The Svalbard Discovery
Jeremy Jones is embarking on a new two-year film project that promises to take freeriding ‘Further’. Photographer Dan Milner joined him beyond the Arctic Circle for a journey into the snowboarding unknown.
“We don’t want to – and it’s not ideal – but we will have to camp here,” announces Anden, our lead guide.
‘Not ideal’ seems to be local slang for ‘might get eaten’. The frozen
sea ice of the fjord on which we’re stopped is a very active polar bear
feeding zone, and only a mile earlier we’d pulled up to examine
frying-pan sized bear tracks on the ice. I put my hand into one paw
print, the enormity of the impression making my normally man-sized hand
look instantly like a child’s. “It’s not ideal,” I repeat in my head,
pondering what lies ahead of us.
In truth I’m almost beyond caring. It’s 6 a.m. and we have been
snowmobiling for ten hours, through a night filled with daylight,
snowstorms and fog. Now, only seven miles from our destination, we’re
blocked by an impassable mix of knee-deep slush, shiny blue ice and
raging glacial meltwater torrents. Our touring sleds, even without the
trailers laden with camping gear, will get nowhere, and although he
tries to hide it, Anden is visibly fatigued from the numerous vehicle
rescues he’s already performed. When Jeremy Jones decided to call his
new splitboard film ‘Further’ he wasn’t joking.
“We have to wait tomorrow and see if it gets colder,” adds Anden. “Then
we might be able to make it up the glacier.” I reach into one gear
trailer to pull out a tent, and begin erecting it as a cold rain starts
to fall. Ahead of me is probably the most fitful five hours of ‘sleep’
I’ll ever have.
Accompanying Jones on this first film trip is the snowboarding legend
Terje Haakonsen.
Our destination is Svalbard, a cluster of Norwegian islands only 700
miles from the North Pole. Open up any airline’s in-flight magazine and
the islands are so far north that they’re cropped from the top of the
route map. They represent the most northern rideable terrain in the
world, aside from jibbing icebergs on the polar ice cap. Svalbard’s
mountains are steep, its weather unpredictable and its wildlife
unforgiving. It doesn’t sound a welcoming place, but as I’m learning,
it’s exactly these kind of credentials that lure Mr. Jeremy Jones. When
it comes to ‘further’, Svalbard ticks all the adventure boxes. But just a
day in, our
Deeper AK camp-out two years ago
[WL87] seems a beach party in comparison. And we have fourteen more to go.
The islands of Svalbard are so far north that they’re cropped from the top of the in-flight route map
I’d be lying if I said that the whole of Svalbard was inaccessible. A
population of 2000 (mainly Russian coal miners and international
students) ensures there is a daily flight connection to the outside
world. We fly into Longyearbyen, the only real community on the islands
(aside from remote polar research huts occupied by bearded fellows with
personal hygiene issues), our plane skimming low over the iceberg-choked
fjord. It’s late April and we arrive to a blizzard.
“It’s not a problem,” says Anden, our Norwegian guide from local
logistic experts Pole Positions. “We just have to go slower and it takes
more time.” He’s referring to the snowmobile trek out to the Atomfjella
area, and our chosen camp zone nestled on a glacier between the
island’s two highest peaks, Newtontoppen and Perriertoppen, which stand
at 1700m. Anden is tall, slim and a man of few words. He is at home in
the Arctic, a Svalbard resident for five years, and his “not a problem”
approach is something we’ll appreciate during the next 25 hours – the
time it takes us to complete the 100 mile sled journey. Our trek, aboard
five snowmobiles towing almost a ton of camping and safety gear, leads
us across frozen fjords, up and over rolling glaciers and past the
broken, serac-spewing faces of enormous tongues of ice. It’s dramatic
and it’s cold, but not as cold as we’d like. The advent of spring has
wreaked havoc with the pack ice, and as we motor over the frozen
wilderness we become repeatedly bogged down in pools of melted ice with
the consistency of Slush Puppies. By the time we reach our first night’s
“not ideal” camp spot we’re fighting the chill of sodden feet and
braving the mental challenge of a cold, incessant rain. No-one expected
rain.
It's hard work being a boy-racer when it takes seven hours to do ten miles
Anden’s positive tone brings a change of luck, however. During our
five-hours of fitful sleep the temperature drops sufficiently to
refreeze some of the way ahead, and while sleet replaces drizzle we
manage to navigate the sleds up onto the glacier. Luck is a relative
term of course; it still takes a whole seven hours to cover just 10
miles, stopping every few hundred yards to shovel snow over rocks and
form our own ‘road’ for the heavily-loaded machines. The zone Jones has
in mind consists of flat, easy going glaciers punctuated by near
vertical walls. Back in Longyearbyen we’d studied topographic maps of
the area, but when we finally silence the sleds at basecamp, nothing
prepares us for the view ahead. All around sit sharp spikes of rock, as
dramatic as any Chamonix or the Tetons can muster, and slicing down
their sheer faces are ribbons of snow – tight couloirs that drop 50
degrees from top to bottom, each representing 2000 feet of uninterrupted
joy. We survey our adopted home and scan the mountain faces around us.
