05-Jul-2005 -- Yet another scout jamboree, and yet another confluence visit!

Five years ago I was a Cub Scout leader, and my son had become a regular scout. His troop attended "Go The NorWay 2000" at Ingelsrud scouting center, and while visiting him there I managed to visit 60°N 12°E which is just a few km north of the camp site.

This year the national jamboree was held at the same site, I attended the camp as Troop Leader which gave me very little free time, but I used the day when all the scouts were out on an overnight hike to visit another confluence, this one over the border into Sweden.

After seeing off my troop's patrols on their hikes, I left Ingelsrud just after 10 in the morning, then drove E and N on road 202 to Austmarka where I turned right onto Mitanderforsvegen. This is one of a large number of dirt roads that cross the border between Norway and Sweden in this area.

During WWII many thousands were helped across this border by a secret network of guides, today things are a lot less exciting, and the actual border is only marked with a single sign, and no actual customs presense.

I followed the same road SE another 28 km to Brandsböl, then turned north on Gräsmarksvägen. After 8.6 km on this road, my maps indicated a dirt road leading almost directly to the confluence, but when I got there I found a sign saying the road was gated. The gate however was open, so I took a chance and drove on.

After nearly 10 km on this shortcut I reached 13°E for the first time, just a little bit north of 60°N. At this point I passed another open gate, so it is probably possible to reach this area from the east without driving through any gates.

After the gate I turned right (south) at a T-junction, then stopped shortly after passing 60°N, on the first possible turnout. The confluence was about 370 m away, across a nice stream and up a small hill. It is totally covered with relatively young pine trees, enough to disable reception of low-altitude satellites, including the ESTB differential correction signals, but I still got a stable position of all zeroes and an EPE figure of 6 m.

On my way back to the camp I drove on much better (paved) roads south to Gräsmark and back west to Charlottenberg, a swedish border town located just a few km SE of the border. This was a good spot to buy some essential supplies for the camp, like a huge bag of marsmallows that the scouts could roast on the campfire after returning from their overnight hike.