Author: tom

When I wake, the sun is just peeking over the hills, and through the window into my room. I have a little time before breakfast, so go to the drying room to repack my tent and gather my things. Breakfast is cereal, toast with cheese, eggs and cold meats, with fruit, juice and coffee. We also have the chance to prepare a matpakke – a packed lunch of open sandwiches wrapped with paper. I’d been looking forward to trying brunost (literally, “brown cheese”), so I seize this opportunity and load up my matpakke.pantryWhen I wake, the sun is just peeking over the hills, and through the window into my room. I have a little time before breakfast, so go to the drying room to repack my tent and gather my things. Breakfast is cereal, toast with cheese, eggs and cold meats, with fruit, juice and coffee. We also have the chance to prepare a matpakke – a packed lunch of open sandwiches wrapped with paper. I’d been looking forward to trying brunost (literally, “brown cheese”), so I seize this opportunity and load up my matpakke.

The route to Hadlaskard isn’t too far and doesn’t look particularly strenuous, so I take my time in leaving. The cabin’s hot water is now on, so I have a quick shower and read in the lounge a little longer. There’s no phone signal at the cabin, but the staff have some kind of (satellite?) connection; they print of the next few days’ weather forecasts so we can know what to expect. Today looks good, and tomorrow looks OK, but then the next two days are constant rain and wind.

By the time I leave, it is around 10:00 and the temperature outside is no longer maybe-freezing. The path takes me up the hillside behind the cabin, before looping around the side of one of Hardangervidda’s many dome-shaped peaks (I’m not sure these count as nunataks, but it’s easy to imagine glaciers flowing around and over them). To my left, the horizon is punctuated by Hårteigen – a particularly tall and particularly square-profiled mountain at the focus of the arc which is today’s route.

The paths I’m using are marked with frequent cairns spray-painted with a red ‘T’. There are plenty of places where the path seemingly vanishes, and you’re left to make your own way to the next cairn, a couple of hundred metres away. It’s in one of these gaps that I’m crossing a patch of level, apparently solid ground, when my entire right lower leg vanishes into a pool of mud and moss. I imagine Cairn Guy having laughing at my expense, which makes me feel a bit better. I’ve also now learned two things that will be useful for the next two days: trekking poles are good for sounding the terrain, and flat ‘ground’ is flat for a reason.

Now I’m up on the plateau of Hardangervidda, the evidence of the place’s glacial history is everywhere: every horizon is punctuated by glacier-dropped boulders, and the the ground is occasionally replaced with a smooth pavement of ice-scoured rock.

The weather in the morning is generally pretty pleasant, and the gaps in the clouds keep the temperature comfortable. I pause for a break near a small lake. Sheltered from the wind, this small valley is totally silent-
That is until a plane flies over, heading North. While I couldn’t have known this at the time, I realised that the people in that plane, 6 or 7 kilometres up, were probably the closest other people to me right now, which feels a bit weird. I’m glad to have the GPS tracker (even if the batteries are still playing up).

The plane is soon followed by a band of less-friendly-looking clouds, which begin catch up to me as I’m traversing the ravine at the highest point of today’s route. I put on my raincoat in preparation, but as I start to descend into the shallow river valley, I’m surprised to find myself in a light snow shower.

It’s too warm for the snow to settle, and the snow’s too light to pose any nuisance, so its only effect is to make the scene completely delightful to walk through. After only a few minutes, the sun breaks through from the South, producing a rainbow further down the valley and making the falling snow sparkle.

I kind of wish I’d taken a photo of this, but a) it wouldn’t look anywhere near as good on camera, b) my phone’s touchscreen really doesn’t like moisture, and c) I was happy just to watch and enjoy the view.

Eventually, the shower moves off to the North, and I am left to complete the route down the river valley towards Hadlaskard, which has now appeared in the distance. The walk down is uneventful, having learned my lesson about boggy patches earlier. Eventually, I reach the bridge over the river, which is interesting in itself, consisting of a ladder up, then a series of wooden pallets slung beneath cables/handrails, a ladder down, then a plank across to dry, even ground.

