Sheet 01 / 04 · Spitsbergen, Svalbard · Contours 50 m

Small-group expeditions · Tromsø, since 2011

Where the contour lines crowd.

Ski traverses, ice-field crossings and high treks for eight people at most — above 66°N, below 46°S and over 5,000 m. Led by IFMGA guides who have walked every metre of the route first.

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4 sheets

14 days · 210 km · max 1,180 m · 8 guests

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(01)Why eight

Eight people fit in two tents, on one rope, around one stove. So eight is our number. We move under our own power — skis, boots, and a sail when the wind allows — about fifteen kilometres a day, rarely more. We carry out every gram we carry in. The rest of the world can go faster. We would rather arrive.

2 × 4 = 8two tunnel tents, four to a tent, one cook each night

15.2 kmaverage day, Svalbard 2025, measured by GPS, not optimism

3.1 kgof waste per guest, all of it flown home

(02)Expeditions

Four routes, each one earned.

Every route is scouted by the guide who leads it and run two or three times a year, never more. Pick one to plot it — then hover the profile to walk it.

Sheets are drawn live in your browser. Routes, camps and heights are real; the terrain between them is imagined.

Sheet 01 / 04 · Spitsbergen, Svalbard

Svalbard Ski Traverse

78°21′N 16°42′E · Contours 50 m

010 km

Elevation profile · 210 km

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05001,0001,500 0 km50100150200 Longyearbyen Tellbreen Lomonosovfonna · 1,180 m Mohnbukta Sassendalen
Days
14incl. 2 weather days
Distance
210kmpulling a 45 kg pulk
Max altitude
1,180mLomonosovfonna ice cap
Group
8max+ 2 guides
Difficulty
Strong and cold-tolerant
Season
Apr–May24-hour light from 19 Apr

We leave Longyearbyen on skis, climb onto Lomonosovfonna, drop to the east coast at Mohnbukta and come home through Sassendalen. Everyone pulls their own pulk — about 45 kg at the start, 30 by the end. Every camp is fenced with a trip-wire alarm and watched in shifts: this is polar bear country.

From, per guest€9,800

See 2027 dates

(03)A day on expedition · Svalbard Ski Traverse

05:40, and the tent walls are already bright.

Day 9 · 1 May

−14 °C · NE 12 kn · Sun never below 3°

Cook on duty

Stove on

The first sound of the day is the burner. Snow goes in, two litres of water come out forty minutes later, and the tent warms to a luxurious −2 °C.

Cook tent

The weather call

The satellite forecast is read aloud over porridge: wind, temperature, visibility, cloud base. The guide decides the day’s distance before anyone has their boots on.

Strike camp

Tents down, pulks packed

Striking camp takes fifty minutes on day three and thirty by day ten. Everyone knows which bag goes where; nobody has to ask twice.

First leg

Skins on

Ninety minutes of skiing, ten minutes of rest, repeat. Nobody talks much in the first hour. By the third, somebody is always singing.

Lunch

Lunch in the lee

Thermos, salami, a slab of dark chocolate. Everyone eats standing, faces to the sun, down jackets zipped to the chin. Twenty minutes, then on.

Glacier travel

Rope up

Past the icefall we clip in: twelve metres of rope between each skier, guide in front with a probe. The snow looks exactly the same. It isn’t.

Make camp

Walls before tents

We cut snow blocks and build a wall 1.2 m high on the windward side before a single tent goes up. The trip-wire bear alarm goes round last.

First watch

Bear watch, in pairs

Two hours each, two at a time, with a flare pistol and a thermos. The sun slides along the horizon and doesn’t set. Most people ask for a second shift.

(04)Guides

Four guides. Sixty years on the ice, between them.

We don’t hire for the season. Every lead guide is a partner in the company, has turned a group around at least once, and will tell you exactly why.

  1. Contoured from Store Blåmann, Kvaløya — her first summit, at nine.

    Ingrid Solvang

    Lead guide · Svalbard & East Greenland

    Holds
    IFMGA mountain guide; polar field-safety instructor
    Speaks
    Norwegian, English, German
    Record
    22 Svalbard crossings

    19years guiding

  2. Cerro Solo, 2,121 m, as seen from his kitchen in El Chaltén.

    Tomás Arriagada

    Lead guide · Patagonian ice fields

    Holds
    IFMGA mountain guide; Wilderness First Responder
    Speaks
    Spanish, English, Portuguese
    Record
    9 full crossings of the Hielo Sur

    14years guiding

  3. Passu Sar, above the village in Gojal where she grew up.

    Nadira Baig

    Lead guide · Karakoram

    Holds
    International Mountain Leader; diploma in high-altitude medicine
    Speaks
    Wakhi, Urdu, English
    Record
    17 crossings of Gondogoro La

    11years guiding

  4. The hill above Kulusuk harbour, where he learned to read ice.

    Malik Petersen

    Skipper & ski guide · East Greenland

    Holds
    Yachtmaster Ocean; IFMGA aspirant ski guide
    Speaks
    Kalaallisut, Danish, English
    Record
    2,400 nm sailed in Greenland ice

    16years guiding

(05)Principles

Leave less than footprints.

Five rules we wrote in 2011 and have not had to change. Each one costs us something. That’s how we know they’re real.

  1. 01

    Eight, never nine.

    8 + 2guests + guides

    Eight guests, two guides, always. Eight fits in two tents, on one rope and around one stove. Beyond that a group stops being a team and turns into an audience.

  2. 02

    Carry out every gram.

    3.1 kgper guest, 16 days

    Everything we bring in leaves with us — including human waste on the ice fields. Last season it came to 3.1 kg per person, weighed on a luggage scale in Tromsø.

