Our trip today
I was excited yesterday and put my alarm at 07:00, however completely unexpectedly, I woke up at 06:30 already and could no longer sleep, despite the bed being reasonably comfy. I beckoned Paul who was (obvioulsy) already awake, and he booted up his morning ritual program. At 07:15 we were downstairs making breakfast, boiled eggs (to perfection, if I might say!), the usual bread, salami, smoked salmon, and to mix it up a little Italienisk Salat rather than my usual Sommarsalat.
Gjendesheim to Memurubu
We were in the car at 07:45 and despite a tiny obstruction along the way in Beitostølen where the local goat herd was having their yearly general assembly on the road, we managed to drive up to the Gjendesheim parkinglot by 08:30, which was great. We put on our hiking boots and at 08:38 we were off to the races - our trip today starts at Gjendesheim parkinglot, about 1.5km walk to Gjendesheim, where parking is only allowed up until 2hrs. We’re going to be up here all day, of course, so we go the extra proveribal mile.
Our first task is hiking up the mountain to the summit of Veslfjellet at 1743m / 5718ft which is a hike of about 5.5km, and it takes us 2h20m to get to this point. What I found helpful is that some of the steeper climbs have man-made staircases where the folks who maintain this trail put flat rocks one after another so you can just walk up. We both appreciate these, as they are less bumpy and easier on the knees. At the top, there is a huge cairn. I march past it, because I can’t wait to see the Besseggen part of the trail, but Paul insists that we make photogenic proof of being here. We take the required selfies and we measure the elevation here using Paul’s phone. It measures us at 1751m while the summit is 1743m high, pretty accurate for a cellphone!
From there, the trail mosies up and down until it hits the Besseggen ridge after another 1.8km or so. Although it’s cloudy and overcast, we keep on chasing the clouds away. Every time we’re at a local tippy-toppie, we see fluffs of cloud overhead. But then, every time we get to that next part, the clouds once again are a bit higher. In the end, we manage to avoid all of it, and the Sun even comes up to tickle us a little bit, which is nice.
The path here is gorgeous though, every now and again we’re treated to a view of the lake below, in all of its blue and aquamarine hues and tints. The Sun wants to / tries to break through to give the lake that little extra sparkle. We’re just very grateful that there is no rain and limnited wind (because climbing down slippery rocks in a storm != fun). In fact, the wind that is blowing up here helps us cool off, because we’re both sweating like pigs.
Besseggen
We reach the top of Besseggen after about 2h45m of hiking, and here is where the magic starts. From this angle, we can see down on two lakes and one very thin ridge. The lefthand side lake is called Gjende and it’s at around 984m / 3227ft altitude. It’s very blue water on account of the minerals that the mountainous smeltwater brings. Then, on the right is lake Bessvatnet at an altitude of around 1373m / 4505ft. Lake Bessvatnet lays on a slab of basalt rock, inherently dark which makes the (otherwise very clear) water appear black. Dividing the two lakes, there’s a very narrow (at times only 5-8 meters wide) ridge called Besseggen and comes down from where we are here at 1650m / 5400ft all the way to the black lake below, and it does that descent in about 600m of, let’s say, hikeing/bouldering. We make it down there at the 2h51m mark, and this is 8.77km from where we started.
Besseggen is not an easy path. On the way down we come across several groups, amongst others some quite terrified kids who are hiking the trail the other way around (from Memurubu to Gjendesheim). Their teacher / climbing guide explains that for most folks who are afraid of heights, going up is easier because you can focus on the trail ahead of you. However, even though I also have vertigo, I pretty much always will walk this trail in our current direction to Memurubu because the views makes up for the suffered anxiety.
We have lunch, some Wasa crackers with Jarlsberg cheese, at the lake. I convince Paul not to go skinny dipping in Bessvatnet, because we still have a long way to go. In my memory, from here it’s all simple down-hill. But as we find, this is not actually the case (and Marina; I apologize because you’ve literally told me a hundred times that it’s not downhill here at all!). The weather is still overcast, with some whiter and darker grey clouds above us. Looking up at them, it’s reasonably clear to us that we’ll not need our Peak Performance waterproof hiking jackets today. Good for me, I was stubborn and left mine at home.
