Top 20 Abandoned Areas - Thread - Urban Exploration Resource

Posted by crows

What?? o.o *grabby hands*

Svalbard, the island beyond the northern horizon, has been my home away from home for couple of years. I have spent two full semesters in the University Centre in Svalbard, first in autumn 2011 and then in spring 2013, and had a shorter course in the spring of 2012. I fell in love with the barren landscape, the nature, the mountains, the abandonments, my snowmobile, the people and of course the polar bears. Now that I am facing graduation and one era in my life ends, I'm wondering whether I should aim for a PhD at UNIS or continue in my current job...

Anyway, what makes Svalbard interesting from an urban explorer's point of view? Well, the industrial activity on the island that dates back to the early 20th century has left its marks on the archipelago, inside and around the settlements. You can see abandoned buildings and discarted equipment everywhere. In addition, the Norwegians, in all their wisdom, decided that the cold and dry Arctic climate alone wasn't enough to preserve them. Now, everything older than 1946 is automatically protected by the cultural heritage law. Newer remains are also left largely untouched and only the most recent industrial activity - currently operating coal mines - must follow the clean-up principle and pack up everything when they close down.

So, we've established that Svalbard is a nice place to be and has a lot to offer for a person interested in abandoned locations. However, is there anything that rises above others, a location so epic that it's worth travelling all the way to Svalbard just to see it? How about Pyramiden, an abandoned Soviet (and later Russian) settlement that supported a population of over 1,000 until it was abandoned within a couple of days in 1998?

2011

My first visit to Pyramiden was in September 2011 as part of one my studies at the university. In the summer, the only way to visit the settlement is by boat, so after donning survival suits we zoomed across the foggy Isfjorden at nearly 30 knots, arriving in Pyramiden in less than two hours. Since the excursion was part of a course in the University Centre in Svalbard, we were not allowed to wander off but walked as a single group - about ten students - around the buildings with focus on the deterioration of the settlements. Another reason was that we only had two rifles - standard issue Ruger M77 Mark II's chambered at .30-06 - so we couldn't really split the group. Yet, it was a nice trip even for someone who was used to roaming freely around abandonments. With fog dropping the visibility to couple of hundred of meters and concealing the Pyramiden mountain that had given its name to the settlement, the atmosphere was perfect for walking around abandoned Soviet-era moniliths. Even though entering the buildings is forbidden, our professor took us into several of them, including large wooden structure at the base of the mountain that was used for unloading the coal from the mine. After spending the whole day in Pyramiden and getting an overview of the settlement, we headed back to Longyearbyen.

2012

After my first full semester in Svalbard, I applied for a three-day field course at UNIS in March 2012. Since one of my goals was to re-visit Pyramiden, I took two and a half weeks off from work. However, 2012 was a bad year for tourism since the fjords along the route were not frozen and the only way to get to Pyramiden would be to go over Lomonosovfonna, a large ice cap that covered the central part of the island of Spitsbergen. This demanding route was almost twice as long as the "scooter highway" over sea ice and was partially outside Management Area 10, meaning that it was off-limits for non-residents such as myself. So, what did we do? Got a fresh GPS track along the narrow safe corridor in the middle of the glacier and rented snowmobiles. You see, I didn't check the borders of Area 10 until we returned, and there was no-one to stop us. Also, half of our group had extensive experience from long trips on snowmobiles in Svalbard. Our goal was to stay overnight in Ebbahytta, a free cabin in Petuniabukta, so we packed sleeping bags, firewood, food and enough gasoline to get us there and back over the glacier.

