Norway Winter Camping 2016 - Lost in Deep Snow | Adventure Every Day

It was roughly 10pm, but the sun had already been down for hours on this chilly, late-winter Norwegian night. That’s when Oli and I stepped off the train at the Movatn station and almost directly into about 30 cm of snow. And thus officially began the Winter Camping Expedition 2016.

But we still had no idea at that point of what a crazy excursion it would turn into.

All we had were questions: Starting at night? In the winter? Are we sure this is a good idea? Do we have enough food for this? The right clothes? What about the camera batteries? Will we actually get any film worth showing from this?

We clicked on the headlamps, bundled up our jackets, strapped on our backpacks and then trudged off down a snow-covered trail into the woods.

This was it. Nothing now but a rugged German photographer/outdoorsman, an inexperienced-but-enthusiastic American engineer/filmmaker and countless miles of raw Norwegian nature.

At first, we managed to keep a good pace while following footsteps laid down by previous hikers, but it wasn’t long before our target destination took us onto a new course that was previously untouched, at least since the last sizable snowfall. Ankle deep snow turned to knee deep. It was a trail we vaguely knew from a previous expedition we took to locate a German WWII plane that met it’s dismay in the forest here. But that was several months earlier – no snow, and during the day.

After an hour or so of uphill trudging, we found a fairly flat area large enough to drop a tent and shielded on one side with a rock wall. We hadn’t gone especially far, so there would be much to do tomorrow, but it was almost midnight after all, so it was time to get situated. We gathered up some wood from the nearby trees, made a small fire, enjoyed some warm food, and then tried to catch a few hours of sleep.

When the morning greeted us, we quickly revived the fire and managed to bake a small loaf of bread using a mix that Oli brought along, complete with small packets of jam and Nutella (pure genius!) to go on top. Possibly the best bread I’ve ever had, especially after a cold night on the hard ground. But there wasn’t much time to sit and enjoy it. The days are still quite short in early March in Norway, and we had some ground to cover in order to be in position to catch our ride home by Sunday afternoon – a bus station all the way on the other side of the forest – lest we find ourselves stuck out in the cold for more than the 2 planned nights.

The first campsite

The hiking started out quite manageable, and we reached our first checkpoint at Hansakollen in good time. There is normally a great view over the valley from there, though it was a bit obscured by low-hanging clouds in the early morning hours. So we didn’t linger too long, and soon got back on the trail.

In hindsight, perhaps we should have taken a couple extra minutes to mentally prepare for what was ahead of us. But how were we to know at that point?

The next segment of the planned route was a seemingly mundane, relatively flat stretch through a small valley before an ascent up to Mellomkollen, the crown jewel of the trip. On paper, it was the easy segment of the route. The part with nothing super special to see, so we would just blow through as quickly as we could.

But the knee deep snow turned to waist deep as we approached the flat meadow at the bottom of the valley, making it almost impossible to walk. The top layer was just crusty enough that we would get lucky every now and then and skate across the top. That was maybe 2% of the time. The other 98% of the steps we took resulted in falling right to the bottom of the pile, 30kg backpacks and all. And that was followed by the frustrating and energy-intensive process of digging ourselves out of the snow to try to take the next step. And then: repeat the process all over again.

Snow filled our boots. A bit of anxiety filled my mind. Are we actually going to be able to get back out of here?, I wondered. Maybe this trip was a big mistake.

After 2 hours of this, my body started getting that weak feeling that I get when I’ve totally exerted myself and am zapped for energy. We gotta take a break, I told Oli. I need to eat something.

We devoured some granola bars, cashews and other assortment of snacks. I didn’t feel like moving. I certainly didn’t want to check the map. But we had to make sure we were on track, so we were forced to confront the fact that we hadn’t even covered one kilometer in the past 2 hours. And it wasn’t looking to get any easier any time soon.

Even though I still just felt like sitting there, we knew we needed to push on. 2 hours later, we emerged from that meadow, having finally covered the roughly 1.5 km stretch. The hiking was still not to be easy as we had to make a fairly steep ascent, but the slope of the terrain and increased tree cover meant less deep snow.

Alas! We reached Mellomkollen! It was gorgeous, but in our tired state, it was difficult to properly enjoy it. This time it was Oli that was having doubts. Boots, socks, pants – nothing was dry. Wet plus frigid cold is not a good combination and can be downright dangerous.

I think we should use the headlamps, keep hiking and try to catch the last evening bus back, he argued.

But we’ve reached the place we wanted to be, I pushed back. Plus, I have a second pair of pants and warm, dry socks.

Oli perked up a bit at this suggestion. And after changing, I could see the relief on his face. So it was happening. We were going for night 2 and would not be giving in!

And we’re quite glad we stuck it out. Not only did we end up with an awesome campsite, complete with a sofa dug into the snow next to the fire, but we managed to awaken early enough the following day to catch the early morning sun show it’s face across the valley below Mellomkollen just before a fog bank swooped in and graywashed the whole landscape. An amazing experience indeed, and one we were lucky enough to capture on film:

Mellomkollen and the second campsite. Music from Sigur Ros. The Out of Oslo intro was due to an idea for a tour company that never got off the ground, but you should still check out outofoslo.com 😊

The next day, we packed up and headed for the bus station. It was several kilometers to hike there, but it was mostly a moderate descent, and the snowpack thinned as we went, so it wasn't too bad. We eventually made it back to our warm homes and girlfriends in the city, exhausted but with yet another epic adventure in the books.

Until next year! (Or next post....come back tomorrow 😉)

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Adventure Every Day is a travel & exploration channel started in 2016. In addition to the Steemit blog, I post short films of my adventures to the Adventure Every Day YouTube channel. Please follow and subscribe if you enjoy!