After lunch, we make our way to Memurubu but only after passing a few more ups- and -down hills on the trail. Most of them have a lake associated with them, but nothing can hold a candle to the view (and feeling of accomplishment) on the main attraction of the trail: Besseggen itself. Paul kind of stays ahead of me, and does not stop often. He later informs me that my promise of the trail being downhill and easy going was not a true representation of the factual situation on this last part of the trail (which, in a span of maybe 2km drops 600m of elevation). I suspect he didn’t enjoy it :-)
But, we make it to Memurubu and find our way to the docks. Maybe a boatride isn’t too bad after all. However, we arrive to Memurubu at 2pm or so, 5h36m and 17.2km into our hike. The boat will leave at 16:55 (as we noted yesterday) but there’s only one afternoon boat, somehow we thought they would be every hour or so, but alas. We do the math while eating chocolate chip cookies on the dock: it’s about 10km back via the trail on the lakefront, which should not take more than 3.5-4hrs to do. We figure, we’ll be half way back once the boat arrives to pick us up, and we (at least: I) don’t really feel like sitting around for two hours.
So: off we go, on foot back to Gjendesheim. We put our cruise control to 3km/h and start clocking 19-21 minute kilometers, and at this pace it shouldn’t be long before we reach it.
Here’s where things start to go less than perfect. We eat some salty beef jerky (which is delicious, we both agree, and totally hits the spot on this hiking trail), but it makes us thirsty and we both finish our water bottles. We should’ve topped off at Memurubu but we did not do this, so now we’re hiking (or in my case, perhaps it’s more like stumbling forwards), and we’re optimistically counting meters not kilometers; using our GPS we see it’s 5.5km left to go, then 5km left to go, then 3 miles (4.8km) and so on. I am broken at this point, about 24km into the hike, we try to keep our cruise-control setting of 20min per kilometer, and achieve it, but only at somewhat gnarly physical expense. My legs are burning and surly with me, my knees are killing me. Paul’s legs and knees are no better off, we’re just not super used to hiking this far (9.5hrs and 28.6km when this is all done).
Although the terrain is objectively easy going, certainly compared to Besseggen up there, I think the worst part is that the trail takes us up 100m just to round a boulder and take us down 100m again. Paul asks me to complain to Slartibartfast, I send him a text message and he replies pretty quickly that he is in charge of Fjords, not inland trails, and to take our beef to Loki. Ah, that wretched Loki, who puts in extra 500m of trail here with up-100m-down-100m just to mess with us. Well, Loki, I hope you’re having fun today, because I decidedly am no longer enjoying it!
We arrive at Gjendesheim after what seems like an eternity, although it’s only 18:45. One spot of good luck we have is that the last shuttle from here to the parkinglot leaves at 19:00 so we take a load off and sit down on the benches at the bus, eagerly awaiting for it to shuttle us to Tessa. This allows us to avoid 1.5km of extra walk to pick up the car (which, normally I would not really mind, but right now, everything is incredibly sore, so fuck-it). We arrive at the car to be treated by … a parking ticket! This morning I noticed that the parkinglot had a bunch of yellow plastic bags over the parking meters – but we now see that this was only on the far end of the parkinglot, not the near side. Oh well, we’ll figure that one out tomorrow.
Paul makes us dinner - a delicious chicken-tonight with parboiled rice and red onion. It really hits the spot, and so does the shower. Just after dinner, he fires up the Sauna. We were in there yesterday with Irving, our AirBnB host. On the way back from Gjendesheim we made a quick stop in Beitostølen to pick up some beers. He offered me a few yesterday and I want to repay the favor. This AirBnB is super, the hosts Tonje and Irving are really nice, and we get to use their kitchen and living room and Sauna: eleven stars on Yelp.
What’s next ?
Tomorrow morning we check out of this AirBnB, and drive to Lillehammer. We’ll visit a few museums there, spend the night, and make the small trip to Oslo the day after, in time for our boat on Sunday September 11th at 14:00.
Pictures of the Day
NOTE: There’s a few more pictures than usual for today, but we wanted to share all of them because making them came at great physical expense :) The Besseggen trail and in general this area of Jotunheimen in Norway is absolutely the best, possibly my favorite place in the world to go hiking, and to be humbled by the vast beauty of Mother nature.
