Arctic Ice Caves

By snowcat up the snow-covered glacier, we reach the crest and finally the roar and rumble of the beast comes to a halt. My redheaded, freckle-faced driver and guide, Ingrid, a 30-year old native of Svalbard, Spitsbergen, jumps out of her perch into the permafrost. She hands me my crampons and helmet and tells me the headlamp is turned on by a button on the left. Ingrid explains that the rifle is in case we encounter a polar bear on the way out of the ice cave. There is a small ditch dug out of the snow and a shovel just in case. A wood plank stands on end to one side of the ditch. Ingrid lifts it to uncover a narrow hole. She points. We are headed down she tells me. I grab the rope and try in vain to find some footing in the ice. I lower myself down the narrow hole in the ice and land hard at the bottom. What lies ahead are winding pathways cut into the glacier over the millenia by the summer melt. Every year when it freezes and the cave can be re-entered the landscape of the passageways has changed from the year before. The curving walls appear as though they will close in on each other, crushing us. We crawl, we slide, we climb and slither deeper. The cave looks like glass. The glass is ribbed, studded by giant icicles, clear or white or blue, lit only by our headlamps. There is no sound but the crackle of the ice pack under our crampons. The temperature outside is about zero farenheit, but inside the cave the farther we travel it is getting warmer, uncomfortably so as I am dressed for sub-zero conditions. My left hand is badly hurt from the day before, bruised, swolen just below the wrist, and causing me excruciating pain any time I move it. But I have no choice now. My hands, my arms, my back and legs are all needed to engage the terrain of the interior of the glacier. About an hour and a half in, we reach a small crevice filled with water. We can go no farther; it is time to turn back.

Just before we reach the rope to climb up and out of the hole we stop and drink a hot black currant juice from a thermos. Ingrid tells me about life in Svalbard when she was little. Her father worked in the coal mine. In those days, there were only miners and scientists in Spitsbergen. The miners lived in housing owned by the company. There were no shops or stores. The miners filled out a list at the company and every month the ship would come in from Norway with their kilo of sugar and other non-perishable foods. What was left of the miners`s paycheck was paid with a currency printed by the coal company and usable only in Spitsbergen. In fact, there were three different currencies, depending on whether you worked in a Russian mine, a Norwegian mine or for the government as a research scientist. But, as there was no place to shop, there was no need, and by this system, the company never really paid its workers at all. The company simply fed, clothed and sheltered the employees and their families. There was no retirement here. When the worker retired, he had to move his family out of the company housing and leave the island. Today, there is private housing and workers are paid in Norwegian kroner. Still, people generally stay only a handful of years in this place.

Climbing back out of the hole and feeling that arctic air and the sun reflecting off of the snowy cliffs feels exilerating, and worth being tossed around in the beast again back down the glacier.