Spitzbergen

For 40 days in April and May 2023, I lived on the glaciers of Spitsbergen. My team and I covered 700 kilometers - once on skis from south to north across the Arctic island. In parts 1 and 2 of this series, I talked about the mental challenges that accompanied me during this expedition. But what would I have liked to have known beforehand that would have made my life easier during these 40 days? If you are about to embark on such a journey or simply want an insight into my thoughts: This one's for you. Here are ten things I learned directly or indirectly from our expedition through Spitsbergen.

PART I and PART II of this series of articles dealt with the mental challenges of a 40-day Arctic expedition, i.e.: What goes through the mind of someone who is traveling "off the grid" for such a long time for the first time, isolated from everything familiar and in the middle of an extreme situation for 1.5 months? In order to create a complete documentary film during such an expedition, however, there is a much more specific question - one that cost me sleepless nights before the trip: How do you even film in the eternal cold?

In the first week, it was not even clear whether the team would reach the southern tip at all. While storms raged outside, the battle against their own motivation began inside the tent. But the apparent routine that followed was a fallacy. In the second part of his article series, Moritz takes us further into the psychological depths of a 40-day expedition. He gives an unembellished account of the enormous pressure to meet the sponsors' expectations and deliver a documentary film without a script, when all you really want to do is lie in a warm sleeping bag. How do you turn doubt into routine? Why are sunsets a torture? And how do you prepare your mind for such extremes? Moritz shares his personal learnings and gives tangible tips for mental training - so that fear eventually turns into strength.

For his film project 'End to End Svalbard', Moritz spent 40 days on an expedition through Spitsbergen. Over the coming months, he will be reporting on his personal experiences and insights from this border crossing in a four-part series of articles and sharing his emotional life with us. One of the reasons for this is that he found hardly any reports at the time that provided open and honest information about the obstacles. The first part is about the mental challenges that such an expedition entails.

We've reached the autumn of the season, so to speak, and more and more of the films that we presented as trailers in the spring of the season are now appearing: The Hagens, Continuum, Sänkyøu. We reap what we have sown! We also offer you the best amateur vloggers - Marco Bassot and Gerhard Wiedemann - with a bit of FWT risk management and a good podcast with Maxime Chabloz at the end.

We have put together 25 trailers of films about freeriding for you and have also skilfully commented on most of them! Just take a look! The anticipation is building, the stoke is real and the order is in favour of underdogs.

Every two years, the International Snow Science Workshop (ISSW) brings together scientists and practitioners from a wide range of different, but always snow-related, subject areas. New findings and research results are presented in various thematic blocks - so-called sessions. We break the whole thing down into more or less digestible morsels and summarize the sessions of the ISSW2018 for you every two weeks.