24-Mar-2002 -- Sunday March 24th was a special day for us. The trip to Iceland was a birthday gift from my girlfriend and we did think about getting engaged while we were there.

On this Sunday we finally found the right spot and at about 12 noon I proposed - this was the highlight of the trip!

Afterwards we visited some waterfalls and glaciers and on the way back to Reykjavik we figured that we still had some time to check out 64/21, the 'secondary' confluence that no one had visited yet.

We looked at the map and it seemed that we could practically drive to this point. So shortly after we crossed the river at Selfoss we left road 1 and followed road 350. And we got really close to the confluence point. At the base of a mountain next to a small farm house we parked our car (see south view).

We walked up the mountain in very heavy rain and realized that you have to hike quite a bit, to get from 20.59.000 to 21.00.000. The mountain is very steep (base elevation 62 m) at this area and it is hard to estimate the distance between two latitude coordinates - especially when you are new to confluence hunting.

After hiking up for a while we decided to take it easy - the first day of being engaged we didn't really want to risk our lives for a degree confluence. The steepness and some snowy patches that made the ascent even more difficult caused us to change our plans and we decided that we just want an attempt ... and we also thought we need to be closer than 500" for an attempt ...

It looked like the degree confluence itself is in an almost vertical cliff and when we reached 20:59:51.2, elevation 180m, we decided that it was close enough for us. So we took our pictures and started the descent. The rain didn't stop and when we got to the car, it was time to get out of our wet clothes.

Well ... if we would have know that we were only 120 m away, and only 20 meters off from a succesful trip (the 100 meter rule) ... we would have done some more climbing and would probably have reached it ... but now we know better and the next time will be OK.

We had a great dinner in Reykjavik in the evening, really enjoyed the trip and had an unforgetable time in Iceland - and we are engaged now!