Saturday morning was the annual sled race across the fjord from Longyearbyen. It is part of Solfestuka, the sun festival, celebrating the arrival of the sun over the mountain in the town for the first time this year.
Getting to the festival involved a fairly long walk of about an hour and a half, down into the town and then across the fjord on the sea ice to the valley opposite. It was a beautiful day, with the sun lighting the tops of the mountains as we headed across. We steered well clear of the broken edge of the sea ice, tending to walk where people had skiied or scootered before. Parts of the walk were very slippy, but a lot of the ice had a shallow covering of snow which made walking easier. However, we were very glad when we got picked up by a snow cat, and driven the rest of the way. It was a bumpy ride but fun, especially as it would cost a lot to do as a tourist!
The sled race itself had competitors from both the town and the University. There were some great sledges, some strange sledges, some drunk and scantily clad competitors, a giant banana split, some smoke and light effects, some sledges that made it down in 50 seconds, and some that careered straight off the run! Some people ended up running down and gave up with their misbehaving sledges. All in all it was good fun. We had some interesting looks from the locals as we were colder than them as we had no scooter suits on, so warmed up by inventing a 'keeping warm dance' and drinking lots of tea!
Of course we had the equivalent of the red cross there, albeit with a rather different vehicle, and had polar bear guards with rifles stationed around the area. Just some more of the oddities of a village event in a town in the Arctic!
The event was also a great way to people watch the 'locals'. They all arrived on snow scooters, some with kids riding in front or behind them on the scooter, others towing sledges with the rest of the family sat on them. The place was full of people in scooter suits, even babies. The children looked so sweet all puffed up in their warm clothes with little red cheeks. Lots brought little sledges or ran around in the snow to keep warm. A scooter park appeared as more and more people arrived, a crazy array of more snow scooters in one place than I shall probably ever see again!
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