Alien landscape

Just another afternoon ski

On top of a Pingo (hill made of ice that forms in regions with permafrost)

The view out my window last night

Why I haven't been taking too many pictures recently...

Why my room smells like a 2-stroke engine

Svalbard might be the only place on earth where:

You can walk in to a bank wearing a face mask and a carrying a rifle and they don't really mind

Classes are cancelled when the sun rises

Living in town gives you the right to free helicopter rescue missions if you fall through sea ice or into a crevasse

Teachers hand out rifles and snowmobiles before field trips to ice caves

There are no McDonalds or Starbucks

You can go 2 months without seeing a single living organism other than humans, reindeer, and half-dead grass

But the biggie... the trump-card, if you will... Svalbard is THE only place on earth where environmentalists own snowmobiles


World, meet the first vehicle I've ever owned (that's me in the picture, I promise). She is a yet-to-be-named 1999 Polaris Indy 500 that I'm sharing with a friend. Why, you may ask? Because if you want to see more than 25 km beyond town, you have to have one. There aren't roads here, and as much as I'd love to ski across the whole island, it's just not possible. I still prefer to explore this place on skis, but now I'm able to scooter to a distant glacier, THEN ski up it.