Russian adventures

For the first time in a while we had a long break from lectures this weekend so a few of us decided to go on a long hike 🙂 We headed out to Grumant which is an old Soviet settlement in Svalbard. It was established in 1912 and abandoned in 1965. At one point it had over 1000 inhabitants with Colesbay (a nearby settlement). “Grumant” was also once the name of all the archipelago of Svalbard.

From Bjorn Dalen (location of the student cabin), it took us about 7 hours to reach and was located right at the bottom of a very deep valley.

We hiked across a long plateau to get there

We eventually got to the coast where we had view over the Arctic ocean 🙂

The weather was amazing by the time we got there; clear skies and the sun was starting to set

All that remains from the settlement are four large houses that we had a quick look around.

Here are some of the houses, right on the edge of the sea

We also looked through the windows and saw some pretty crazy damage

Some of the rooms had completely been overtaken by plants

Despite the creepy atmosphere, the settlement was pretty cool to see especially as it was so old. After having a look around we sat down and ate dinner while watching the sun set across the horizon 🙂

Here is my friend Alex, trying to take pictures of the sunset 🙂

Here is where we ate a dinner of bread loaves and mucho cheese

And enjoyed the sunset some more 😀

We camped nearby when it got dark before hiking back to Longyearbyen the next day which took around 10 hours.