From Monday 12th to Thursday 15th of March we did our second student organized field trip. Sarah, Laura, two friends from Germany and I went up north of Norway to Alta. There we stayed 35 kilometres south of Alta in an Airbnb cabin next to the lake Trangdalsvatn. The cabin was a “real Norwegian” one without electricity and water. It was really cosy in there and the owner were really friendly and helpful. We arrived close to the cabin on Monday late in the afternoon. From the parking we had to cross a lake on our skis to reach the cabin. We were loaded with backpacks on the back and the stomach which were heavier than our usual big backpacks. The area around the cabin was diverse with some flat parts, lakes and mainly a lot of mountains. On the flat parts there were a lot of forest terrain. The plan was to do several daytrips on our cross-country skis every day to get to know the area around the cabin.
On Tuesday we left the cabin in the morning to go on a daytrip with our cross-country skis. The first part of our trip was following a snowmobile track uphill. The second part leads us through unprepared, flat area with two lakes on top of the mountain. The last part of this day was going downhill through an unprepared area with quite a lot of trees. Especially the downhill part was quite challenging because the mountain was steep, and the snow was deep. Furthermore, you had to do turns as you wanted to avoid the trees. It was a good practicing for our going downhill skills on unprepared snow. All in all, we made around 12 kilometres this day.
On Wednesday we started again in the morning for our cross-country ski trip. This day we crossed the lake next to the cabin which has a length of seven kilometres. After that we followed on with a little loop next to the lake which was going a little uphill to a smaller lake and then downhill back to Trangdalsvatn. The loop was a prepared track and we didn`t have to do a lot of navigating. After the loop we started our way back to the cabin on the lake. As it was already late afternoon we wouldn`t have been able to make it back to the cabin on daylight but we were lucky and after crossing more than three-quarters of the lake the owner of the cabin passed us with his snowmobile and a sled and gave us a lift back to the cabin. This day we made around 20 kilometres in total. Especially for our friends from Germany this was a good day to exercise the basic cross-country skiing techniques because there were a lot of flat parts and quite easy up- and downhill. This gave us the possibility to show them different things.
On Thursday morning we started our last daytrip. We went up the mountain from the first day and followed on top of the mountain the length of the lake until we came to the starting point for the loop of the second day. This day we had to do a lot of navigation with compass and map. As we didn`t print out a map previously we only could use a map on the mobile which worked quite well. The entire day we went on unprepared snow through untouched nature. We hitchhiked our way back to the car as we had to be in Alta in the evening. Altogether we did around 15 kilometres this day. In summary this was definitive my favourite day out of these three diverse daytrips.
On all the three days we were lucky with the weather and had a blue sky with a lot of sun. In the evening we always relaxed in the little sauna next to the cabin and enjoyed watching the northern lights which were quite bright because of the cloudless sky.
For me this was an amazing trip to an incredible place. I loved the nature we have been to and I really enjoyed being somewhere without any civilisation around.