Shooting some more

Here come more photos from the shooting range, like I promised. William and I did some practicing last night, and here are a couple of snapshots (eeh..) from that.

The shooting range must be the dreariest place on the island.



But the view is quite good. This is one of the glaciers far across the Isfjorden.


And this is the airport.


William loading...


and firing.


And me shooting. The right shoulder a bit sore today, yes.



Afterwards a quick tour down to the beach. On the way we passed The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, under construction in a deserted mine (more about that here and here).


They´ll open in September, so if there´s some kind of grand opening, maybe we´ll go and have a look?

Afterwards we strolled on the beach, to check if there were any birds left. Luckily we weren´t attacked by maniac terns, but we saw a couple of other types:

Hvitkinngås, or Barnacle goose, they´re leaving Svalbard about now. By October nearly all the birds will be gone - only the grouse will stay behind on land, and some sea-gulls along the ice-edge.


Is this a Myrsnipe (Dunlin) or Fjæreplytt (Purple sandpiper)? We couldn´t figure it out from the book, but our bet is on the Fjæreplytt, as the Myrsnipe usually leaves as early as July/August.

Hello Fjæreplytt. Lovely name.



Seagulls. Some kind of.


View from beach towards camping-site and airport.


... and across Adventfjorden. From left the mountains Adventtoppen, Hiorthfjellet and Operafjellet.




About the shooting; we weren´t terrible good any of us, but we figure we´re good enough to venture into the wild this weekend. The chance of actually seeing a bear is very small, it´s estimated that there are 1500-2000 bears on the whole of Svalbard, which is 61 022 km² big - so they´re spread thinly across the islands (this is the kind of stuff William and I keep repeating to each other, like a mantra). And the biggest population is in the north, near the ice. And if you should bump into one, in 95% of the cases it´s easily frightened away with signal pistols, or doesn´t show interest at all.

So there´s a good chance I´ll be back next week, in one piece, to bring more exciting stories from the arctic!