Hornvik – Fox-filled Wonderland

hornvik

We made our way to the dock and met Josh (fellow monitoring volunteer) and Ester (director of the Artcic Fox Center) loading enough food and gear to invade Russia. We helped haul it aboard and were on our way to Hornstrandir! It was another beautiful day. We felt bad about their drought, but were praying it kept going for another several days.

En route we saw another minke whale! We took it as a good omen for wildlife viewing. We were landed by zodiac on the rock strew beach at the base of a 30 foot, 70 degree incline up to our campsite. We hauled all the food (so much food) and gear up to our camping place. Icelanders are very hearty eaters – we have been defeated by their portion sizes (unbelievable, I know) on several occasions. I concede that a day spent rowing to Ireland to raid coastal villages and capture treasure from monasteries probably works up an appetite, but we with our less challenging schedule couldn’t begin to absorb that many calories. Even in light of the typical Icelandic meal our provisions seemed wildly excessive. We were devastated to see them in any case, as we had been originally set to go out to Hestur on our own and had been told to equip and provision ourselves for that. We had packed and carried all our food and supplies (including the wretched stove that everyone is sick of hearing me carry on about) over the entire country. All I knew is that not a single packet of that oatmeal was going back to America in my bags.

our camp in hornvik

After we hauled everything up to our camping plateau, Ester gave us the grand tour. She suggested a “short-cut” straight up the cliff side as a time saver as she had to catch the ferry back at 5PM. So we gamely followed her bushwhacking through the Arctic jungle. With 24 hours of sunlight the plant-life goes nuts, so it was jungle-ish with butter cups up to mid-thigh and your boots hopelessly tangled in dandelions. Ester is also quite expert in botany and pointed out and fed us countless Icelandic plants and extolled their various medicinal virtues. The lichen thing was weird to me – optimally you brew it in hot water and then in hot milk before eating it. How does anyone come up with something like that? “Look at this bizarre thing I found growing on the rocks! Why don’t I boil it in milk and eat it?” Anyhow, she led us up and over and around. Each view and bird cliff was somehow even more impressive than the previous. Hornvik is unbelievably beautiful – truly sublimely lovely, and we could understand the envy expressed by all the Icelanders we’d told about our sojourn.

brad diligently scanning for foxes

After she’d pointed out all the monitoring locations and given us the basic information (pit toilet 800 meters south of camp, water from pretty much anywhere you find water), she raced off to catch the boat and left us to it. We had barely erected the kitchen tent and had not yet solved the mystery of the giant gas canister when a fox strolled leisurely through the camp to check us out. He casually looked us over and then proceeded to assert himself by marking a couple of posts and rock outcrops. We were thrilled/ shocked/ giddy and madly scrambling for cameras as he sauntered back up the hill and out of sight.

Kimberly on the look out for foxes

We retired that evening excited to begin monitoring. Brad and I split the watch on the Horn monitoring location – I took noon to six and he took six to midnight. Due to some scheduling issues, Suzanne was unable to start with us, so Josh went up to the saddle of the cliff to monitor three fox dens in the valley and meant to cover them most of the entire watch himself. (Suzanne arrived with the ferry on Friday on began monitoring that very day splitting time on the saddle with Josh) The hike up to each location was an hour to an hour and a half and once there you settled yourself into a likely spot and prepared to be silent and vigilant for six or more hours. We recorded all the human activity as well as the animal behavior – trying to see if links can be formally established between human use and animal behavior.

fox pauses from his serenade



We await the ferry with our gear pile



It was really hot hiking in the brilliant sun and very cold sitting in the biting winds. You had to bring many layers to adjust to the extremely variable weather and a big thermos of hot drinks as well. What we found is that the foxes are not particularly active on the noon to 6 watch. Mostly what Kimberly monitored were hikers, boats and the weather. Part of the job was timing how long people spent around the den we were watching. Most people walked right over the den (which was in the middle of the trail) with only the briefest of pauses. Some stopped long enough to point out the holes to their companions and take a few photos. Then there were those charming few who tried to conjure foxes out of the dens by rattling their trekking poles in the holes a shouting. I’m not sure where these people got the idea that threatening an animal with a stick and shouting will encourage it to approach you. I suspect that these were Icelanders most of whom Ester and others told us harbor a profound dislike of the foxes. This disdain goes back to the agricultural root of the country and the ubiquitous belief of farmers the world over that any animal with sharp teeth is a threat to the livestock. In Iceland that means that the farmers think that the foxes eat the sheep. If it wasn’t for the fact that people can shoot foxes on sight anywhere in Iceland but on Hornstrandir it would be amusing. Please, look at our fox pictures and videos and let us know if they look to you like they could take down a sheep that wasn’t already chopped up on a dinner plate.

