Norway Basecamping

Report

9 days in Jotunheimen. The goal was to summit some of the higher mountains.

To do that I had a much heavier backpack with me as I carried more gear to set up a good basecamp and spend a few days at each camp.

When I actually made it to the highest mountains (Galdhøpiggen and Glittertind), the weather wasn’t great. I had some very rainy days. And even when it did not rain, the visibility in the mountains was low.

I managed to summit both mountains anyway, on back to back days. I was very much in doubt and considered not going up. But I’m glad I did. I did not get any views but the challenge was fun.

I also had a lot of other wonderful experiences: hiking in to a glacier, seeing lots of wild reindeer, cold dips in crystal clear lakes, long hiking days, cozy reading in my tent, and much more.

Notes

• My Nortent Varde with a ground chair was a good setup. I could sit either inside the vestibule or all the way inside the tent when the weather was bad. On rainy days I spent quite some time like that, reading and drinking coffee.

• A heavy backpack really makes a huge difference when hiking. I knew that going into this and so the plan was not to hike a lot with the backpack. But it is still interesting how big the difference is between this and my lightweight trip last year. Back then I hiked all day every day and the bag did not bother me much at all. This year it was a challenge to hike with the bag. But last year lacked a lot of comfort when I wasn’t hiking. This year my camp setup was super solid.

Photos

TODO