Longyearbyen Glacier

Svalbard Day 9 (back blip)

Today we joined a small tour group for a hike up the Longyearbyen glacier, with the intention of getting to the summit of a mountain. The views were great from the start. We put walking crampons on to walk up the glacier (our guide told us that it had retreated 30 mètres so far this year) and then onto a very wet, muddy lateral morraine to head up the mountain. It was another warm sunny day and many new brown coloured streams were emerging from the melting snow higher up. After three hours it became obvious that we weren’t going to make the summit when we came across a brown waterfall that we couldn’t cross. (See extra) We opted to have lunch (dried chilli in a packet that we added hot water to) then slowly made our way back to the glacier and down again. The streams lower down had swollen so we made a few detours and got our feet wet before we reached the end of the walk. Despite not reaching the summit we had a great day and enjoyed walking in the mountains.

We cooked our own evening meal at the hostel before having a walk to look for an Arctic Fox again but no luck today.