(Jamie here)
We've been here a few weeks now so are getting pretty settled into Longyearbyen, which must be why it was time for our field trip to a town even further north and more remote! Pyramiden is an abandoned Russian coal mining town that was last properly occupied in 1998. Since then the coal mines have lain silent and the only building occupied is the hotel in which we stayed, feeling a little like we had stumbled back into the 1970s. Pyramiden is quite literally built on Russian soil, shipped in when much of the town was originally built.
We travelled to Pyramiden in a massive RIB type boat; due to a lack of appropriately sized survival suits both me and Daniel ended stuck up in the (heated) cabin whilst Kendal braved the outside, sadly both sides of the glass were slightly envious of the other!
We were delayed setting off due to the sea state out in the fjord so spent the morning relaxing in the UNIS library (they have a hammock and big bean bags - please Shona?). By 12 it had calmed down and the trip across to Pyramiden was quite smooth and quick. On arrival we were deposited on the ramshackle quay and cadged a lift on the bus, which surely must be in the running for most northerly? After depositing our belongings on the chequered lino floor of our rooms we headed out to take salt dilution measurements of the flow rate of the stream coming down from the glacier above the town.
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| Checking the mixing of the flow with luminous dye. No photoshop involved! |
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| Science! |
After fieldwork it was time to head back to the hotel for our dinner and to watch a video on the history of Pyramiden, including video of a ski race meeting a polar bear! We also went exploring around the town and docks.
On Tuesday we went up onto the glacier and split into groups to find some highly elusive stakes laid out by the Czech research station to record the movement and accumulation/melting of the glacier. We reconvened for lunch half way up, and again to be guided down another glacier by Jacob, a PHD student from the Czech station, and hike back out to Pyramiden in a beautiful light, arriving slightly late for dinner and starving! A highlight of the day (other than being on a glacier in amazing sunshine) was an arctic fox coming and investigating us on the way up to the glacier in the morning.
The next day we visited some of the derelict water supply reservoirs that supplied the town and after lunch in a cabin split into three groups, one group (including both me and Daniel) hiked up and around to visit a huge waterfall from the top; the second group (with Kendal in it) hiked up the gorge to see the same waterfall from below and a few also went back to the hotel at this point. We arrived there first and whilst Jacob went to take pictures for his project we relaxed and enjoyed the view; just as we were leaving we received a radio call from the gorge group to say they were arriving at the base of the falls, many metres below us.
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| Dried lunch with water from the flasks made some of our packs far lighter! |
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| Heat exchangers to keep the permafrost in the dam frozen so it remains watertight. |
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| Fossils are quite common finds on hikes |
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| It is impossible to get a sense of scale in such a landscape |
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| The other group (Kendal in the pink hat) looked like ants making their way up the gorge. |
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| Daniel crosses a smaller stream on our return down the other side of the valley, far above the gorge. |
On arrival back at the hotel we were excitedly informed by the other group that the guide based out of the hotel had encountered and scared off a polar bear from the shore in the town, just a few hundred metres from the hotel but they didn't see it.
The previous nights polar bear sighting had us on high alert as we started out final full day in Pyramiden, walking to visit the Czech research station a few kilometres along the coast. We had a break there sampling their extensive range of biscuits before spending the afternoon comparing different methods of measuring flow rate and sediment transport and visiting the weather station they maintain. We then had dinner in the station, which oozes character, originally built as a Russian mining hut years ago before being used by a poacher who was unceremoniously kicked out and the station let to the Czechs for a nominal rent. After dinner we took a trip in a RIB across to the edge of a huge glacier on the opposite side of the fjord and went ashore and through a tunnel in the ice created by flowing meltwater. We were hoping to see the polar bear but he was presumably still somewhere on the Pyramiden side of the fjord, this small fact didn't stop us reporting back to the others that we had seen it of course!
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| This piece of ice looks suspiciously like Nessie... |
The following morning we met up with two chartered tourist RIBs for the trip back to Longyearbyen after a very busy week! I'll leave you with a few pictures of the town of Pyramiden.
