Second Glacier Hike in Vestlandet, Norway

The other glacier we hiked on in Norway has receded almost a mile from the lake.  In the 80's, it used to come down to the lake.  So, we had a long walk to get to the base.  We had a woman guide from Nepal.  She and her husband work in Norway in the summer and go back to Nepal in the winter.  Not many tourists in Norway in the winter!

This glacier winds back and forth down from the "ice cap" at the top of the mountain.  An ice cap is an area of compacted ice in a valley that doesn't move.  Ice caps fill entire valleys and are often thousands of feet deep, sometimes more than a mile deep!  It's hard to imagine so much ice.  A glacier is the overflow of the ice cap, created when the valley overflows with ice, from years of snow, hail, and rain piled onto a valley that is already full.

Unlike the other glacier, this one is steep, so the hiking was a little harder.  Again, our group of 8 were all roped together, with crampons on our boots and ice axes in our hands. We really didn't need the ice axes, but they looked cool.  There was another hike we didn't have time for that involved using ice axes to climb walls of ice.  Jennifer said she wasn't interested in doing that one, so I'd have to go by myself if I ever got the chance.

The glacier as we approached the face.  The black on top is mostly rock dust, not dirt.  It looks coal black close up.  Note the group hiking in the upper left corner.

  Getting closer.

Here's a funny one.  These idiots jumped the safety barrier and went up to take pictures of each other touching the glacier.  Jennifer said they reminded her of the people on safari that went to get closer pictures with lions and got eaten.  Glaciers can break apart at any time, so we might have got to see them crushed by a few tons of ice.  No luck. I'm just jealous, of course.

Below is one of the numerous sinks on the glacier.  Meltwater runs along the glacier until it can find somewhere to go.  Tiny cracks eventually turn into wells hundreds of feet deep, draining the water all the way to the rock beneath the glacier.  I'd love to go rappelling down one of these!

Next time I go on a glacier hike, it's going to be inside the ice caves!  I've been wanting to do that every time, and every time they say "It's not safe now." 

Pure blue ice.  Mmm mmm.  

First Glacier Hike in Vestlandet (Westlands), Norway

Maybe it's because I come from Houston, where naturally occurring ice is treated as the end of the world by the local media, but I've always loved natural ice.  I can't get enough of icicles and frozen lakes and streams. Glaciers are the most awesome ice around.  Thousands of years old, hundreds of feet thick, flowing like a slow motion river down a valley, and glowing bright blue.  Who can resist such an awesome and beautiful thing!  We've seen lots of them; barely hanging on to steep Himalayas, or even falling off in one case, and we've seen lots of calving of the Perito Moreno glacier near Calafate, Argentina.  So, when we planned our trip to Norway, I got all excited about visiting some glaciers.

While we were there, we took two glacier hikes on two different glaciers.  If you guessed that they've both receded quite a bit in recent years, you'd be right.  The first glacier, oddly named Nigards Glacier, or Nigardsbreen in Norwegian, flows from the ice cap, down the side of a steep mountain, and ends up near a lake.  The second glacier, Styggevatnet, is close to the top of the mountain and has a gradual slope, ending in a jagged, 100-foot blue ice face.

We knew the Styggevatnet hike involved kayaking.  What we didn't realize until the day of the hike was that it was 7 kilometers of kayaking, each way!  To get to the start of the kayaking, our caravan of about 8 cars drove for a half out on a road that dwindled to a gravelly switchback near the top of a steep valley. When we opened the car door, we were slapped in the face by a freezing, wet 40 MPH wind.  That was a rude shock.  The idea of sitting in a wet kayak with that cold wind numbing my fingers was not too appealing.    Luckily, after spending almost an hour getting geared up, the guides saved a few lives by canceling the trip.

The next day, the weather was better.  Here's the view from our starting point - the glacier is the expanse of white with the shadows of clouds sliding across it.  It's 7 kilometers away.  I asked why we couldn't just hike there, but they said there are lots of steep, slick places that would require climbing equipment and would be even slower.

Here's how it looked as we approached.  The face is about the height of a ten story building.

After we had lunch, we took off the kayaking gear, and put on the crampons, and got roped together.  Number one rule of Glacier Hike Club - "Don't Step on the Rope!".  There's a rope in the pic.  This was one of the hairier passages - a tricky step in a narrow trench, with deep crevasses within a foot on each side. 

In the photograph below, you can see a group of about 8 people with another group.  They're on the upper left part of the glacier.  This gives a much better idea of the scale of the glacier.

This photograph illustrates the depth of the crevasses.

Here you can see the rope in action as Jennifer leans over a crevasse.  Everyone got to take turns leaning over the abyss. Two people set their feet and lean back while one person looks over the side.  That was fun.

I'll save the second glacier hike for the next post.  Lots of blue ice coming up!  Click here to see the second glacier hike photos.

