Booked three months in advance, we scored £79 RT tickets to Trondheim on Norwegian air for the long weekend! Thank you Skyscanner for the “Everywhere” search functionality. A lot of our recent trips have been to cities, so for this trip we wanted to try to get out into nature. After booking flights, we searched google maps for national parks in the area and settled on Dovrefjell, a three hour drive from Trondheim.
Friday
We departed 6:25pm from Gatwick, meaning we had to leave work a bit early. Luckily, we had time for a quick stop in the two lounges – the Grain Store (where we get a £15 credit each) and the No1 lounge. After a dash to the gate, we watched Hidden Figures, about 3 black women who worked at NASA during US segregation as mathematician “computers”. We arrived late at night, but because of being so far north, twilight lasts all the way to 12:41am and night is only an hour long. We stayed at an airbnb, where the Nepalese host kindly stayed up for us, quickly let us in, and we went straight to sleep.
Saturday
Deparing at 9am, we arrived at Vangshaugen around noon, a nicely serviced (though closed) group of DNT huts at the trailhead. Shortly after arriving, we painfully realized that we had forgotten to fill our camp stove with fuel. With nothing the siphon the fuel out of the car, we grudgingly settled on driving back the 40 minute access road to purchase the £0.40 of fuel needed for the stove.
Finally back at the trailhead, with our stove fueled, we prepared to start hiking. We were planning to hike a 3 day loop, starting in Vangshuagen, 5 hours to Raubergshytta the first night, to Grovudalshytta the second night, and then back to Vangshuagen. As we left the car, we came across some men who told us that we were still a month or two too early and that we’d likely need skis (in retrospect it probably would have been fine in hiking boots, but not pleasant in Viki’s running shoes). We ended up driving a small amount further, to Helen, and we just hiked the 2 hours to Grovudalshytta, in the valley, far below the snow line. Much of Norway seems to be based around honesty, and the £3 toll for the road to Helen was self pay.
Our jaws dropped when we arrived at Grovudalshytta. I’m used to cabins like the old Russet Lake cabin near Whistler – a small wooden structure with some wooden planks to sleep on. The Grovudalshytta hut was nothing of the sort – it was absolutely incredible. There were fur pillows and throws on upholstered couches. There were baskets of fresh kindling and chopped firewood, with a huge amount of extra stored outside. Not only was there, a dedicated kitchen, but it was fully stocked with pots, pans, and utensils. Adding to this, there was even a pantry that was filled from floor to ceiling with canned food and a self-pay system.
While it was unfortunate that we couldn’t follow our original plan due to it being too early in the season, this meant that we were the only ones in the massive cabin. From the log book it looks like people only really come from the end of June through the beginning of October. I made a fire, we jumped in the river, and had a cup-a-soup and Uncle Ben’s rice for dinner. Chocolate covered raisins for dessert.
Sunday
We slept wonderfully and were happy for remembering to bring eye masks, which turned out to be rather necessary in Norway this time of year. After a breakfast of instant oats with nuts/seeds/fruit, we started hiking towards Raubergshytta, knowing that there was a good chance we wouldn’t make it. Just as we left, there was a bit of a scary river crossing that gave Viki a bit of a fright. After some coaxing, we removed our boots, waded across, and made it to the other side – the terrain here was rather more rugged than the gentle hills of England!
We then began the steep trail out of the valley and up into the alpine. Viki needed a bit more coaxing when we arrived at our first large snow patch, but with shoes on our feet and strength in our legs, we soldiered on. After about 3 hours of the 6 hour journey, we came to an extended snow field, as far as the eye could see. I relented, we ate lunch, and we agreed to return to Grovudalshytta. There was a bit of a funny part walking along the snow field when I shouted “be careful right about… here…” and right at that moment I collapsed through the snow bridge to the stream below.
We hiked back to Grovudalshytta and I found that I had completely sunburned the back of my legs. We went for a chilly swim, dried by fire, read, and watched a movie
Monday
It was pretty cool to wake up in somewhere so remote and think that we’d be travelling from there to London in the same day. We woke up slowly and left ~11am to hike without bags up the valley an hour to some locked cabin. After playing with an inchworm, we turned back to Grovudalshytta, had our last cheese/chorizo sandwiches and cup-a-soup for lunch, then hiked back to the car.
We made sure to give ourselves enough time to have a brief stop in Trondheim as we didn’t go through the center on the way out. We arrived in Trondheim at 6:30pm and had dinner at a popular, well-reviewed Vegan buffet place Hagen Bakklandet (180 NOK / ~£18 per person). It was quite good for being Vegan. We then strolled for an hour around town, across the bridge, saw the huge central cathedral, and the famous colored houses by river. Finally, we got to airport and watched Deadpool – I was in a bit of a pout because there was no lounge. Overall it was a fantastic long weekend getting out into the wilderness.
