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“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. ” Henry David Thoreau wrote this over 150 years ago in his cabin on Walden Pond. We too like to seek inspiration from nature and spend as much time as we can outdoors. We love to share this with like-minded people – this is the main reason for us to start the Borea Adventures operation.

With prevailing westerly winds recently the sea ice is coming close to the shores of the West Fjords. Actually it is now forecasted that ice may close the shipping lanes around the NW of Iceland and into some of the fjords. Attached here is a sattellite photo with the ice edge sketched on as of today.

Mr. Einar Sveinbjörnsson, meteorologist at the Icelandic Meteorological Office keeps a very interesting ‘weather blog’. Every day he writes about his observations of weather phenomena all over the world. This morning he drew attention to the fact that sattelite pictures are showing very little sea ice along the east coast of Greenland.

Icelanders go crazy on new years eve burning fireworks like it´s not just the last day of the year, but also the last day of their lifes.

Borea Adventues is in a Christmas mood and now giving 10% discount on all bookings made and confirmed before February 16th 2007. On the two experimental expeditions, to Jan Mayen and Greenland, the discount offered is 20%. We had to make a few adjustments to prices for coming season and this discount will do more than offset any price increase. The Icelandic currency can be kind of unstable but with these adjustments we will be locking the price list in Euro’s until a new schedule for 2008 is posted.

Today is the Day of Saint Thorlak. It´s a long tradition in the West Fjords of Iceland to eat stinky skate fish on that day (don´t ask me why!) and during the last decade or so, this tradition has spread all over the country. The skate fish is put in a large container for some period until the ammonia smell becomes worse than in a lousy bar toilet on a Sunday morning. Yummi…

We heard from our friend Jim Gudjonson in Golden, British Columbia that he is enjoying great snow conditions in his mountains. A week of snow cat skiing in the Monashee Mountains in 80 cm of powder….. sounds awesome! Jim was skiing with us last spring and is bringing another group for May 2007. We don’t have 80cm of powder in Isafjordur now but today was absolutely beautiful day – cold, clear and yes… with perhaps 15-20cm of powder.

Date presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting suggests that Arctic sea ice is no longer recovering from the summer melt and that the ice pack may show very rapid losses in the near future. Calculations show that late summer in the Arctic will be ice-free by 2040 or earlier, well within a lifetime.

Here is a puzzle… find the hidden Ptarmigan couple in their winter dress? During a short hike in the mountain above Isafjordur last Sunday afternoon the Aurora skipper came across this Ptarmican couple. They were happily oblivious to the fact that Ptarmigans are one of the most popular Christmas dinner in Iceland… or perhaps they simply knew that this guy never carries a more dangerous weapon than a camera.

“Drinking water from the falls, eating berries from the vine – that’s the way it should be! A great land inhabited by great people. To the best crew and compliments to the chef! Thank you all !!” Enough talk about snow and gale force winds… when the days are dark it’s nice to remind us of summer and fair weather. Above is a quote from AURORA’s guestbook, written by Erik Butler from San Francisco. He is a great photographer and many of the pictures on this website are from his collection from a trip last July.