Cabin Trip

Hi everyone it’s Kendal here.

Since my last post,‎ we have been busy exploring the surrounding area with a five day field trip to Pyramiden and a day trip to the Russian settlement of Barentsburg. I have also squeezed in time to kayak across the fjord. 

The most exciting adventure on Svalbard has been our cabin trip to Foxdalen, a valley and glacier approximately 15km outside of Longyearbyen. Jamie, Susanne and I set off  on Friday afternoon when we finished lectures. As you can see from the photo below our bags probably weighed the same as us so we decided to taxi our way to the end of the road. This meant we only had a 6km hike to the cabin.

After our short but exhausting hike, we were extremely glad to catch the first glimpse of our accommodation that came in the form of a little red hut with a typically beautiful wooden décor inside and of course a log-burning stove.

Photo taken by Susanne

The first job as soon as we arrived was to light the fire and then wrap up warm in our sleeping bags to watch the sunset before having an early night. The next day we went on a hike where we encountered lots of reindeer and each collected reindeer antlers, we saw a solar halo and experimented with our photography skills below some ice.

Photo taken by Susanne

We also had spare time to practice our yoga poses at the top of the mountain!

Photo taken by Jamie

On Saturady afternoon Olesia and Ilya arrived at the cabin. We had a quick dinner and decided to go for a short evening hike to see the sunset.  After an energetic light saber fight ‎we settled in for the night and treated ourselves to mulled wine and smores.‎

Photo taken by Susanne

After a good nights sleep we awoke to a light layer of snow on the ground.  We set off on our journey back to Longyearbyen at midday, thankfully with much lighter bags having used all the water, food and firewood.

Definitely looking forward to our next adventure!

Photo taken by Susanne