Saturday 15 September 2012

Alpefjord and Mestersvig

Early this morning the FRAM dropped anchour in the bottom of Alpefjorden. This fjord is a part of the Staunings Alps, a very alpine and mountainous area. Some of the peaks are over 2800 m and the landscape is impressive! We lowered our polarcirkel boats and the passengers got a cruise a long on of the glaciers terminating in the fjord. The glacier actually two glaciers mergin together. The names are the Gully Gletcher and the Sefstrøms Gletcher. The weather was a bit cloudy with light snow showers on the summits. As we sailed out of the fjord and into Segelselskapets fjord the sun broke through the cloud cover and a spectacular rock face with many different layers of rocks in different colours were visible to everyone. 
We dropped anchour in Nyhavn, the harbour facilities of the Mestersvig area at1600 hrs. After landing at the pier with our polarcirkels we were greeted by three of people living at the Danish Naval Guard at Mestersvig. Mestersvig was built when a lead and zinc mine was opened in 1950s‘. They needed a harbour to ship the ore to Europe and an air-field. The mine closed in 1961 but the air-field continued to operate for the people in Scoresbysund. In 1985 the air-field was closed down as Scoresbysund got their own air-field in Constable Pynt. The military then took over the air-field in Mestersvig and has since „guarded“ the air-field with normaly two former members of the SIRIUS patrol, Station Nord or the other branches of the Danish Military.