This puts me right next to the cabin, outside which I sit and eat my lunch in the sun; brunost turns out to be worth walking 20 kilometres for.

After finishing my lunch, I venture inside. Dropping off my bag, poles and coat in the porch, I enter the cabin proper, and find myself in a beautifully warm room, whose walls are lined with shelves of food. At this point, I accept that I’ve simply brought too much food with me – enough for 8-9 days, when you could comfortably get by with two. Ah well – the store does lack tortillas and peanut butter so I’m not sure it even counts as a pantry.

In the main lounge room, I meet the cabin’s other guests – a Norwegian couple, who had stayed the night before and kept the wood stove running today. As it’s my first stay in an unstaffed cabin, it’s nice to have people around to show me how everything works, and it definitely helps that they (like everyone else I’ve met on this trip) are friendly and – of course – speak perfect English.

The first order of business is making myself a cup of tea, then laying out my damp gear on the rack above the stove. I spend the next hour or so looking at the maps and attempting to read the books in the lounge. Before long, it’s time for a dinner of instant noodles – prepared in the cabin’s surprisingly well-appointed kitchen, with views out to the river and Hårteigen in the distance.

As the sun sets, we light the candles, and I enjoy the irony of reading an ebook by candlelight for a while before heading to bed. Tomorrow I’ll have to decide how I’m going to split up my remaining three days of walking among the next four days to best avoid the forecast rain. That’s probably a decision best left until the evening, when I’ll return to the land of phone signal and WiFi.

My first real night in this tent is… eventful. The breeze that appeared while I was pitching the tent continued to strengthen and eventually brought along some rain. At some point in the night I’m woken by what I can only assume is the sound of a distant rockfall. Poking my head outside the tent, I’m surprised that I can see anything, and can make out the shapes of clouds ominously swirling above the mountains (where the light is coming from, I have no idea). The sight is a bit unsettling, but luckily doesn’t prevent me getting back to sleep.

When the morning comes, it is bright – the night’s dark masses replaced by white puffy cumulus. I have a quick breakfast of instant porridge, and get going. Today’s destination is Litlos – a staffed cabin, where I’ll get a bed and a hot meal. Even after only one night of camping, I’m looking forward to spending a night in a room that doesn’t move in the wind. As I pass the cabin at Middalsbu, I see lights stirring behind the windows; evidently sleeping in a tent is good for motivating early starts.

My route initially takes my round a shoulder of the mountain at the head of Valldalsvatnet. I glimpse the radio tower back at Risldal, and send a quick message home. My GPS tracker claims its batteries last over a week, but is already complaining that it’s low on charge. I hope it’s just cold, but turn it off, just in case.

As I ascend, I enter some light cloud, which doesn’t do much more than obscure the view. I also start to encounter Hardangervidda’s locals, who are very polite about sharing the path (and you can always tell when they’re nearby from the bells around their necks).

The path takes me up a shallow U-shaped valley, at whose far end, I see someone coming down towards me, but well off the trail. After a few minutes, I notice their three colleagues spread across the width of the valley, along with their sheepdogs – this must explain why I’ve seen so many sheep this morning. I try to avoid countershepherding as I pass them to reach the top of the valley, which is marked by another impressive waterfall.

For the next couple of hours, the trail follows the Northern edge of a series of lakes. The terrain varies from flat gravel beds, to gently swelling meadows, to fairly steep lakeshore, and finally scrambling around 45-degree piles of rock and talus at the water’s edge. Luckily these sections are fairly short, and I’m back on (relatively) flat ground before long.

One thing that there are quite a lot of in Hardangervidda is streams – streams that you have to cross. Most could be jumped over, but there are usually helpful stepping stones if you want to take the boring route. The wider ones sometimes take a bit of thought, as they have multiple apparent routes networking between islands of shallow gravel beds. On one of these wider crossings, I misplace my trust in a rock that looks like it won’t roll over, and receive a pair of quite wet legs in return. A change of socks doesn’t really do much for soaked shoes, so my movement for the rest of the afternoon is a bit squelchier than the morning.