Brad enters the data

Far more exciting from a fox watching perspective was my 6 to midnight shift which featured about 3 hours of sitting in the shade once the sun slid around to the north. Despite the bitter cold I endured with the help of my snowsuit and thermos of coffee, I had the consolation of many foxes to watch. The first two nights the foxes I saw were pretty far away and difficult to see without the binoculars. However, on the third night a fox came so close I thought he was going to sit in my lap (which would have been very welcome since it was a particularly cold and windy evening). He snuck up on me while I had the binoculars glued to my face scanning the face of Midfell. I heard a noise close by and turned to find a fox not more than 6 feet behind me. He walked around me for a minute or 2, then lost interest and walked away. Later he returned for another look and then seemed to head for cover lower down on the mountain. The same fox came to visit me on the 4th night out also. For this reason, Kimberly and I decided to trade shifts on the last day so that I would have the hiker observation shift and she would get to watch the foxes. She was not disappointed because my friend visited her and put on the show you can watch on our youtube channel. Here: http://youtu.be/Xeaf6OHlhcA

the arctic fox center in sudavik

This fox monitoring business was the centerpiece activity of our Fund for Teachers grant and it was exactly what we had hoped it would be. We learned so much about what goes into a wildlife study. Each morning before heading out to monitor we discussed the ways we will incorporate the experiences.

Our week in Hornvik flew by and before we knew it we were packing up and hauling our weighty gear back down to the beach (which was only slightly less tiring that going up). The ferry arrived on time at 11:30, we were shuttled aboard, and settled in for the 3 hour ride back to Isafjordur. When we landed we were met by Fanney (Ester’s wonderful daughter) and Sonja (who works at the center for the summer) and they carted us and all the gear to the Arctic Fox Center in Sudavik.

We wrapped up our fox monitoring experience at the Arctic Fox Center in Sudavik. It is a beautiful facility with thoughtful, well displayed exhibits, two orphaned “ambassador” fox kits and a fantastic café. http://www.melrakki.is/  We were feted with marvelous waffles, cream and jam by the awesome staff (thank you for everything Fanney, Sonja and Isabelle) and then set to work entering all the data from our field logs. It took hours and we began to regret the verbosity of our weather and tourist recording. The center also arranged camping for us at the local campground. The whole experience was beyond our wildest imaginings and we are deeply grateful to both Fund for Teachers and to Ester and the Arctic Fox Center.

josh juggles fox kits



unbelievablely cute baby fox



Isafjordur – Excruciating, Exhausting, Exquisite and Delicious

cafe braedraborg- mmmm, cake

That pretty much sums up our time in Isafjordur. If I haven’t mentioned it before, let me now make clear what an extraordinarily fit, hearty bunch the Icelanders are. If you’ve never read Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth (you should be ashamed) you should get it out and in the character of Hans, you can see what they are like. They don’t all speak fluent Danish and we didn’t find them taciturn, but everything else was pretty much spot-on. Anyhow, the point of this digression is to make clear that the Icelandic definition of “moderate activity” and everyone else’s idea are wildly divergent. The kayak trip I booked for us – 8 hours of cruising the placid fjord gawking at seals and ending up steeping in a geothermal pool – was a labor of Hercules.

I want to say this post is so late because I have just now regained the use of my arms – but that is a slight exaggeration. The town is the largest and most important city in the entire Westfjords region – over 2000 people. We flew in and wimped out of camping again. It was raining and cold and we told ourselves we had a full week of living rough – totally exposed to the elements in the wholly unreliable Hyperlight 3 ahead of us and needed to recruit our strength. The Hotel Edda chain had sleeping bag space available. This chain is set up for the summer tourist season in schools across Iceland. We shared a chemistry classroom with 3 French people and a Dane.

The “hotel” was a 10 minute walk from downtown and we walked over to locate the café where we were to meet our guide for the kayak excursion the next morning. The café Braedraborg was a haven of organic, vegetarian deliciousness. Everything was wonderful and we were thrilled to hear that they were supplying our lunches for the kayak trip. Next day was gorgeous, and we learned that yesterday’s drizzle was the first precipitation they had seen for a month.

We met our guide and the other three participants and drove out Reykjarfjordur. The winds were fairly strong; the guide said they were just with-in the limits of his having to cancel. The fjord was stunning, the seals were like robins – bobbing up adorably here, there, everywhere. It was a little nerve-wracking actually. They were so playful that I was afraid they might try to tip us into the water.

isafjordur

All our previous sea kayaking has been in Hawaii and Florida – places where falling in is part of the fun. Here we wore a good 15 pounds of thermal/ waterproof gear including spray skirts. These are super elasticized to cinch over the lip of the kayak – whatever you call the hole where you sit in a kayak- to keep the frozen North Atlantic spray from causing your death of hypothermia. They are equipped with a strap that is your emergency release if you tip over. This was pretty scary as I couldn’t budge mine and would therefore be hopelessly trapped under the kayak in an accident. The water was crystal clear; affording an excellent view of the immense swarms of the biggest jellyfish I have ever seen – one more reason to sit there having a conniption fit about a seal tipping me.

psst! there's a seal following you!

