Von Postbreen & beluga whales

The day after the hike to the top of Forkastningsfjellet mountain on Revneset, a boat tour away from LYB, I went with the same touring provider on the other side of Isfjorden – to the Von Postbreen / Von Post glacier on a RIB boat, along with a small group of people eager to enjoy the day spent on the sea.

At first, I thought that I had maybe planned wayyyy too many glacier visits in only a few days, but it turned out to be an excellent decision. There are several good reasons why.

First – the weather changed from gloomy to extremely sunny and warm. Even though I prefer the weather we’ve had on the Nordenskiöldbreen, it is a superb experience to enjoy the glacier visit when the Sun shines above the Arctic. We passed by Forkastningsfjellet on which I went up on the day before. I love to have another perspective and I was really glad to see it from this angle.

Second, the scenery is absolutely fantastic. We passed by Diabasodden towards Hilmar Nøis’ trapper cabin to Von Post observing the arctic exquisiteness.

And then, the whales. Beluga whales. I spotted maybe 30 of them, and the guide spotted over a hundred of them in the whole area. Everywhere you turn to, you can see the water sprayed from the blowholes followed by a “bøøøøh!” sound. The entire experience is extremely humbling – Norwegian laws forbid any intentional contact with the arctic wildlife and if you are in a boat – you need to stop at a distance which does not irk the whales. But they felt comfortable enough to approach us and we were out of our minds. I have never seen anything like this before.

Besides the whales we saw a few ringed seals. One of them was particularly playful and curious. The seal was diving in and out while reappearing along the entire area for a long time, playing hide’n’seek with our cameras.

Von Post glacier was very noisy and had a ton of ice chips and smaller icebergs on its front. I ADORE the sound that a boat makes while going over them.

The grand finale was the dinner provided by a restaurant at LYB, and the guide served us a rich elk meat soup with root veggies while we were sitting on the coast near Von Post.

Now, that is how you create an experience!