Luckily for some streams and rivers, somebody has done the hard work for you and installed a wobbly bridge. This keeps crossings interesting while substantially lowering the odds of getting wet (and increasing the penalty for doing so).

Coming down from the lakes, I catch my first glimpse of Litlos and, spurred on by the thought of drying out my shoes, make good time toward it. I’m still over half an hour away when I catch the scent of diesel – apparently the air is so clean up here that the exhaust from the generator there can be smelled over a kilometre away.

Before long, I’m standing in a lovely warm reception, being told where my room is and when dinner will be served. It’s only about 16:00, so in the few hours before dinner, I read in the lounge, gaze out the windows, and make an amazing discovery: the tørkerom (drying room).

By the time dinner comes around, there are five guests at the cabin: a Norwegian couple who had come up from Hellevassbu, and a Norwegian couple who followed me from Middalsbu. The Norwegians tell us that they are hiking the length of the country in sections, and that the section they’re on now is over 40 miles long. This prompts a brief puzzled look between the Germans and myself; 40 miles is a decent distance, but won’t get you anywhere from here. The Norwegians then elaborate that in Norway (and Sweden, I think), a mil means ten kilometres; I find this a bit strange, but also kind of unsurprising.

Dinner is mushroom soup, followed by roast pork with potatoes and vegetables, with a strawberry mousse and coffee to finish – all in generous portions. Warm and well-fed, I head to my only-slightly-too-short bed.

The bus from Bergen is busy – I’m lucky to have turned up early, as there are a few people who don’t get seats. One of the things I find amazing about Bergen is the way that the road will vanish into a tunnel, and reappear seemingly outside the city entirely. As the bus crosses from fjord to fjord, we pass some spectacular waterfalls; the driver announces that they are at a particularly high flow rate, and I wonder whether the rivers farther East will be the same. Eventually, we arrive in Odda, and the coach gets a lot less busy as about half the passengers alight outside the Trolltunga Hotel (presumably planning to hike up to the famous outcrop in the morning).

After decapitating another mountain pass via a tunnel, we arrive in Røldal, a community of a hundred or so houses, at the head of a lake. On the three other sides, the town is hemmed in by the mountains, with the steep Southern edge of Hardangervidda rearing up just beyond the road.

Fortunately, a river (presumably with the help of a lot of ice) has cut a valley into the escarpment which offers an easier way up. Eventually, the sound of the road fades, and the soundtrack for the rest of the week begins: the white noise of wind and waterfalls. This initial section is reasonably steep, so I take multiple opportunities to stop and look back down the valley.

As I climb, the forest of stunted birch trees thins, to be succeeded by the grassy moorland of the plateau. It’s around this time that I realise that the squares on my map are 2km to a side instead of 1km. Luckily the route lengths are marked in hours, so this really means that the walking speed was faster than I’d expected from trying to (incorrectly) measure the distances myself.

After about two hours, the land levels off, and I get my first view into Hardangervidda proper. Having tried not to look at photos in advance, I’m surprised at how uneven it is. ‘Vidde’ means plateau, so I was imagining something substantially flatter. Even so, it looks far from unmanageable, so after a quick lunch of leftover takeaway pizza, I continue onward.

A gentle descent brings me down to the level of Valldalsvatnet, along whose shore I’ll continue for the next couple of hours. The path has been replaced by a gravel road, which makes for faster, if less interesting walking. At its head, the lake is few by an impressive waterfall, where I run into the first people I’ve seen since shortly after Røldal. There are a few cabins, and a small farm at which sheep are being herded onto a livestock lorry.

Eventually, the trail peels away from the edge of the lake, and begins to climb again. The sun is well behind the mountains now, and I’m beginning to look for a place to camp. Given the slope, I don’t find anywhere suitably flat until just short of the cabin at Middalsbu. The ground seems to consist of a thick bed of moss, in which my footprints become short-lived puddles before rebounding, but it holds my tent’s stakes well and is very comfortable to lie on.

Despite the now rising wind (and it being my first pitch of this tent outside by garden), the tent goes up quickly and easily. After a quick dinner consisting of the last of the pizza, and a little cheese, chocolate and dried apricots, I call it a night at about 21:00.