  3. 03

    Pay the people who know the ground.

    41%of each fare stays local

    Local guides, porters, cooks and skippers are paid IFMGA-equivalent day rates, in full, before departure. Forty-one per cent of every fare stays in the region we travel through.

  4. 04

    Turn around on time.

    13:00typical turnaround

    Turnaround times are agreed the night before and nobody renegotiates them at altitude — not you, not us. In 2025 we turned back on nine summit days. We would do it again.

  5. 05

    Count the carbon, then cut it.

    1.9 tCO₂e per guest

    Flights are most of it. We route by rail and sea where we can, run camps on solar and white gas, and fund peatland restoration in Troms for what’s left.

(06)Field notes

Written in pencil, at −19 °C.

Guides keep a notebook on every trip. Once a season we type a few pages up, spelling mistakes and weather included.

19 April 2026

Lomonosovfonna, Svalbard

78°44′N 17°20′E

Day 9 of 14

The night the sun forgot to set

At 02:10 the thermometer on the tent zip read −19 °C and the snow outside was the colour of apricots. Nobody was asleep. Aud, who is sixty-seven and on her first expedition, had her boots on and was pointing at a line of fox tracks going straight up the glacier, 1,100 metres above the nearest rock.

We had skied 17.4 km that day, the longest of the trip, and the plan was sixteen more tomorrow. I pushed the start back two hours and nobody complained. On the plateau the light doesn’t change so much as thicken: blue at midnight, gold at two, white by six. We let it.

Fox tracks at that altitude mean one thing — it was following the bear’s route, hoping for leftovers. We doubled the watch and saw neither.

— Ingrid Solvang, lead guide

  1. The forecast gave us a twelve-hour window. We got four. The shovels were out before the first gust, and by dark there was a cave for eight with a shelf for the stove and a vent the size of a fist. We played a card game whose rules nobody fully agreed on, ate the reserve chocolate, and walked out on day three into the stillest morning of the season.

    — Tomás Arriagada

  2. From the tent door at Concordia you can see K2, Broad Peak and both Gasherbrums if you are up by five and the cloud sits low. I woke everyone at 04:50 with tea. Jonas, a structural engineer from Graz, stood there for twenty minutes without saying a word, which his wife says is a personal record.

    — Nadira Baig

  3. The bergs calving from Helheim drift down Sermilik in convoys. Some are the size of churches and ring like them when they crack. We kept 200 metres off the big ones — they roll without warning — and cut the engine so everyone could hear them. Thirty-one nautical miles that day, and it felt like none.

    — Malik Petersen

  4. Every guest gets the same kit list and the same limit: 23 kg in the pulk or duffel, not counting group gear. We laid ours out on the workshop floor to prove it can be done. The heaviest single item is the sleeping bag, at 2.1 kg. The most argued-about is the second pair of socks. Bring it.

    — Ingrid Solvang

(07)Departures 2027

Eleven departures. Eighty-eight places.

Prices include guiding, food, group kit, permits, and every night from the first airport to the last. Flights are yours; we’ll help you route them by rail where we can.

Showing 11 of 11 · 43 places open

Meridian Expeditions departures in 2027
DatesExpeditionDaysPricePlacesAction
09 – 24 Jan2027 · Sat to Sun Patagonian Ice FieldLed by Tomás Arriagada 16€11,400 2 left
13 – 28 Feb2027 · Sat to Sun Patagonian Ice FieldLed by Tomás Arriagada · 6 of 8 places open 16€11,400 Open
04 – 17 Apr2027 · Sun to Sat Svalbard Ski TraverseLed by Ingrid Solvang 14€9,800 Waitlist
20 Apr – 03 May2027 · Tue to Mon Svalbard Ski TraverseLed by Ingrid Solvang 14€9,800 2 left
06 – 19 May2027 · Thu to Wed Svalbard Ski TraverseLed by Ingrid Solvang · 5 of 8 places open 14€9,800 Open
24 May – 07 Jun2027 · Mon to Mon East Greenland, Sail & SkiLed by Malik Petersen · 4 of 8 places open 15€12,600 Open
14 – 28 Jun2027 · Mon to Mon East Greenland, Sail & SkiLed by Malik Petersen 15€12,600 1 left
03 – 23 Jul2027 · Sat to Fri Karakoram High RouteLed by Nadira Baig 21€8,900 Waitlist
07 – 27 Aug2027 · Sat to Fri Karakoram High RouteLed by Nadira Baig · 7 of 8 places open 21€8,900 Open
20 Nov – 05 Dec2027 · Sat to Sun Patagonian Ice FieldLed by Tomás Arriagada · 8 of 8 places open 16€11,400 Open
11 – 26 Dec2027 · Sat to Sun Patagonian Ice FieldLed by Tomás Arriagada · 8 of 8 places open 16€11,400 Open

Nothing open on that route this year — join the waitlist and you’ll hear first.

A 20% deposit holds a place; the balance is due 90 days out.Prices per guest in EUR, shared tents, single supplement on request.

From a guest

Ingrid turned us round four hundred metres below the col on day six. I was furious for about an hour. The next morning the col was under a cornice the size of a house, and I have never questioned a Meridian guide since.

Hanne VikArchitect, Bergen · Svalbard 2023, Karakoram 2024, Greenland 2025

Day6 of 14
Position78°41′N 17°02′E
Turned at13:00 · 812 m

(08)Enquire

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Write as much or as little as you like. A lead guide reads every enquiry and replies personally — usually with questions about your knees, your sleeping bag and your longest day out.

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