During lunch we had made it back into the Woodfjord, now heading for Gråhuken – place of the hut, where Hermann and Christiane Ritter had spent the winter 1934/35 along with their hunting aid Karl Johan Nikolaisen). The site will be off limits for tourists from the coming (2025) season, hence a last chance to visit and get a glimpse of the hut and an idea of the living conditions during that winter.

My zodiac group eventually got called and we made it into the rubber boots and then on into a waiting zodiac, heading for the beach – when out of a sudden the instruction to abort blared through the radio. A polar bear had been sighted in some distance – and we were directly brought back to the ship … those already ashore were immediately evacuated – with no humans left ashore in less than 15 minutes.

While it was a bit disappointing to not get to see the hut – the show the polar bear put up was fully compensating for that. The bear was taking a pass slowly along the shore line, easily watchable from the ship using binoculars, photos also kind of worked out – even with simpler cameras (as mine) – check the zoomed-in picture below and look for the white bits along the shore.