Sylvia Gross

Born and raised in Bonn, Germany, Sylvia travelled to the Arctic for the first time in 2012. After finishing her studies, she left Germany for good to live and work in the Arctic all year round. She has spent two seasons as a dog sledding guide in Finland, lived with the Inuit in remote East Greenland, and guided in Svalbard and Antarctica.

In 2019, she crossed the Atlantic on a three-masted schooner and sailed through the nearly closed pack ice of the Arctic Ocean. From 2018 to 2019 she spent the winter in a tent in the High Arctic at 78°N and in 2019 she completed her one-year Arctic Nature Guide (ANG) course in Svalbard to become a professional polar guide.

Since then, she's been living in Svalbard, guiding guests on snowmobiles and skis over glaciers and through mountains in the spring, working on different ships and kayaks in the Arctic in the summer, and down south in Antarctica when it's winter and dark in Svalbard. When she is not working as a guide, she likes to go on longer private trips, such as three months hiking in Iceland or 600km on skis and kites across Svalbard. What she loves about guiding is showing the polar world to others - showing her world to others and seeing the smile on people's faces when they spot a whale or see a glacier calving for the first time.