Thomas and a friend, Magnus, joined us the first night before returning to the parking lot where they drove one car to where our hike would end and they drove the other car home.
We started the hike where our hike ended three years ago, at Melands Grønahei. We stopped for our first break at the bridge crossing the river. We walked past the old buildings that I'm sure Cornell has several pictures of and we crossed "Patti Pass", the narrow ledge beside the waterfalls.
The cabin was empty when we arrived and we had a nice evening with good food (carried in by Thomas and Magnus)!
The next day, Thomas and Magnus took off for home as Thomas had to work on Monday. Aadne, Thorhild, Knut and I continued on to Grasdalen, another cabin that we visited with Pat and Cornell. It is a very small cabin and when we checked the visitor book, it turns out that we had been there three years ago to-the-very-day ! How fun.
On day three, we back tracked a bit and headed first north then east to the highest cabin on the trip called Eidavatn. There was still lots of snow in the mountains and although it made the going much faster at times, some of the passages were harrowing and steep as you can see from the picture above. We had three or four steep passages to cross. It was a long day and we were happy to arrive at Eidavatn.
The following day we headed down into the valley again. The steep downhill was, fortunately, not covered in snow so that made things a bit easier. But once at the bottom of the valley we had to wade across the river! We all had been thinking about the wading all day and when we finally arrived at the river bed, I was relived to see that it wasn't fast running water, but in stead a slowly running river meandering through the valley. But what makes a river slow running? - right- width! It was over 100 meters wide and well over our knees for most of it. There were two small sand islands in the middle which gave us a short break. So we stopped, stripped down to our underwear, took off our boots and put on our crocks and headed out with our packs hanging loose on our backs. It all sounds rather cosey and fun, wading through a beautiful river until you think about where all the water comes from - namely melt off. The water was only a few degrees above freezing and let me tell you -that's COLD. After just a few moments the feeling of cold went over to pain and it didn't stop until several minutes after we made it over to the other side.
But we made it and I will not forget it - ever :)
An hour or two after crossing the river we arrived at Nilsebu. Here's a picture of Nilsebu, beautifully located beside a lake. Here we met two sheep farmers. They came in the evening by boat to get their sheep across the river, away from the cabin. They asked for some help gathering the sheep and we gladly gave them a hand, playing shepherd for a while.
The hike from Nilsebu to Stakken looked rather tough at the start and we asked the farmers for advice as to where it was best to climb the mountain on the side of the lake. They didn't reccomend walking it at all as there was still too much snow there, so they just drove us across the lake in their boat.
So a day that we had been dreading, turned out to be a relaxing day, waiting for the farmers until one in the afternoon out in the sunny weather. Then a sweet boat ride across tha lake and a comfy three hour hike to Stakken!
Stakken was also empty, but we could see from the book that there were 12 people there the day before, so we were lucky once again. The walk from Stakken to Viglesdalen was beautiful. We had great weather and crossing some of the high platous was beautiful.
Patti and Cornell might remember the compass made out of stones at the highest point of the platou.
Once we got to Viglesdalen (the starting point of our trip three years ago) both cabins were empty so we took the smallest one to ourselves. By night fall the big cabin was filled so once again we were very lucky there.
Another great hike through the mountains of Norway ended after one week and what a great hike it was. Thanks to Thorhild and Aadne and Thomas and Magnus for a great time!
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