NPL Day 100

Day 100: Sunday 24 September 2023

Sandhaug-Klerkatjørn via Litlos

We had an early alarm today since we had plans to hike far, and today we wouldn't follow any roads. When we got up it was just us being awake, and we had breakfast in silence. Just as we were about to leave, some of the others started getting up. We said goodbye, then went out into the cold morning air. There was a thin layer of ice on the small pools of water on the ground, and the mountains in the distance were powdered with snow. It was slightly windy, so hard to stay warm, but we tried to keep up the pace a bit.

After about 5 km, close to Besso, there was supposed to be a bridge over the water, but it was lying to the side. We followed the water upstream a little bit, then found a place where we could cross. It was REALLY cold, and at the deepest place it reached up to Kim's knees.

After fording the river Kim had to put on s lot more clothes. She was cold now, and the sun wasn't warm enough to warm her up. As we continued, the trail was okay, but there was a lot of muddy parts. Here in Norway there usually aren't planks along the trail, but these populated trails get incredibly damaged by all who hike here, and the path in some places were several meters wide because everyone has tried to avoid the muddy and wet parts.

Later in the day the sun disappeared behind some gray clouds and it immediately became a lot colder. Both of us were really tired and low on energy, so in Litlos we stopped for dinner inside the self-service hut, and it was really nice to sit down. But we couldn't pause too long because we wanted to reach as far as possible today. Tomorrow we would have bad weather with rain and wind, and probably more than 30 km to go.

We got going from Litlos, now with rain gear on, and made good progress. After about 7 km we tried to find a tent spot. We didn't want to continue longer as we would then be even higher and up on a "plateau". It was going to be really windy throughout the entire night, so we wanted to find some kind of shelter from the wind. Behind some rocks we thought we found a good shelter, and started to pitch our tent. But suddenly the wind changed direction completely, so we decided to take down the tent and look for another tent spot. We felt a bit frustrated, and were worried that we wouldn't find any good spots. We walked about 500 m, then found a new spot under a cliff as the trail had started to wind its way upwards. Here we were also more protected if the wind changed direction. It wasn't as flat here but it was good enough. Lukas put the EVA pads on his side, under the tent, to try to help flatten it out a bit so we wouldn't wake up lying on top of each other, and also wouldn't puncture the mattresses on a stone.

Then we went to bed, sleeping with earplugs in so the wind wouldn't bother us too much.

Today's

Distance: 33.56 km

Start time: 08:09

End time: 19:30

Ascent: 877 m

Descent: 900 m

Tent: 58/101