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On foot through Norway's national park: Failed! And now what?

21.8.2019

Translation: machine translated

Arthur and Jannik are two trainee photographers. Last winter, they set off on an adventurous expedition to the north of Norway during the sports holidays. This is their travel diary.

Sunday, 17 February

We sleep until after midday. Jannik is awake first. He sleepily toddles into the living room of our little hut to prepare breakfast. The smell of our freshly dried clothes catches his nose. While our living room airs out, we have breakfast in our jackets. We start the afternoon by exploring the campsite and discover the laundry room. While our clothes are being washed, we enquire with the campsite team about possible day trips in the region around Røkland. There seem to be plenty of them. We decide to spend the rest of our stay on day trips.

Monday, 18 February

It drizzles all day long. During the night, when luckily it didn't rain, we put Arthur's Nikon D850 on a tripod in front of the hut. The camera was supposed to take pictures of the sky automatically at regular intervals. This was in the hope of capturing any Northern Lights phenomena. In the morning, the camera froze slightly.

For lack of alternatives and as a kind of occupational therapy, we search the images one by one for northern lights, which we unfortunately don't find, and tidy up our equipment. We realise that we have far too much food or NRG-5 left over. When we planned our trip, we assumed that we would consume a lot of calories. But now that we are sleeping and living in a warm hut, we need to eat much less food and so we are faced with a mountain of emergency rations. We are dismayed when we realise how much NRG-5 we have left for the remaining six days until our planned arrival in Zurich: Over 20 packs, which together equate to more than 45,000 Kcal, are lying in our kitchen.

For a better understanding: NRG-5 is a vegan emergency food that is often distributed by aid organisations due to its high calorie content, for example in war zones or during famines. Despite all these impressive properties, NRG-5 is above all one thing: a tasteless powder that is eaten with a little water as an equally tasteless porridge.

We decide to eat as much NRG-5 as possible in the remaining days and start with a large portion of stew.

Tuesday, 19 February

The morning starts with good weather and we decide to use the day for a hike along the road. In order to be as mobile and quiet as possible in the event of a moose/rare animal sighting (yes, we still have hope), we leave our snowshoes in the hut and head out to the campsite with only light luggage. When we reach the road at the edge of the campsite, we realise that the ground is now even icier than the day before. On the way, we meet the campsite owner, who tells us that it has rained heavily overnight and that the winter maintenance vehicle won't be able to get to Røkland until the evening. The snow-free paths and roads could be "a bit slippery" by then.

Although this is clearly the case, we slide at a snail's pace across the spacious car park and along the road. After an hour, it starts to rain again.

After just a few minutes, a film of water forms on the icy road, making it seem almost impossible to continue. After a few painful falls, we decide to walk through the wet snow. Even though we don't have our snowshoes with us. The way back takes about an hour longer than the way there and when we finally sit back in our hut in front of the heater in the early afternoon, we start to feel the numerous falls of the day.

Wednesday, 20 February

We get up with the sun, which, for once, breaks through the clouds. Our backs and knees are still aching from the hours of sliding the day before, but we still decide to go for a hike through the forest on the opposite side of the valley. The path is very steep, but without our pulkas and without rain, the climb is easy for us.

A pleasant side effect of this tour: by the evening, we are hungry enough to enjoy a few portions of NRG-5 with pasta. After a heroic fight at the dinner table, we realise that we only have 18 packs of emergency food left! We decide to head north to the town of Bodø the next morning.

Thursday 21 February

Today we are already at half past seven at the bus station in front of the campsite, at the junction with the E-6. When the bus passes us without stopping, we return to the campsite's reception hut, back to where we had had a coffee just before. The campsite owner is very amused by our mishap and tells us that you have to make yourself known at this time of year if you want to take the bus. Very few people travel from Røkland by bus.

Two hours later and after making hand signals to the bus driver from afar, we are on the bus to Bodø. The weather improves noticeably on the long journey and when we arrive in Bodø, the sky is blue for the first time in days. After wandering aimlessly around Bodø, a somewhat touristy harbour town, for several hours, we get back on the bus to Røkland early so as not to miss it again.

Luckily, there are more people travelling by bus from Bodø and we reach Røkland early enough to get a good night's sleep before heading back to Switzerland the next day. But not without eating a few NRG-5 portions first. After dinner, we sit in the living room and, as we do every evening, go on northern lights watch at 15-minute intervals. It's already ten o'clock that evening when Arthur does his usual two-minute northern lights patrol around the campsite. Suddenly he sees something green in the sky: dutifully and because he still has his camera in the hut, he runs back to pass the Northern Lights alarm on to Jannik. Two by two, with our tripods under our arms, we run back outside. But by the time we've set up the cameras, the spectacle is already over again.

Frustrated, we decide to stay outside for a while longer. However, when there were still no northern lights in the sky hours later, we pointed our cameras in different directions and went to bed. While the cameras outside automatically take pictures of the night sky at regular intervals, we sleep comfortably in our bunk beds.

Friday, 22 February

Not a minute after our mobiles woke us up, we were standing outside in the snow next to our cameras, still in our pyjamas. We hastily change the batteries, which have run out overnight, and hurry to review the interval recordings. And sure enough, one of the cameras has captured the green lights at regular intervals! We're a little upset that we didn't set up the cameras further away from the campsite for fear of losing them, but at least we got some Northern Lights pictures!

We pack our equipment, which we have used to make our hut almost cosy over the last few days, and say goodbye to the campsite owner. A friend of his drives us back to the train station in Røkland for free, where we board the train to Trondheim at half past ten in the evening. Our return journey to Zurich begins. You can read more about this in the next part: Stories from the deep snow in the middle of midsummer.

What has happened so far:

Background information
On foot through Norway's national park: a test of endurance for man and material
by Arthur Gamsa und Jannik Kaiser

How it came about that Arthur and Jannik report on their experiences for Galaxus, you can find out here.

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Two photographers, one objective: crossing a Norwegian national park on foot
by Patrick Bardelli

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Arthur Gamsa und Jannik Kaiser

patrick.bardelli@galaxus.ch

We are two photographers in training at the F+F (School of Art and Design) in Zurich.
Since we are very fascinated by nature, we are much in the mountains and forests of Switzerland on the road. Mostly with camera, tent and a gas stove in the luggage.

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