Cloud Dragons in the Fjords of Norway

A first attempt at this. I'll tell you, it strained my patience to be able to stand still long enough to do this.  I did about 7 or 8 of them, but I kept thinking they would not look good, and quit too soon.  These bands of clouds snaked along the mountains all afternoon of the day we arrived.  We had a view much like this from our hotel room.  If you're familiar with the dragons of Japanese calligraphy, you can sort of see where they got their ideas in these clouds.  They just add a head on one end and some legs, and you've got your dragon emerging from the mists.

Fjords of Vestlandet (Westlands), Norway

We rented a car to get around in Norway.  It was a Hyundai ix35, which is an SUV much bigger than we paid for, or expected. It was a mixed blessing.  On the one hand, it had heated seats that we actually used in mid-August.  On the other hand, it used a lot of that $12/gallon gas!  Besides driving, we also took ferry rides, mostly to get our car where we needed to go, but once we just rode the ferry for fun on a 4-hour round trip through the Nærøyfjord (Narrow Fjord).  So, we got to see the fjords from land and from water.

This is Aurlandfjord, where we stayed in a cute little hotel with a water view.  There's an early-morning panorama of it further down.

Here's the Google map of the road/tunnel leading out of Aurland and up onto the highland plateau.  As you can see, the road actually crosses itself when seen from above, but that's not a problem when you're tunneling through solid rock.  We went through other tunnels like this, where you actually drive a sort of corkscrew through the inside of the mountain.

A view from the top of the incredible road/tunnel that took us out of Aurland and up into the highlands.  It's softly raining, so the picture looks pretty hazy, which gives it a quiet mood I like.

Another view from the ferry on the Narrow Fjord.  

From our Narrow Fjord ferry ride.  Little church on the fjord.  Doesn't seem like they have any roads to this village.  Maybe it's hiding.  

Morning view of Eidfjord.



Morning view of Eidfjord from the dock in front of our hotel.  Don't let this picture fool you.  It was raining most of the time we were there.

View of the morning mist over Aurlandsfjord from the dock at our little hotel in Aurland.  What a peaceful spot.

Photo of Sognefjord, on our way back to Bergen.  This is the main artery fjord.  The other fjords are branches off of this one.  Sorry about the ragged edges.  I couldn't bring myself to give up any of the view.

Click here to see our first Norway glacier hike, which first required kayaking a few miles!.

Click here to see our second Norway glacier hike, with lots of blue ice!

Click here to see those snake-like Nowegian fjord clouds in motion.

Click here to see photos of the fjords of Norway.

Norway Styggevatnet Glacier Panorama 1

Here's a quick preview of the Norway Glaciers post I'm working on.  

This is a panorama of our guided group hiking on the Norwegian glacier named Styggevatnet.  We kayaked seven kilometers from the far end of the lake to get here.  The far end is around a bend, so you can't quite see it.  Crevasses about 100 feet deep in all directions make the rope necessary.  We're all wearing crampons on our hiking boots, which makes it quite easy to crunch along on the ice.  

The panorama has a flaw due to movement - the two pictures near Jennifer overlap, but Jennifer shifted a little in the second between taking the first photo and the next.  So it looks like you can see right through the back of her head.  The jagged edges around the photo are because the pictures are not taken perfectly level and at the same height across the scene.  I could have cropped them out, but I didn't want to lose the scenery.    

Other Norway posts:

Clouds form a sort of slithering snake in the fjords.

Norway's Disco Tunnel - The Laerdal Tunnel

We drove a lot while we were in Norway.  Many of the roads of Norway follow the water line of a fjord, or tunnel through lots of rock along the waterline of a fjord or cross a pass from one fjord to another.  The average tunnel seems to be about a half mile long, but it's not at all unusual to drive two or three miles in a tunnel.

The longest tunnel we drove through was over 15 miles long.  It was late at night, after a long day of hiking and driving.  It was a surreal experience, because nothing changes mile after mile.  It almost seems like you're sitting still and the tunnel is flying past you.  I think that's why they built the discos.

As you approach a "tunnel disco", the first thing you notice is an ultraviolet glow in the distance, directly in your path.  As you strain to see what's ahead - a bizarre ultraviolet glow grows larger and larger.  As you pass into to the disco, the entire tunnel suddenly expands to three times it's normal width and height, a massive cavern of rugged rock permeated with the eye-bending purple color of black lights.  The first disco appeared about four miles into the tunnel.  There were two more, at eight and twelve miles.  The glowing caverns did a great job of waking me up and keeping me from dozing off from fatigue and monotony.  That's one of the main "real" reasons for them, another being to allow tractor trailers to turn around in case the tunnel is blocked.

Wikipedia on the Laerdal Tunnel, including disco photos!