I noticed that my post about Vindelfjällen received foreign readers (yey!) so I decided to write at least this post in English.
This July I did a hike to Jotunheimen, the Home of the Giants, the most popular natural park in Norway due to its central location. If you want to combine a hike and a visit to Oslo or Bergen, you might want to consider hiking in Jotunheimen. I was surprised by the steepness of the fjälls which was greater than in the areas I have hiked in Norwegian Lapland. If you are looking for breath taking views and physical challenge, Jotunheimen is the place to be.
For me hiking is about peace and quite. Jotunheimen has tourist traps like Galdopiggen, the highest mountain of Norway which is visited by 200 people every day during the high season. To avoid that, we chose a less popular route and only bumped into a couple of people during each day. So if you are looking for some time with yourself and not with 200 Norwegian tourists, you might want to continue reading.
Our journey started from Helsinki, Finland where we took an overnight boat to Stockholm and continued to Lillehammer, Norway the next day.
Lillehammer has a book store with quite good selection of hiking maps.
The next day we headed to the starting point of our hike, Leirvassbu, a fjäll hotel approx. 200 km from Lillehammer. Leirvassbu offers simple but clean and cosy rooms with private or shared bathroom. They have a good breakfast buffet and dinner with three courses. Once again as a Finn, I was astonished how they have managed to transport things like salmon, apple pie, wine etc. to such remote location. I guess one could also argue how sustainable transporting such luxury items to the fjälls is…
Our hiking route
Our route was: Leirvassbu to Olavsbo (13 km), Olavsbo to Skogadalboen (16km) and from Skogadalboen to the lakes south of Leirvassbu (18km) and from the lakes to Leirvassbu (2km). So all and all the route was about 50 km. Even though the amount of kilometers is little, I would describe the hike as semi-challenging due to the big amount of steep parts and the large amount of snow and ice.
NOTE THIS! If you are using hiking map Nordeca 1:100 000 like we were – the route times (number of hours it takes to walk from A to B) are highly underestimated and reflect a walking speed of 5 km/hour where as a realistic speed is closer to 2km/hour. Naturally, the weight of one’s backpack has a big impact on the walking speed. We were carrying 20kg packs with food and a tent where as the Norwegian passers by of course had just a 2kg rucksack filled with couple of energy bars and a water bottle ;-).
Hiking day 1 "Winter is coming"
As a GOT fan, and considering that our hike took place in the middle of July, I would title the first hiking day as “Winter is coming”.
The trail had a lot of snow and wet areas which caused my 15 years old hiking shoes (new ones on the shopping list) getting completely wet. We had a tent with us but once we arrived to Olavssbo my shoes were so wet that we decided to sleep inside…or that was our idea but it turned out that we were not welcome to stay inside :D. Yep, you heard right. We knocked on the door of one of the massive and brand new cottages of Olavssbo and were met by an old grumpy looking man. The man did not even bother to open his mouth to say hello, instead he just stared at us looking a bit angry. After standing there and staring each other for 10 minutes (that’s what it felt like) we kindly asked if we could stay inside. The man, who turned out to be the cottage guard, answered “since you are carrying a tent, I suppose you are staying in the tent”. I then asked if both of the large cottages were full and received a not so clear answer. Astonished of the man’s reaction I then asked if I could at least bring my shoes inside to dry up. To this the man answered NO, you can not do that. I wonder if any other hikers have had bad experiences with the cottages’ (hytter) staff?
After this unpleasant meeting out in the middle of nowhere, with soaking wet shoes, we started to look for a place for the tent. The problem was not only the hard weather and wet shoes but the rocky area that did not have solid ground to set a tent on. After all we managed to find an OK place but the wet snow and hard wind made it a challenge to get the tent up.
Hiking Day 2 - "From winter to summer"
The trek from Olavssbo to Skogadalboen includes a long steep downhill that was covered in meters of breaking snow.
After couple of hours in the snow came several water crossings. On the pics below the water crossings might look easy but in reality it’s a different case. The water is just above zero and very rocky, so balancing with a big backpack is not an easy thing to do.
On day 2, we experienced a 360 degree transformation from winter to summer. Oh what a great feeling it was to get some sunshine and warmth after all the walking in snow and coldness. The long and steep snow downhill eventually led to a breathtaking beautiful valley where you could see beautiful flowers growing between the rocks.
Probably still a little bit annoyed by the not-so-pleasant reception at Olavsbo, we decided not to stay at Skogadalboen cottage either and spend all the nights in tent (revenge!;). Finding a tent place was not an easy task to do since the ground was either wet, rocky or uneven. After searching for some time, we found a good-enough tent place from approximately 3-4 km before Skogadalboen.
Hiking Day 3 - The giant's home
After leaving from our lovely tent place we passed the large fjäll hotel of Skogadalboen. The DNT (the Norwegian tourist association) area of Skogadalboen is not limited to only the near surroundings of the “hotel” as it includes also a surprisingly large surrounding area of land. This means that you are not allowed to set up a tent without paying to the hotel or even cooking on that area. There are signs at both sides of the DNT area stating these rules.
Leaving Skogadalboen meant a change in weather again, although not as radical as before. The part between Skogadalboen and Leirvassbu offers the most beautiful views of the route and makes you understand why Jotunheimen is called “the home of the giants”. Some parts of the route felt more like climbing than hiking especially with a heavy backpack. I have to admit that on a couple of occasions the thought of hiking with a small rucksack (like all the Norwegian hikers had) might have crossed my mind. Somehow I still ike the idea of making and carrying my own food more than sitting in to a ready restaurant table.
After leaving Skogadalboen area on the hiking map there was an attraction named Store Hillern. Along our walk we kept on guessing what is the Store Hillern, is it a mountain resembling a mouse? No, it is not. Store Hillern is a hunter’s keep from the beginning of the 20th century restored in the 70s. Yes, we went inside. No, I would not have liked to stay overnight inside Store Hillern.
We found a decent tent place around the lakes south of Leirvassbu to spend our last night. We did not pass any hikers on the last part of the hike even though we were really close to Leirvassbu and again felt very happy about the route we chose.
Hiking Day 4
Intentionally, our last hiking day was super easy and short; just a couple of kilometers back to the starting point of our hike: Leirvassbu. We wanted to do it like this as we were not going to spend the night at Leirvassbu but to drive to Beitostolen, a village 150 km from Leirvassbu.
The hike was demanding, had a great amount of different landscapes and weather conditions and offered physical challenge as well as spectacular views that I will remember for the rest of my life.
Were should I go next?