Everywhere there is stuff to ride, and on every aspect, but each descent
will have to be earned on foot.
Our trek leads us across frozen fjords, up and over
rolling glaciers and past the broken, serac-spewing faces of enormous
tones of ice
We’ve come in on the heels of the midnight sun, giving us 24/7
daylight to work with. Already our sleep patterns are out of kilter, our
watches irrelevant. While the extra sled drivers turn around and head
off, leaving us with only one vehicle for safety, we pitch camp. Our
attention is continually drawn to the enormous headwall that closes off
the blind valley behind us, and the huge off-camber ramp of snow that
cuts a diagonal line across its face. North facing and shady when we
arrive, we see the ramp slowly become bathed in orange light as we boil
water for a midnight freeze-dried dinner. At 78 degrees north, the sun
may stay low in the sky but it does throw direct light onto the north
aspects, something we can never shoot in more southern latitudes. We
look at each other over steaming foil sachets, sharing the realisation
that our snowboarding schedule just took the night shift. It’s 1 a.m.
The mild spell of weather has left a rain crust on the snow, even up
around the camp at 1200m. We head out on the splitboards, skinning
around our new neighbourhood and increasingly excited by the
possibilities. Jones is a simmering pan of excitement. Returning from
our first reccie, we arrive back at camp to find it encompassed by a
2-foot high tripwire. ‘”Hey guys, watch the bear fence,” shouts Gigi,
our second guide, before explaining how the wire sets off charges at
each corner when tripped, scaring the bear – or at least giving you time
to grab the gun. “In theory, at least,” he adds, “often they don’t
work.” Indeed, only 10 weeks after our trip a young British student is
mauled to death on the island, their trip wire not having tripped.
Luckily Gigi, a 20-something Austrian guide who has found love and new
beginnings in Svalbard, is a master at setting the fence charges. The
proof comes during the next two weeks, when the fence is tripped
repeatedly by members of our group stumbling from their tents to answer
the call of nature. We learn that nothing can rouse you from your
slumber more rudely than a polar bear fence being tripped.
At 78 degrees north, the sun throws direct light onto the north aspects, something we can never shoot in more southern latitudes
Our initial bursts of enthusiasm send us energetically skinning
across the glacier to climb some of the lower couloirs, but our efforts
are poorly rewarded with scratchy lines down crusty chutes. At dinner,
frustration is painted on everyone’s faces. We wake on day four to the
sound of a thousand needles dancing on the tent fly: snow. The weather
in Svalbard is fickle at the best of times, and despite its polar
location snow doesn’t fall in any great quantities here. We watch
patiently as the fresh slowly accumulates around camp, biding three days
in the group tent, where we play unnecessarily complicated card games
and discuss the world we live in. With no mobile reception, no TV and no
Facebook updates, we turn instead to the art of real communication,
face to face, slowly realizing that it is this kind of human interaction
– as much as the snowboarding itself – that makes such trips special.
This, says Jones, is the lifeblood of
Further. He’s setting out
to make a film that shows, by example, that real life isn’t about high
tech voyeurism; it’s about getting back to the basics, about reclaiming
the fundamentals, about not losing touch with your surroundings.
Further is unlikely to be played on a PS2.
Temperatures rise and fall – good signs for the snow adhering to the
faces ¬– and the 6 inches that land on the camp is driven two foot deep
into the couloirs by a fierce Arctic wind. After 72 hours the storm
breaks and a high pressure rolls in, bringing sunshine and
finger-numbing temperatures. We’re quick off the mark, heading into a
zone we’ve already scoped out and which offers a few more forgiving
descents, with less consequences should something rip out. It’s a good
call, as Terje’s second line slices the whole chute out from under him,
sending a 40-foot high airborne avalanche racing to the bottom. We
watch and shoot in awe from across the cirque, zippered up and battling a
-25C windchill.
As the snowpack gradually bonds more firmly, Jones and Terje take on
more demanding couloirs, skinning in, climbing up and ripping their
lines like an enormous game of snakes and ladders. From a rime-blasted
summit we peer across to one of the most dramatic mountainscapes I have
ever seen: a 2500 foot tongue of snow, consistently forty foot wide,
which spears its way down between two shoulders of rock. It’s like a
bolt of white lightning against the dark crags. We tag the chute “Nat
Geo”, due to the anticipated shot being worthy of a
National Geographic
cover, so beautiful is the play of light on this astonishing landscape.
Jones slays the entire couloir, top to bottom, in six powerful turns.
“This is unreal,” he says, when we next regroup. “To get a perfect 50
degrees, with such mellow open run outs.”
Shooting on-slope rewards the filmers and I for our own pack-lugging
splitboard efforts, with runs to the bottom of some wild, AK-style
pitches, while Gigi highlights his own mountain-upbringing by following
Jones and Terje down some of the most demanding lines. The Austrian is
not shy of a little airtime it turns out.
We work every aspect, feeling genuinely like kids in a sweet shop, not
sure which bounty to turn our attention to next. Terje ticks off the
mini chutes immediately behind camp, throwing some huge backside airs
off every lip on the way down, and each morning at 4 a.m. we finally
collapse into the mess tent to consume dinner. Sleep will be until
midday.
