16-Apr-2004 -- After a very nice snowscooter trip, including a visit to Pyramiden (a Russian mining town abandoned since 1998), a night in Scottehytta, nice glacier fronts, lots of seals but fortunately/unfortunately no polar bears we returned to Longyearbyen at around 18.00. Since we were still hungry for more Svalbard nature, the snowscooters were rented until next morning, and we were leaving Svalbard in two days (Jakob after taking two short courses at UNIS, Harald and Hugo after a one week visit) it was obvious that we had to make an evening trip after having dinner. To contribute to the number of confluence visits on Svalbard, and as the weather was supposed to get worse, we decided to go to 78°N 15°E relatively close to Longyearbyen, the confluence where the Svalbard confluence surge was triggered by two simultaneous visits one month earlier.

At around 21.00 we left Longyearbyen and headed up Longyearbreen towards south. The trip went through Fardalen, across Colesdalen, up through the Valley of the hundred rock glaciers (formally known as Synndalen), and up Passfjellbreen. After some minutes of confusion over the borrowed GPS (thank you Malte very much!) up on Passfjellbreen, we managed to drive the last few hundreds of meters to the slope and localize the magic spot. At around 23.00 we stood happily on 78°N 15°E, eating sandwiches and drinking hot tea in a cold and unfriendly wind.

We took the pictures as fast as we could in the increasing wind, with lots of time spent on warming up our hands, and after approximately 45 minutes we started the trip back towards Longyearbyen. We returned the same way as we came with wind and snowfall increasing until we could only see a few meters in Fardalen. Luckily the track back was well known and we had no bigger problems finding our way home to Longyearbyen where we went straight to bed after two intense days of snowscooter driving.