On the glacier itself we strapped spiked plates to our shoes, grabbed our ice picks and were roped together. Having a safety rope seemed a bit over-cautious at first, since the glacer wasn't particulary steep or slippery and didn't have any large cracks in the ice. [And fortunatly we didn't really needed to use it.] But after a while it became obvious that looks could be deceptive. Since it was quite warm, the ice on the surface was melting and running down the glacier in lots of little streams. For some reason the streams were all going down in serpentines [I would have assumed that the water would carve straight lines into the ice] and in the bends the water was often fast enough to cling to the side of the ice, sort of like a bob sleigh going around a corner. As a result of this, the water dug into the ice almost sideways, so that there were places which looked quite solid from above, but were just a thin sheet of ice over a steep drop. (See picture.) Before it starts to sound overly dramatic: I'm not talking about hundred feet deep drops here, just a couple of yards, but falling down those ravines would not have been fun.

The walk over the glacier was impressive, especially since it was a warm (ok, about 12 degree celsius, but that is warm by Svalbardian standards) day, the sky was blue and the sun was reflected by ice, giving everything a slightly unreal and 'postcardy' look. After an hour or so, we were back on solid ground and went up Sarkofagen mountain on the 'stairway to heaven'. [The tour guide had nicknamed it thus, since the crest of the mountain is shaped like a triangle pointing towards the top of the mountain and is slanted upwards, so it looked a bit like the perspective view of a wide road going on into infinity towards the sky. {Ok, the description is a bit vague and it's one of the rare cases were a picture really tells more than a thousand words, but unfortunatly I didn't take a picture of it. Anyway, the name seemed appropriate when we stood there.}]

When we reached the top, we had a coffee break and nice (did I mention breathtaking?) view of Longyearbyen and the glaciers. On our way down towards Longyearbreen we spotted a grouse, which had just taken a sandbath. When we passed a waterfall and saw our shadows on the side of the mountain, I realized what the row of shadowy figures, walking single file and carrying (ice-)picks reminded me of: the seven dwarves from Snow White (ok, we were just a group of six, but the similarities were obvious), so we went down the glacier singing and whistling "Heigh-Ho" :-)

At the end of the glacier we could do a bit of fossil hunting, since the rubble there is full of them. (I found four stones with fossilized leaves in them in about two minutes, so they are very easy to spot.) And from there it was just walking down the rocks and rubble back to Longyearbyen and the trip was over.