Norway: Third Backpacking Day

Day three could be described by numbers.

We hiked close to 20 miles for 14 hours.

We climbed over 600 vertical feet.

We followed the sky ladder for 200 meters

We ate 1 piece of bread for lunch.

We saw 0 lemmings.

There were 99 bottles of beer on the wall.

Day three could be described in numbers, but that wouldn’t tell nearly the whole story. No, it wouldn’t even begin to describe the awe I felt at the summit, the sweat that was dripping down my face 100 meters into the sky ladder, the hunger I felt at hour 13, the frustration I felt at mile 14. Numbers cannot even begin to capture the beauty I experienced at the edge of Trolltunga, the sense of accomplishment that filled me as I got into my sleeping bag at 3 in the morning, or the wonder that flowed through me as I looked down into the Bearded Valley.

That’s right, I was in Bearded Valley (Skjeggedal for those of you who understand Norwegian). That is where the story begins.

We wake up and start the 4 mile hike to the base of our ascent. This was probably the easiest 4 miles of the entire trip. It was actually a flat path! In Norway? No way! Way. So 4 miles in we drop off some of the weight from our packs. We had to decide between ascending with full packs and camping at the top, or getting rid of weight at the bottom and coming back down to sleep. Thankfully we dropped off most of our weight at the bottom. Climbing so much with full packs would have been extremely exhausting.

Then some of the fun part comes. We have to hike up along the dry river bed to reach the base of the Sky Ladder. This sounds easier than it turned out to be. First, there were no marked paths, so we were kind of just hopping from boulder to boulder, approximating our path by just heading toward where we thought our goal point was. Second, after the dry river bed there were the extremely high grade slopes that were covered in snow. While some of the girls thought the climb was scary, I was not looking forward to our climb down those slopes. That climb down could very easily turn into a short tumble down. By short, I mean many, many meters long tumble down the side of a mountain.

No paths and steep slopes aside, we made it to the base of where the actual climb began. Trygve gave us a short lesson on how to use the carabineers and harnesses to secure ourselves to the ladder and we were off. Let me tell you, this was one of the greatest experiences I have had in my life. I was climbing up a ladder bolted into a sheer cliff face hundreds of meters above the base of the mountain. The largest cave I have ever seen, easily over a hundred meters tall (probably inhabited by trolls), waterfalls pouring over the cliffs, and the fjord down below were easily the most beautiful natural views I will probably experience in Europe while harnessed into something… okay, or ever.

After a good hour or so of straight up I climbed over the last leg of the Sky Ladder and was greeted with triumphant and relieved faces, and of course, a view. But this isn’t where we were going to stop. Although the views from here were absolutely breathtaking, Trygve had another place in mind to blow us all away, so we started trekking off into the snow blanketed landscape.

A few kilometers later and I realized that we had reached our goal: Trolltunga (or Troll’s Toungue). Interesting name right? Well, if you imagined the mountain was a troll, you would think that it would have a pretty big tongue. Now, if the mountain/troll stuck out his tongue, it would be a giant stone jutting out over the fjord. That is exactly what this was. Imagine a Norwegian version of Pride Rock from The Lion King but taller and without the supporting rock. Well, I got to stand on the end of that. It was incredible. Absolutely incredible. Check out the pictures if you don’t believe me.

Again, we had a little photo shoot, some lunch of just one slice of bread and some bacon cheese and headed off back down the mountain. Again, we had to make a decision. Do we go back down the way we came or the longer route which is milder in its descent? It was getting late and we didn’t want to navigate the boulder hopping in the dark (nor did I want to deal with sliding off a cliff due to the steep snow covered slopes) so we headed down the longer way.

I cannot say with certitude if it was the best choice. At least an hour after we started our descent, we were still higher than when we had started. I realize Norway doesn’t really understand downhill, but this was getting ridiculous.

Several hours later (and admittedly, many more breathtaking views of glaciers in the distance or fjords down below) we started to make some progress downward. It was almost dark when we reached the steep downhill similar to that of Langfoss from before. To deal with our frustration of ours of hiking and seemingly no progress, we started to sing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” and, incredibly, finished it just after reaching the road we were camping on.

We drove into Odda for some food to celebrate what we had just accomplished, but still had the 4 mile trek that we did in the morning to get back to our site. Trygve and Cecilie, the champs that they are, ran ahead again to set up camp so we could get to sleep as early as possible.

It was after 3 a.m. when we finally made it to camp, tents already set up and pads inflated. It felt so good to go to sleep after a day like that. I slept like a rock, not even a troll could have woken me.