It isn’t the North Pole, and it isn’t even the northernmost point that my feet touched land that week. But hiking at Stephen’s Garden in Svalbard is the highest we went: approximately 1500 feet. Leaving the ship anchored in her small cove in front of a glacier, our zodiacs zipped around the fjord entrance, depositing us on a small landing beach at the end of a ridge. A short scramble almost directly straight up put us on the edge of the tundra: a mossy, marshy flatland. Shale, quartz crumbles and saxifrage dot the landscape underneath my feet. Each step I take fills with water.
An alluvial valley is off to our left, below. We can see the rivers as they make their way from the foot of the glacier to the sea beyond. Within minutes of being on the tundra, as we make our way across to where the ridge begins to slope upward, we see our first reindeer of the day. Two large males with impressive antlers. They spot us too, however, and we proceed up the mountain in a circular dance, neither group moving directly toward the other. The next time I look, they are behind us.
Onward, and upward. We cross the marsh and trek higher, through the shale, up along the ridge. The ship comes into view then on our right, and so does the glacier. The cliffs begin to drop steeper toward the water. To our left, another glacier curves out of the icefield that spreads delicately across and into the mountains. More reindeer appear on the ridge above us, turning, assessing us, and then moving away down the hill. We watch them for a few moments, catching that split second where they were a darker silhouette against the pure bluish white icefield in the distance.
As we cross from one side of the ridge to the other, zig zagging our way up toward the highest point, we spot rock ptarmigan. The small white bird nests on the cliffs below us, a safe spot from predators like the arctic fox. At our highest point, the crystalised snow crunches under our feet and we pass a small bag of candy around. We take pictures, posing in front of the glacier far below us, capturing the mountains glinting in the sunlight across the fjord. I make a snow angel, but the snow is too hard to really impress upon.
We turn to head down, and a shout goes up from those in front. Whales. Almost too small to see with the naked eye, twenty four beluga whales make their way along the shoreline, sloughing off their skin as they swim up the fjord. Their brilliant white shapes are clearly visible now, through the turquoise water. We watch them as they round the point, pass our landing beach and continue to the far glacier. It’s silent at the top now as we contemplate these arctic marine mammals. To see whales from a ship is one thing, to see whales from a small boat, quite another. But to see whales from 1,500 feet up, from land looking down on the water, and to still be able to revel in their enormity, is entirely another thing altogether. I feel honoured that they shared a brief moment with us.
Soon, they are out of sight and the spell is broken. We begin to talk again among ourselves and our guides adjust the rifles on their shoulders (protection from polar bears) and we keep going. We spot three reindeer on our way: this time, a baby and its’ parents. Too far away to disturb them, we watch as they climb the ridge and forever they are etched, a line of mama, baby and dad.
Our trek ends where it began, slipping down the shale slope to our tiny landing beach.
[Stephen’s Garden, Svalbard, 9 June 2015]
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I visited Svalbard onboard the National Geographic Explorer expedition ship. However, it’s possible to explore the town of Longyearbyen on your own. Check out this post about tips for travelling to Svalbard for more details.