Chapter 4: 80 Degrees North

We awoke on the 26th of June to a swath of fog covering the area around our ship. Our captain and expedition guides always warned the weather can change quickly, and it finally did for us. Our original plan to fully explore the northern coast of Spitsbergen and the boundary of sea ice foiled, we instead set our sights on another destination: 80 degrees north. I didn't know this was something sought after until hearing from some of the other passengers and crew. Longyearbyen, the main settlement in Svalbard, is already at 78 degrees north, holding the record for northernmost commercial airport, northernmost gourmet restaurant, northernmost bar... you get the idea. Apparently even fewer people cross into the 80's.

The moment we reached 80 degrees north on the bridge

It was surreal traveling through fog in all directions to the horizon. It was like we were traveling through a wormhole, to a completely different world. We all gathered in the bridge to witness the threshold crossing, and one of our passengers got to blow the horn. Just like landing on the continent of Antarctica, this was an “accomplishment” I knew nothing about. But few souls have ventured so far north.

And then it was back down to walruses. We headed south towards where we came, toward Longyearbyen. Our destination was a landing site we were previously bumped from by a larger ship on our first full day: a common location for herds of walruses to show up. After anchoring, we took the zodiacs to a small spit of land where about forty were gathered, resting on each other on the beach. The smell was horrid. And the animals were huge, some of the adult males reaching 3,500 pounds. While they mostly lay and rolled over, some sparred with each other when one touched another in a place they didn’t like. We observed them for almost an hour, watching these huge creatures along the beach. We had seen juvenile elephant seals in South Georgia, which were roughly the same size, but there were only a few of those then. To see the sheer weight and size of all these animals up close was exhilarating.

Finally, we moved to another spot to do our last excursion of the day. It was one more zodiac cruise in a shallow, sheltered bay, where we came across several harbor seals, some with their pups. Much more timid and nervous than the bearded seals, they anxiously watched us as they swam around the small cove. The babies were adorable; it was watching a new cycle of life begin in Svalbard. We thought it a fantastic end to an eventful day. And how wrong we were.