Yup, just like that...
This time less snow and cold, this time the sun and her warmth were smiling on us. We arrived to Byglandsfjord – huge lake formed by the river of Otra. Clear cold water is reaching over hundred meters of deep. The bottom of this lake in shallow areas is ornamented with thousands of tree branches witch formed into beautiful drawings of nature.
We got canoes into the water, put on our floating devices and were instructed on how to canoe. It soon turned out that even with my canoeing experience it was a challenge to control the canoe by paddling only on one side. Soon enough when everyone had a little of this practice we set off… to the south.
The challenge was to keep the constant speed so the group would stick together – that way in case of capsizing we could perform a rescue with minimum amount of time. Being in that kind of cold water even hurts… Trust me, me and Petr tried it out in the evening.
It wasn’t hard at all to navigate in this fjord. Sometimes it was harder to see where the islands were because from our horizontal point of view they blended with the shores. Other than that we had huge mountains with ridges around, bends and curves of the fjord were also a very obvious orientation points.
Mountain tops were still covered in snow and the lake surface reflected the beauty above. It was all like a beautiful dream taken out from Tolkiens books.
We stayed overnight in one of the islands in the middle of the fjord, there we’ve learned how to build an improvised shelter using the equipment we we had. In this case it was canoes. They turned out to be a very good shelter material combined with a tarp and few ropes.
We enjoyed the sun in the evening, me and Petr went swimming, then we returned to the camp, started a fire, ate supper and one by one we went to our newly made beds.
Next morning we reached the point where this lake turned into a river, we practiced some river canoeing. One canoe capsized. We made some mistakes that could have made the situation even worst by rescuing Daniel and Jais. Some of us jumped into canoes without life jackets and some of us (me, to be more precise) went to a canoe alone 🙂 .
In the evening we stayed at Troll Aktiv – the place where I am going to spend a lot of time this summer. Some of our guys tried out rafting. I took a part as a photographer from the shore, I was very pleased with the result, because I got some really nice pictures. The river seemed mad and my heart chilled by the thought that this might be my new job 😮 .
On the next day we set out on some nice looking mountain bikes. We scared the shit out of a couple of badgers and found ourselves at a nice crag where we climbed for the rest of the day, fortifying our skills. That night I was sleeping on the edge of a cliff, I tied my sleeping bag to a tree – just in case. It was one of the best night sleep I’ve ever had, braking my bones into the void didn’t concerned me.
The next day – the last day we made the last push towards home and 70km evaporated quickly. On the way there we experienced on of the most beautiful bike paths in the world leading us through tunnels along mountain river…
Learning outcomes:
We acquired and strengthened our practical and safety skills in mountains and fjords. By the end of the trip our group felt more close to each other.
