Voyage North - photo essay (10) Endalen

Endalen means 'valley no.1' - originally named in the early twentieth century by the American Arctic Coal Company . . . the next valley, counting away from the town, is called 'no.2' and so on. In a settlement with, at the beginning, a shifting population of miners and whalers, no-one was 'at home' there, and names were never allocated. The same is still true in the town of Longyearbyen - the streets all have numbers not names.

A guided walk in Endalen took us through old mining areas, in a bleak landscape. In winter, the whole area is picture-postcard beautiful when covered with snow. In summer it is has a different bleak beauty. We stopped frequently to look at plants - the arctic supports a surprising range in the short, intense summer, and they will appear in the next post.

When leaving the town boundary, it is necessary to carry a rifle and scare-flares in case of meeting a polar bear. Outdoor guides in the area have to be trained in use of firearms and our guides carried rifles (not already loaded) and ammunition, as well as flares. A tragedy of climate change is that the bears come more often into human-populated areas, because they are hungry. And the rising temperatures make these remote areas more accessible to tourists. The combination is bad news for polar bears. We didn't see any bears as the ice had receded too far north - although Svalbard spans the 80th parallel, the final wisps of the Gulf Stream keep the waters warmer than they would otherwise be, even without climate change.

passing out of the safe zone

assembling at the start of the walk

 

 group briefing from the guide

rifle on the ground during tea stop

looking back towards the track (actual road has ended) from where we started

mining remnants, cotton grass growing in foreground

more distant view - mining apparatus and cotton grass

striking mountain-top formation - natural, not the result of mining

the whole mountain

the type hillsides from which coal is mined

we had to turn back here because the swollen river had partly washed the bridge away

somewhere from which to look at the river and bridge!

remnants of the bridge