adventures in *

I camped overnight and actually slept better than at the hotel. Woke up around 4a when it started getting light out. I met up with the Icetroll tour guides around 10 and we drove up to the trailhead with a group of 7 other people.

We put in the kayaks and paddled 6 km to the edge of the Austdalsbreen glacier. After a break for lunch, we put on crampons, roped up and headed onto the glacier. The sides of the glacier were covered with a dark sludge, Carlos our tour guide explained that it’s ground up rocks that get picked up by the glacier and moves to the top as the glacier melts. There were also hundreds of dark 1″ holes in the ice, they were dead lemmings. During the winter when the glacier is covered with snow, lemmings come out to forage for food. Unfortunately they don’t find anything and die of starvation. Their dark bodies absorb more heat from the sunlight and melts the ice faster then the surrounding area. That was interesting.

We trudged around on the glacier walking near crevasses and admiring the deep blue color deep within the ice.
Carlos threw some ice chunks into one and we heard it bounces down and down for 30 seconds. That’d be a bad place to fall down.

Later we noticed a wave forming in the lake, the front of the glacier had calved into the water and sent a 5 ft tall wave across. There were 2 kayakers in the water and we watched them bob up and down as the waves passed them. They were ok, Carlos radioed to another tour guide to warn them.

We headed back to the kayaks after a couple hours of hiking then paddled back. My hands were starting to blister and my shoulders were sore, it had been awhile since I’ve kayaked this far.

We got back to our cars around 7, I headed to Sogndal to stay overnight. By the time I got there, it was 9:30 and all the hotels I checked were either full or charging $250 USD, too much. I camped down next to the Sognefjord with the sound of the water lapping against the rocks to put me to sleep.