After a night in Bergen, we took the train up to Finse climbing from sea level to over 1200m in a three hour journey.
The weather on the plateau wasn’t fantastic at first, with low clouds covering the ice cap and a cold wind blowing, but it cleared up eventually to give us a nice day and even some suntan.
From Finse we took the route to the east of the Hardangerjøkulen Plateau, crossing the east end of Lake Finsevatnet to access the start of the marked route.
We spent the day traversing below the ice plateau. As was the case throughout the trip the tramping was easier than is the case in New Zealand, so it was possible to cover greater distances. Outside of the summer season however, the whole area is a vast snow field, (it was used as the setting for Hoth in the opening scenes of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back) and is used for cross country skiing.
Towards the end of the day we walked one of the most spectacular sections of the trip, across the low saddle of Helvetesgilet before sidleing around some iceberg covered lakes.
We then descended towards Lake Skåltjørna camping above it on a dry shoulder giving great views of the glaciers pouring off the edges of the ice plateau.
On the second day we continued the traverse, turning south around the ice plateau before eventually reaching the large manmade lake of Sysenvatnet. Here we watched shepherds, far below, herding their sheep out on to the summer pastures.
We had intended to reach Vøringfossen on the second day, but at around 5:00pm with several kilometres still to go we called it a day and camped above Lake Grytetjørnane, in another spectacular location by a small pond on the slopes of Fjelldalen. In the evening we made the short climb to the summit to look back over the ice plateau in the evening light. (in fact this far north at this time of year there is very little darkness, just a sort of twilight at around 2:00am)
The third day started with the descent to Vøringfossen passing numerous huts along the way.
We found ourselves at the Fossil Hotel for morning tea, which consisted of a fabulous salmon sandwich. We were quite out of place in the grand hall of this building dressed in our tramping clothes, complete with boots and gaiters. From the hotel we peered down from the top of one of the most spectacular waterfalls I have ever seen. All the tourists here didn’t detract from its beauty one bit. The falls are 187m in total with a small upper tier and a much longer lower tier.
This was the least interesting part of the trip, with open heather moorland reminiscent of the Eastern Cairngorms. It wasn’t helped by a sudden and dramatic change in the weather with a twenty minute hail storm forcing us to stop and seek shelter. The scenery and weather improved late in the day though, with a return to steeper river valleys and a mixture of open bush and scrub. We camped on a small terrace above Fljotdal (one of numerous small hill communities spread over the plateau) and avoided the worst of the mozzies that we had started encountering in the valleys.
By day four the good weather had moved away. We awoke to grey skies and the rain started around lunchtime and continued for most of the day. We passed the large hut of Hedlo (still closed for the season until next weekend) then crossed the Veig River on a bridge which had only been finished the previous day by the hut warden. (Bridges in this area are either summer bridges or all year bridges. On several occasions we had to ford because the summer bridge hadn’t been completed yet)
From the bridge we climbed then headed west across the plateau for the rest of the day. The scenery here – a mixture of wide open views and small lakes is pretty rather than spectacular. In the late afternoon we rounded the small peak of Valeggi and then descended to the ‘self service’ lodge of Stavali. We seriously considered staying here, - but the price and the distance to walk on the last day put us off. Instead we camped in the wet, an hour further on, on the shoulder of Randinuten in an exposed but well drained spot. Luckily there was no wind to go with the rain.
The last day saw the rain turning to drizzle and then being replaced by low cloud over the mountains. This was a pity as we only got glimpses of the Kinso River Valley, which is extremely steep. The path drops dramatically on rock shelves which had turned greasy in the wet. On the way down we passed numerous huge waterfalls all of which were in full flow after the rain.
The last hour of the tramp was through woodland to the town of Kinsarvik. We celebrated with a lunchtime beer before sadly having to say goodbye to Sascha and Daniella who took the ferry over the fjord to return to Bergen. We caught the bus to Geilo and the night train onwards on Oslo to complete our Norwegian adventure.
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