avoid carrying up their skis. Meanwhile, cross-country skiers have now switched to roller skis and use the roads. Other locals walk their dogs or run downhill on the muddy path happily chatting to each other.

Then I take the car to Ersfjordbotn and stopped at the gravel car park at the viewpoint, apparently the only one in the village. I was too lazy to walk to the waterfall but at least I took a photo of the fjord Ersfjorden which faces directly west.

On my way back home I make another stop in Eidkjosen and take a walk uphill to Lomvatnet.

From Eidkjosen, it’s only a fifteen-minute drive home. I’m still happy every single time I realise that nature around Tromsø is so beautiful, full of variety and nearby, as long as you own a car. With public transport many of these small hikes would unfortunately be inaccessible.

Ways, paths, tracks, and trails May 2 2026

When I thought the weather had been bad on the kayak trip the day before yesterday, it was much worse today. It was colder, it was windier and the mix of precipitation was more varied: rain, snow, soft hail and sleet. At the northern tip of Tromsøya, storm gusts almost knocked me off balance and the graupel blowing straight into my face hurt. I wished I had brought a face mask and ski goggles and I bent my head low to avoid the heavy weather. That’s why I did not walk all the way home but took the bus, boarding it looking like a drowned rat.

At home the same procedure: a long, hot shower and a fire in the stove, which was drawing like mad in the storm.

However the photos are not about weather, they are about the ways, paths, tracks and trails that I followed or crossed on my hike on Tromsøya today. Some are ski trails, most are summer and winter trails. Some still offer very wintry conditions; others look like early spring – or late autumn. My rubber boots splash through water, bog down in the mud and disappear into the snow. It will take some time until most of the ways, paths, tracks, and trails are dry – if it ever happens.

Tomorrow will be different, tomorrow it will snow.

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