We watch Jones drop into the face, straightlining the
initial 50 degree chimney and into a set of rooster tailing turns and
mach ten airs. He covers the entire 2,400ft face in under 30 seconds
Far from making things easier, however, the 24/7 daylight brings us a
strange dilemma. Do we store our energies for the magical light of the
midnight session, or nail the western flanks earlier in the day? We have
too many options. Wherever we head, we’re escorted by Gigi, who carries
a powerful 0.33 rifle and flare gun. The gun toting is a legal
requirement everywhere on the islands outside of town, and although it’s
rare to find polar bears so far up on the glaciers, if they are hungry
enough they will come, lured perhaps by the noisy population of Auks
nesting on the cliffs nearby. In Svalbard, every sled has a gun rack.
Slowly, over three days, each of the couloirs in our zone is ticked off,
our crew regularly returning to camp after a 15 hour session. Each face
we hit requires a full hour to approach on the splitboards, and a two
to three hour climb up to the summit. The absence of darkness helps fuel
our energies, keeping our internal engines running until finally,
having returned to basecamp, the brain decides it’s time to sleep. Our
daily routine starts to last longer than 24 hours.
Terje Haakonsen tweaks out...
Several times we race for lines only to miss the light by minutes,
while others come easy. Then, after 12 days out, Jeremy decides it’s
time:
”You see it, Dan?” he says, looking back behind our basecamp at the
enormous headwall. The problem is that I can see any number of lines
back there that would have Jeremy popping his load. “The ‘camp ramp’,
the whole reason for placing camp here,” he says, a little agitated at
my lack of couloir filtering. He is of course looking at the enormous
shelf that dwarfs the camp – the vast, steep and exposed 45 to 50 degree
face that offers little room for error. “I think it’s ready.”
The scale of Svalbard’s terrain throws us yet again. It takes 90
minutes to skin to the base of the Camp Ramp, and a further 150 for
Jones, Terje and TGR filmer Dan Gibbeau to climb its vertiginous face.
Accompanied by the other two filmers, Chris and JK, I crampon up the
opposite face to get a vantage point – the ‘barbie’ angle as it’s called
in the trade, as it’s usually the easy, sweat-free angle to shoot from.
Crampons and ice-axes though, are not what I call BBQ attire. As the
face becomes bathed in an ephemeral pink glow, we watch Jones drop into
the face, straightlining the initial 50 degree chimney and into a set of
rooster tailing turns and mach ten airs. From our vantage point the
line looks almost lazy, but he covers the entire 2400 ft face in under
30 seconds. Terje drops in next and repeats the show, working the
Western edge of the ramp, before being spat out at its base at warp
speed.
Terje’s second line slices the whole chute out from under him, sending a 40-foot high airborne avalanche racing to the bottom
I lower my camera and remember to breathe again, glancing at Gigi and
my fellow grinning cameramen. Behind us the sun is slipping its way
east. It’s 3 a.m. and I know in three hours dawn will break back home
across mainland Europe. Immersed in radiant Arctic light, I stoop to
remove my crampons and pack my gear for the ride back to camp. To my
left sits a virgin face, perfect and powder laden. Our run will be a
good one. High on a ridge, about to drop into a line in one of the most
remote corners of the world, for once I couldn’t care less about polar
bears.
...the result of too many white lines perhaps?
Ursus maritimus
Svalbard and the Russian Franz Joseph Land (joined by sea ice in
winter) share the highest concentration of polar bears in the world,
numbering some 3000. The Polar Bear (//Ursus maritimus//) is the largest
terrestrial predator, typically weighing between 350 and 550 kilos
(yes, that’s half a ton!) They inhabit the arctic regions of Alaska,
Canada, Russia, Norway and Greenland. Their primary source of food is
the ringed seal, which they can smell beneath the sea ice from over a
mile away, catching them when they surface through breathing holes. The
polar bear paw is 12 inches in diameter and each claw 2 inches long.
Equipped with a 4-inch thick layer of fat, and fur made up of insulating
hollow-core hair, they are perfectly adapted for Arctic survival. They
can run at 25 mph.
Polar bears rely on sea ice for their survival, which grants them access
to their prey. In summer, when the sea ice breaks up and drifts further
from shore, they will try to stay with the ice, but for those stranded
on land feeding becomes more difficult and it is common for polar bears
to go long periods without eating. It’s at this time in the autumn, when
they’re at their hungriest, that they can become most dangerous to
humans, as evidenced by the student death in Svalbard last August. With
climate change affecting sea ice in the Svalbard archipelago and other
Arctic regions, encounters with stressed polar bears will likely become
more common as they venture inland to find food.
Learn more about polar bears and what you can do to help them at www.polarbearsinternational.org
Now try that with a real one, tough guy
TGR/MilnerPolar
bear tracks, and the "bear alert" wire surrounding the Further crew
base camp rigged to blow off a flare when tripped. Snow camping in
Svalbard is no joke.