I won't go into the details of our trip from Longyearbyen to Pyramiden, but it was a harsh one. I lost my windshield in the darkness and got a frostbite in my face. Also, Ebbahytta was already taken, forcing us to seek shelter from Pyramiden itself. After leaving our snowmobiles outside the settlement, we walked the last five kilometers or so and arrived at the deserted hotel in the middle of the night. We knew that there were people living in Pyramiden since the generators were running and there was heat, but there was no-one around, so we ended up sleeping on the floor behind the reception desk. Note that this was back in the days when the hotel was still not open to tourists. The Russian workers found us in the morning, but instead of telling us to leave they just smiled at us. Later, while we were walking on the main street, we met one of the workers who said that not that many people had visited that year. He also said that we would be welcome to visit the hotel and get warm, but "the bar is unfortunately closed".

This time there was only four of us, but we only had one rifle, so we were kind of stuck to each other. While all of us were eager to walk around, I was the only person who identified himself as an urban explorer. Even though I managed to slip away - not necessarily the safest thing to do - I only got a glimpse of some of the buildings we did not get to see during my previous visit. I knew I had to get back...

2013

After a year of hell in Finland - I got my first taste of office life - I sent an application to UNIS and just told my professor and employer that I was returning to Svalbard for one more semester.

After settling down in Longyearbyen, my first goal was to buy a snowmobile. After couple of weeks, I was a proud owner of a 2002 Polaris Indy 500 with about 13,000 km in the odometer. Now, the only thing to do was to wait for the fjords to freeze - unlike 2012, this winter looked good in terms of temperatures and sea ice predictions.

Our first trip to Pyramiden in March 2013 was one of the most exhausting trips of the season. While we knew the approximate route over the glaciers, we didn't know exactly where to get down in Nordenskiöldbreen, one of the big glaciers flowing to Billefjorden, and we had no idea about the actual sea ice conditions. The only thing we had was a key to Skottehytta, a cabin owned by the hunting and fishing club, so at least we had a place to stay if we got there. Everything went well until it was time to get down from Nordenskiöldbreen, one of the bigger glaciers in the region. It took us three hours of driving around the moraine areas to find a way down, only to realize that we could've driven down along the glacier in ten minutes. Crossing the Adolfbukta bay was not a big deal - we checked the ice thickness and it was sufficient - but towards Petuniabukta the ice became thinner and thinner, eventually becoming too thin for safe driving. Finally, we made a decision to drive on the coastal zone where the ice was resting on the seabed. However, the ice was broken and we could only maintain an average speed of five kilometers per hour. When we finally reached the cabin, I was so exhausted that I decided to skip visiting Pyramiden completely, opting for heating up the cabin and sleeping while the others drove across Petuniabukta to the settlement. I had not been feeling well for several weeks and this trip to Pyramiden did not help. Still, we had established that it was possible to go there - according to the Russians, we were the first tourist group of the season - and it would only get easier from now on.

The second trip to Pyramiden - and my first in 2013 - turned out to be the only "routine" trip of the season: practically nothing went wrong! Our group of six - three guys and three cute girls - stayed in the small cabin of Ebbahytta that, by the way, had only three beds. Since we had two rifles and I had already visited Pyramiden twice, I decided to skip the normal sight-seeing walk around the central settlement and headed off to the power plant with a friend of mine. Inside, we found pretty much what can be expected from a coal-fired power plant: steam turbines, control rooms, offices, a large emergency diesel generator and so on. We also found a sauna and a small swimming pool as well as laboratories and social premises. After roaming around the asbestos-laden building, we drove to the hotel and found our girls there. They had talked the Russian guide around to let us join a tourist tour to some of the better-preserved buildings. So, we were taken to the cantina and the culture center, both of which were very interesting and well-preserved, but unfortunately not to the swimming pool. Well, we didn't pay anything for the trip. After spending the whole day in Pyramiden, we retreated back to the cabin and... well... did what students usually do in the cabins in Svalbard. What happens above the Arctic Circle stays above the Arctic Circle...

