Activity:

The plan for this week was to take the canoes from Bygland down the river to one of the small islands half way to the dam, stay there for one night, paddle to the dam the next day and stay at TrollAktiv for the night. On the following day we would take bikes to a nearby climbing crag for a day of climbing and one last overnight before cycling back to Kristiansand the next day.

Day one

Activities:

We met up at Bygland about half an hour north of Evje to get our canoes onto the water. Line and Adam kindly gave us an introduction to canoeing techniques, so we learned about forward strokes, sweep strokes, sideways movement and j-strokes to help us get where we were trying to go. I didn’T have much prior experience in canoeing and I felt like Adam and Line did a good job explaining it to us.

As soon as we got on the water, we had to realise our week of is not going to be quite similar to the sunny vacation trip the first group had experienced. Temperatures had dropped drastically and the predicted rain for the first days turned out to be snow. The setting felt surreal but was absolutely captivating and beautiful to watch. Our first summer trip started off in the snow.

Apart from the fact that it was rather cold, there was not much wind and the sun peeked through the heavy snow clouds around noon. Sӕdis and I teamed up in one canoe and after some practice manoeuvring the canoe was no problem at all. The trip was led by a different canoe for each subsection of the trip. We managed to retain a consistent speed of 3-4 km/h and everybody managed to stay close to the coastline and not fall too far back most of the time. We had a quick snack break shortly after we had left Bygland and a lunch break in the sun on the beach of a small island.

Upon arrival on our overnight island Len gave us a small tour and pointed out possible spots for shelters and to consider the direction of the wind and the sunrise when choosing a spot. Chris an I found a perfect natural shelter right next to a small rock wall which could easily be covered with a couple of branches and weatherproofed with moss or a tarp.

Once that shelter was done, I met up with Adam, Sӕdis, Jill, Adrian, Jonas and convinced them to try and build a tepee on the edge of an opening in the middle of the island. Turns out you need a lot of tarps for a tepee with that many people but not everybody had brought a tarpaulin with them. Therefore we decided to make two smaller shelters.

When Len inspected our almost head-high build he offered to show us how to build a tent out of three tarps, some rope and branches. Thereby it is important to have the tarps overlap and fix the sides to the ground to get out of the weather. The open side of the tent should be in the lee of the wind for obvious reasons and the whole tent should go down towards the feet. When we had used our tarps for the tent, Chris and I also decided to stay in the new shelter.

Right when we finished it started to snow again and half of us decided to stay in the shelters and spend the rest of the day in our sleeping bags until it was eventually time to sleep.

Testing of equipment:

Canoes, paddles and life vests all served their purpose well. With a bit of practice and the right technique, moving around in a canoe is definitely not too difficult.

Waterproof neoprene gloves might have been a good idea because regular “waterproof” gloves do get wet and cold after a couple of splashes. Moreover warm winter boots are recommended for conditions like this. Your legs won’t get much movement in the kayak, so it’s not the worst idea to wrap them in plastic to stay warm.

Lessons:

Group Dynamics:

People repeatedly disobeying the instructions of the leading team to stick close to shore or slowing the rest of the group down due to ineffective teamwork were the only two things that disturbed the peaceful atmosphere of the day.

Day Two

Activities:

The following morning we broke camp right after breakfast and headed off towards the dam. Weather was nice at the beginning and end of the trip, with a bit of stronger wind from north-west around noon. We had a short snack break just before the Town Grendi and a lunch break just after the bridge at Byglandsfjord. Sadly the two guys fishing caught nothing but seaweed so we had to stick to our own provisions. At least the sun came out after lunch and we remembered it was Adam’s birthday that day so we sang and enjoyed the sun for a moment. When we arrived at the dam we dragged them onto the land and walked the last bit to TrollAktiv alongside the rapids that would be a grade 6 in kayaking due to the low water levels.

Motivation among the group was relatively low when we got to Troll and most people went to Evje to go grocery shopping. I ended up helping out with testing and fixing bikes and playing around in the bike park and on the pump track which was very good fun. In the late afternoon we met up to celebrate Adam’s birthday with cake and games. Afterwards Jonas and Julian and I went night climbing on the tower until we got tired and moved back to our cabins.

Testing of equipment: –

Lessons:

When playing around in white water with a kayak, make sure to walk the route before going in if the river or conditions are unknown to you or a difficult grade. Steep cliffs in the river can usually be identified by mist rising just behind the edge. Should you be unsure about that particular part, get to the shore and walk around to make sure you know where you’ll be going down. For training or just for fun it is a good idea to look for an “eddy” where opposing currents cancel each other out to paddle upstream and practice on an interesting bit of white water over and over.

Group Dynamics:

Len challenged our survival skills in a theoretical group survival situation. Our plane had crashed on a lake in the Canadian winter, 100 kilometres away from the last point the aircraft had contact with civilization. There was a number of items aboard the plane and everybody could only take one to maximize our chance of surviving and had to explain how the item would be helpful in our situation. Among the items were an empty lighter, a knife, a bottle of whiskey, a pair of spare clothes for everybody, a mirror, a gun with bullets and various other things that could be found on a regular business trip.. It was great fun and everybody got involved in the discussion.

Day Two

Activities:

After checking the depressing weather forecast for the last two days we unanimously decided to skip the “experience” of staying in our bivies for the greatest part of the day and cycle back in the rain the day after. Instead we cycled back to Kristiansand in one go, always following cycle route number 3, passing beautiful landscape and fantastic old logging slides that could be tackled with a kayak. We had lunch at a hydroelectric power station complete with the pipes that feed the water into the turbines and tunnels in the mountains to prevent overflow of the dams. Furthermore we came across a randomly stranded fish on the sidewalk nowhere near the water and the official redneck town of southern Norway, clearly marked by black skid marks on the road and pick-up trucks. All in all a long but easy beautiful tour, also suitable for unexperienced mountain bikers.

Lessons:

Friluftsliv associations such as Vest- or Midt-Agder Friluftsliv maintain gapahuks in the area that are accessible to everyone and equipped with lavatory, fire pits and canoes in some places.

Group Dynamics:

The group stayed together fairly well for the first half of the trip but the distance from front to back increased noticeably during the day. Efforts to get the group closer together by slowing down failed as the people in the back then slowed down as well. After all it was no big deal to have some people race ahead to the next waypoint and wait for the others.

Testing of equipment:

Most of the mountain bikes we had were okay, however mine decided to get rid of the left pedal not more than 10 kilometres from Kristiansand. If that would have happened on a real trail I could have been in serious trouble, but luckily nothing happened. We had already heard about the desolate condition of some of the bikes from the previous group, so I guess we were still lucky.