Day 50: Saturday 5 August 2023

South of Skukkenrøysa-Balskota via Grasfjellkoia, Gressvasshytta

When we woke up today, a little bit of sun was shining on the tent. We had a look outside - most of the fog was gone, at least from what we could see.

We got up and got ready to get going, and discussed what to do. In the end we decided not to take the "shortcut" that we had been adviced by another Norge på langs hiker (Morgan). The weather wasn't stable enough. It is better to take the trail than to go off trail when the sight is bad.

So we found our way back to the trail, and didn't hike for even a km before we met Daniel, our first Norge på langs-hiker for today. We talked to him for a little while, as usual about the trail up ahead and route choices.

We then continued, but didn't get far until we saw two other hikers. Must have been Stefan and Simone, that Hans was expecting back in Umbukta.

And it was.

We said hello, and started talking to them, and as we talked, ANOTHER hiker showed up 😂 So we took a new group photo with the third hiker, Nadia as well. Apparently they hadn't met her before but had followed her, and she told the story about how she lost her phone in Børgefjell 😱 Really a nightmare scenario for us. Luckily she had her Inreach, map and compass etc, and her photos uploaded to the cloud, but all her notes were gone. We felt so sorry for her. But now she was looking forward to Umbukta where hopefully she would be getting a new phone.

We shared more about our experiences, and talked until we were freezing, then we needed to get going again.

We walked a little bit further, to Grasfjellkoia, where we had some breakfast, sheltered from the drizzle that rushed past us. Then we kept going, and listened to a new podcast - a fantasy audio play. Very nice with something different.

Suddenly we also saw the mighty glacier Okstindan in the background which was very cool. Unfortunately too far away to get any good pictures, and the top of the mountains were shrouded in clouds. We also flew the drone a little.

As we got closer to the dam, we decided to take a short cut which would save us about 1-2 km or so, so that felt nice. Later, we also walked a little bit on the shore of Gresvatnet, a tip we had gotten from Hans which we appreciated. Walking up in the terrain was a bit harder with small ups and downs and lots of greenery.

Before we reached Gressvasshytta, both of us REALLY needed to use the toilet and started to hurry, but when we arrived we met people there and were a bit delayed at first 😂 After some short talking we could go, and when we were back again we could talk a bit more properly to them. The people we met there were tillsynet, three people working on expanding the hytta. Earlier today we had seen a boat crossing Gresvatnet, and apparently it was them. They had just started a fire and now were making food. We had some sandwhiches in there, and they offered us saft, which we couldn't say no to. We also wrote in the Hyttebok. While Kim was writing in the Hyttebok, we were also offered a slice of pizza each 😍 And we really appreciated it, and talked about it the rest of the evening. So nice!

After leaving the hytta we didn't walk far, just 2 hours to Balskota where we found a small spot to camp. On our way there we had a little bit of phone connection and were chatting with another woman hiking Norge på langs - Mia. In the morning it seemed like we were going to meet, because we were about 40 km from each other. But here we saw that she had written that she was 24 km south of Umbukta while we were now 31 km from Umbukta... There were few route choices here, but it seemed she had hiked closer to the glacier, while we hiked on the shore of Gresvatnet. But we never got an answer from her that day, because we had lost the phone connection. That was too bad, because we have been writing with her some times and it would be cool to meet!

So we made camp beside Balskota anyway. The ground was not flat and not leveled, but it had to make do.

We put up our tent there, went to clean ourselves in the small creek, had some spoon chips and chocolate, then went to bed.

Today's

Distance: 28.13 km

Start time: 08:11

End time: 20:00

Ascent: 729 m

Descent: 940 m

Tent nights: 36/51