My third trip to Pyramiden was supposed to be the "main trip" of the season. My plan was to tag along with my friends, who were heading for the north coast with two German tourists, until Petuniabukta, where I would establish a base camp at Ebbahytta and wait alone for three or four days until they returned from the 80th parallel. In the meantime, I would make several trips to Pyramiden across the fjord. For this purpose, I had enough food and gasoline as well as all necessary safety equipment to survive for five days. That is, of course, unless I had to shoot more than one or two bears as I only had ten rounds of ammunition for the rifle and two flash bangs plus one red flare for the flare gun...

Everything went more or less well until we got to Ebbahytta, where I noticed that my snowmobile had dropped some parts along the way. However, I had all my equipment still with me and the scooter was still in driveable condition, so we decided to continue according to the original plan. When I saw my friends disappearing to the horizon, I went to bed and slept through the first day as well as through the following night - talk about sleep deprivation! On the following day, I headed off to Pyramiden with a moderate speed since I was missing one of the idle roller wheels and there was a danger I would rip the track belt. I parked my scooter to the harbour and walked around for something like nine hours, re-visiting the power plant and going into a dozen new buildings. At some point, I had a break at the hotel and had couple of cans of Coca-Cola. The tourists were eyeballing me, walking around with a rifle of my own and so on. I saw more or less what I wanted, but decided to not to climb to the mine. The entrance is located at an elevation of about 500 metres on the face of the mountain. While it's relatively easy to get there - there are stairs - everything up there is covered in several metres of snow. Well, that calls for a summer trip in the coming years, perhaps with a group of like-minded friends. After a full day in a largely abandoned settlement, I returned to my small cabin only to see two snow scooters approaching from the north, one towing the another. "Can't be", I thought. My friend had damaged his track belt on broken sea ice and they had, wisely, decided to turn back instead of pushing further north. About 10 kilometres before the cabin, the Arctic Crap died completely and had to be towed. After I stopped laughing, we opened a bottle of cognac and threw the cap into the fire.

The fourth and final trip was a simple salvage trip: we had left the Arctic Crap outside Ebbahytta two weeks ago and it had to be brought back before the sea ice got too weak. We had no definite plans how to get the stricken scooter home without ruining our engines, but we packed enough equipment so that we could come up with something once we got there. One thing we lacked was a place to stay, but if Ebbahytta was taken, we could always sleep in an old Russian hut I had named "Octagon" for its eight corners. That cabin would have no heating, but at least it would protect us from the polar bears. On sea ice, some of our scooters started overheating and had to stop. I continued to Ebbahytta with the owner of the Arctic Crap on the backseat to "claim" the cabin for us. However, upon arriving to the cabin, I noticed two things: there was German skiier staying in the cabin and a hungry polar bear had ripped open the leather seat of the abandoned snowmobile. I left my German friend to talk German with the German skiier and was still laughing out loud when I got back to my friends. In the meantime, they had met a guy who had enquired our plans and, upon hearing that we had not place to stay, had offered us the key to the hunting and fishing club cabin for free. Yay! Still laughing, I picked up my friend and towed his snowmobile from Ebbahytta to Skottehytta, and we set off to Pyramiden. This time, we concentrated on the harbour structures and climbed to the loading tower on the pier. Again, a successful trip in beautiful weather. On the following day, we towed the Arctic Crap back to Longyearbyen - a feat no-one believed to be possible. High on top of Nordenskiödtoppen, I turned back on my scooter to look at Pyramiden and decided that I would return.

So, that concludes my visits to Pyramiden in 2011-2013. It's difficult to explain in detail what we saw, so you're better off browsing through the galleries. I have couple of thousand of photographs from my trips and going through them will take some time, so you better subscribe to the location or at least come and check out the updates every now and then. Of course, you can always ask me for anything related to exploring abandonments in Svalbard.

http://www.uer.ca/...ow.asp?locid=30897

I'm going back to Svalbard in May, but the ice situation is pretty bad and I don't think I'll make it to Pyramiden this year. I guess the next visit will be a summer boat trip.

I also need to re-do all the pics in the LDB entry (full members only). The white balance in my laptop was off.