If my heart had not already exploded from the incredible effort of propelling the kayak against the current and killer headwinds it would have seriously been lodged in my throat. The trip out to our lunch spot was hard work, but wonderful. If I’d had a grain of sense I’d have insisted on portaging the kayak back to the trailer from there. It was probably less than a mile by land and after lunch the winds had changed direction and picked up strength. I was making good progress back to the shore where we had embarked when the guide pulled up beside me to tell me we were actually headed to a seal beach on the opposite shore. Since the point of the excursion was observing wildlife up close and on their home turf I felt I had to even though seals had practically been riding in the kayak with me the whole time.

It was heart breaking, back breaking, arm breaking crossing the fjord – the waves were much larger now and several times threatened to swamp me. The seals were laid out all over the beach basking and lolling. I didn’t even care. I hated those seals because now I had to recross the fjord again. Brad took a video that look like he panned the beach – he didn’t. He just quit paddling for a few seconds and that is how quickly and how far back he was blown. I have never exerted so much effort for nothing in my life. I had the ultimate humiliation of the having the guide tow me half-way across on the way back. I just couldn’t do it. He didn’t even seem to be working. He was at least two to three inches shorter than me and I won’t humiliate myself further by guessing how much I outweigh him. That is what I mean about the wiry, superhuman strength of the Icelanders. After hauling me half-way back he had to go out again and tow in the gigantic Dane.

By the time we beached, I was completely incapacitated – I could not use my arms at all. Brad had to haul me out of the kayak and put me in the van. The trip to the thermal pool was life saving. We bobbed and steamed and were remade by the hot water. I liked seals again. I even like kayaking again. It really was beyond beautiful and I cannot recommend the guides enough. http://www.boreaadventures.com/  

As if their trips are not wonderful enough, we were thrilled to learned that they are supporters of the Artcic Fox center and donate a percentage of every excursion’s cost to them.

Pictures at: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjAQMCmw  Just one, the rest will go up August 1st.

Video: http://youtu.be/CKWKKxrchek  It is just the one – they are too quick and we are too slow, especially dressed up in our gear and trying not to lose a paddle.

Heimaey Means “Home Island”

blue cinders at pompeii of the north

We drove out early to get to Landeyjahofn where we caught the ferry to the Westman Islands. Westman Islands? Aren’t they actually as far South as you can go in Iceland? Why yes, they are. It certainly isn’t about Vikings have poor directional sense; the Irish slaves (or West Men) of Hjorliefur, rose up and killed him and escaped to these islands. They were mercilessly hunted to extinction by his half-brother, Ingolfur on these same volcanic outcrops.

These same islands were the scene of a terrible Algerian pirate raid in the 1600’s where almost 250 of the natives were carried off to African slavery. Twenty-something eventually had their freedom purchased. If these various stirring events don’t make for enough of local history, their more recent claims to fame are equally, if not more dramatic.

eldfell, westman islands

The Westmans are home to the world’s newest island; Surtsey emerged hissing and boiling from the ocean in 1963. It is a living laboratory, inaccessible to all but scientists specializing in bio-colonization. http://www.surtsey.is/index_eng.htm has tons of good information on this fascinating UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Westmans made big volcanic news again in 1973 when Eldfell emerged from the earth and began raining fire, ash and lava on the island. The whole island, 5000+, was evacuated in just a few hours with no loss of human life. Pretty amazing – equally amazing was the inhabitants’ determination to not lose their home to the eruption. When lava threatened their harbor, a remarkable scheme was hatched to divert the lava flow with tons of frigid sea water and keep it from closing off the harbor.

Heimaey is also famous for their puffins. Scads of these adorable sea birds call these jagged cliffs home. The children of Heimaey take to the hills and dales in August with cardboard boxes seeking out puffin chicks in distress. When it is time to head out for their months at sea, some of the chicks become disoriented and lose their way. These are given a lift by the children, who collect them in said boxes, take them home, and then release them directly into the sea when they are ready. Unfortunately, the puffins are now facing a threat beyond the scope of the children to mend. Rising sea temperatures have eliminated their food source and seriously diminished the population.

puffin!

We had a spectacular day for our visit and the islands were gorgeous. Eldfell dominates your approach and is a bizarre red cinder cone. Helgafell sits quietly in the background, all dark and brooding. It is definitely a very dramatic landscape. We went up to the puffin cliffs and enjoyed the gorgeous view out over the island and all of its uninhabited surrounding kin – not very many puffins, but plenty of sheep. We also hiked up Eldfell, the lava field slopes up gently making it a very easy climb. We took hundreds of pictures of its truly magnificent geological rainbow splendors. The island is trying to establish a “Pompeii of the North” outdoor museum. They have done partial excavations of some of the 400+ homes buried under the lava. We peeked into dark recesses and saw into living rooms covered in these gloriously iridescent-blue bits of cinders.

See the slideshow at: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjAQMyjA  – only one image now, the rest will be up August 1st.

Video at: http://youtu.be/GEOIsVq95lk  



you can really see where the lava flow buried part of the town



eldfell in front, helgefell behind