Just another way of fishing...
Very nice week, we fished and ate fish a lot, we tied knots, rowed with rowing boats, sea kayaked, snorkeled and survived in the island.
The moment when I will find out if I will have to pay pay my scholarship back had come… 🙂 I was feeling confident enough about what I’ve learned so far here during this course, but I wasn’t confident in my English skills… I struggled speaking in my native language for more than five minutes and now we are required to speak on two specific topics for half an hour 😮
But it’s healthy to be worried about sometimes, because when this came to the past I felt slight relief. Looks like I could talk a bit more than five minutes, although my performance wasn’t great 😉
Life saving test wasn’t that bad either, I managed to “rescue” Miriam in 4 minutes and 40 seconds. It wasn’t a “best” time but I knew my limitation on this one – I’m not a good swimmer and didn’t had much swimming practice lately.
The time has come to use our knowledge in a veileading way – that is what we were trained for this semester. I was really happy with this very successful week although it was very very wet. Our efforts in a heavy rain paid off.
We organised 10 activities for Norwegian students… a lot of Norwegian students -each day we received more that 40 of them. Orienteering, canoeing, abseiling, fire making, stretcher making and a bunch of other group dynamics games – these were our prepared activities. Our task was to challenge teams of students and evaluate their performance and group dynamic processes.
In the evening we would return to our own gapahuks (simple construction wooden shelters). There we light fires and celebrate birthdays… there were 3 birthdays this week alone – Luke’s, Katja’s and Jochen’s.
This week was brilliant as we had a chance to meet so many new faces and put some friluftsliv and veileading skills into action.
Since I got a package from home containing home made products from Lithuania, I was keeping an idea to host a little party with Lithuanian cuisine. Turned out there was never a good time for that. Until NOW.
8 liters of cold beet root soup with 3 kilos of hot potatoes (traditional Lithuanian dish) just vanished. Everyone told that they loved it… I hope they weren’t just polite 😀
After spending four days being sick and unable to do a trip, a window of opportunity arose. On Friday morning I was finally feeling reasonably well. But I already thought that I’ve missed the chance to canoe somewhere in the local area. Luckily Jochen and Flurin still had canoes in Roligheden and I was invited to join.
That was a bit of a surprise, because I was only starting my lunch when I received a call from Jochen. Canoeing in 30 minutes… I’m in!
Jochen and me set sail from Bertesbukta (a beach near Roligheden) and soldered on to Topdalsfjord keeping a small distance from the shore we paddled around the coast line until we found the narrowest part of the fjord to cross. Our plan was to reach Ronsbukta which was on the other side of the fjord. The Fjord was quite calm, but we still had to be a bit careful, because canoes weren’t made for the sea.
As we reached Ronsbukta, we followed the stream and found our way into Drangsvatna lake. There we reunited with Flurin’s family. They drove here by car, because it’s a bit too far away canoeing with Flurin’s little daughter Jana.
The weather was threatening to pour heavy rain rain on us at first but it never happened. It turned out to a really pleasant day. Sunshine, nice view and good company.
We paddled all the way until the very end of this long narrow lake. On the way we took a break in one of the islands. It was Engeholmen – a perfect place for overnight trip. There we enjoyed sunshine for a bit, climbed some trees and etc.
At one point we even made a raft out of our canoes. That turned out to be a stable and quite fast mean of transportation.
For a trip back Jochen switched with Flurin. Quite fast Me and Flurin we reached the shores near Roligheden. Where dinner awaited us in Jochen’s place.
It was a small day trip, but it reminded me that being outside with good companions is the thing that really makes me happy.
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.
Bird watching… I think for me that was one of most anticipated activities this semester. I was a bit disappointed that we didn’t see any birds that we were supposed to.
Despite that, it was a cozy overnight with some useful knowledge provided by our guide Svein. Svein showed us around the area where we were staying. Telling us what we can eat and what we can’t. We tried out some tree buns (or gems) – taste like marzipan! Some of us even tried out tasting some ants – great source of proteins. Sorry ants… We were also advised not to pick mushrooms here as there is a big chance to confuse good ones with bad ones.
The weather was brilliant! We stayed up until stars showed up in the sky. Svein started wandering around the sky with his smart phone, which showed constellations around. It seemed a bit funny using these technologies in an environment such as this.
The only signs of birds we’ve noticed was noises when it was still dark. I am not sure if I heard some of those or it was just my imagination, because I was sleepy. I was a bit disappointed that my colleagues were a bit too loud late in the evening and that there was no signal in the morning to wake us up when the birds started making sounds. I think this should be done with a slightly smaller group.
In the morning we collected our gear and went back to parking place – then back to Uni.
Ah… this familiar place almost felt like home. I was nice to return to Berdalsbu after exactly one month. The mountains greeted us with nice weather the day we arrived and the next day. We saw a pack of rain deer minding their own business up in the mountains – what a beauty.
For the first night after searching for a potential area for digging a snow hole we squeezed ourselves into two cabins that were originally designed to accommodate around 16-18 people – we were 24. Next day we came back to the places that we thought were suitable for digging a hole. Snow conditions were terrible for skiing with a huge rucksack, it was hard and I couldn’t turn. It was agonizing to get down from the hill where the cabins were. But when we started digging all the mental and physical pain of falling again and again disappeared.
It took us a whole day to dig a snow hole. Luckily it was a beautiful sunny and warm day. It was pretty enjoyable to dig, to carve a home out of a massive pile of snow, although Flurin dug the most of it. My snow hole mates were Jochen, Flurin and Jais.
Next morning we woke up to find a completely different weather outside. It was windy (very). Deep in my heart I felt happy – I really wanted something where we could touch reality of mountains more closely (it’s nice to have a trip in a good weather, but a trip in a bad one is something to remember and to learn from).
We practiced mountain navigation as we ascended the mountains east of the valley where Berdalsbu was. As we gained altitude wind became stronger and stronger – goggles for and expedition in such weather was must. My regular sun glasses provided me with little protection against sharp snow flakes that were blown into my eyes.
We dug a shelter for lunch up in the mountains. It didn’t provide us sufficient wind and snow protection so after five minutes or so we were almost covered with snow. After a break we got down from the mountain to the cabin applying bad weather conditions navigation skills. We dried and warmed ourselves in the cabin. Discussed about the mistakes we’ve made in the mountains. After that we’ve returned to our snow holes for a second night in them.
Next morning the weather was more or less the same. We headed towards the road abandoning our beloved snow homes. On the way Len gave us a task to go in a straight line blindfolded – to demonstrate how you can loose the sense of direction in a whiteout conditions. Yup, I almost turned around, while thinking I was going straight.
Not far from the road we had a task to dig in in 20 minutes. The task was to imitate survival in very bad weather conditions. All of us passed this test. Only Will’s life would have been in question, because he spent to much time on finding a perfect spot 🙂
I was disappointed a bit when we headed home instead of staying another night in these snow holes. It was wise to go home because half of the group were cold and wet. And I got constipated… Not enough fluids and to much rice I guess – most important learning outcome.
This was a very successful trip, it was much more challenging than the previous trip in Hovden. We covered 80 kilometers in four days enjoying the beauty of this national park.
Everything went according to the plan, we reached every checkpoint in time, there was no lack of food or equipment nor good mood.
We changed our plans for the last day, we headed towards the road instead of going back to the cabin where we stayed the first night. We got a bit out of course when the track that was supposed to be marked disappeared half way through, so we had to use our compasses and some low quality digital map (pictures of a map). It didn’t helped much because we found ourselves in a light whiteout where we couldn’t see any features of the area anymore – we could only see each other.
