Scandinavia 2008 - Day 18
Monday morning the 18th was an exciting and special day, besides being my sister Naomi's birthday back in the states, today was they day I was to climb a glacier and kayak amongst icebergs. Awaking early, I packed for my trip and found some coffee and an egg salad sandwich at a petrol station on my walk into town to the bus station. From Sogndal it was nearly an hour ride (45 miles north) to Brehiemsenteret where I would meet my group. The bus ride was beautiful and always seemed to follow rivers and creeks on its route through the mountains. We stopped in several picturesque villages and I got my first glimpses of the town I would be visiting tomorrow on my way to see the Urnes stave church. My most favorite village being just north of Sogndal; driving through a narrow canyon where the roaring river dropped a great deal in height, we came up out of the canyon on lake mottled with islands and rocks, on the far shore against soft green hills sat the small community of Hafslo (just down the hill is the picturesque and compact fjord side community of Solvorn – where I would catch the ferry tomorrow).
At the glacier center, Brehiemsenteret, I met the Ice Troll Tour guides and rode in a car with an mad Argentinian named Carlos, a local named Maritha, and an Aussie named Fluer. Carlos would help to launch us, Maritha was our guide, and Fleur would be my kayak mate for the day. Like most South Americans, Carlos drove like a blinded madman relying on white-knuckle luck, but we managed to dodge the timber column in the middle of the 1 ½ lane wide road at the far end of a mountain tunnel. I suspect it was not the first time Carlos had speed speedily through that dark tunnel and gave tourists a scare as he swerved to miss the impending roadblock. After passing through the tunnel of death the road switched-backed its was up the now treeless mountainside.
At the end of the road, just below a long rock damn, we met several other groups of folks who were on the tour with us that day. Carlos set up our gear as Maritha explained the basics to us. Fleur and I launched second, and had some time to toodle about the bay, getting our bearings, while the other kayaks launched. We were 7 or 8 kayaks in all. With Fleur and myself in the lead, we set off towards the glacier. The glacier was at the other end of the glacial lake, and did not appear to be to far nor to big, but with nothing around for scale (the lake of Styggevatnet – meaning “ugly lake” in Norwegian, is just that, the land around the lake is bare rock with no vegetation. It is worth mentioning this whole region is known as Luster. Luster or Lústr in Norse is derived from the word ljóss which means “light” or “bright;” referring to the color of the water in this region), I had no idea just how far we were, or how big it was.
Maritha, a local girl from near Sogndal, was tall and fit. She had golden hair divided into two thick braids. She spoke English well, and carried herself well too. She was in shape and confident; she was hot! Fleur, my kayak mate, who sat behind myself and attempted to steer us as I paddled madly, was not bad looking either. She had ruddy brown hair with flecks of gold and amber, also tied in two braids, but her hair was shorter and hidden under a green canvas hat. Both girls had amazing gorgeous accents. As we paddled, Maritha, in her wonderful accent, told us about the glacier and the lake. She explained that the lake was so deep, and the water so cold, that for safeties sake we would kayak within 50 yards of the shore for about an hour. When we reached the narrowest part of the lake, we would then turn and head straight for the opposite sore, being careful not to tarry. For if in this cold water we overturned far from land, we could be jeopardizing our own lives having only a few minutes before hypothermia sat in.
Others in our party included a young timid German couple, and most notably, an older Russian gentleman and his wife. He was leathery-skinned with yellow-stained teeth and hair, combed straight back. He was dressed in a track suit that reminded me of my brothers 1988 multi-neon-colored camo Starter jacket. That coat was ugly then, and it was ugly now. The Russians tracksuit had all these same qualities. His wife was short of stature and of brains. A great source of entertainment throughout the afternoon, she proved to always paddle in the opposite direction of her overzealous husband. She turned the boat left when he pointed his paddle right, and turned right when he pointed left. They spent most of the day turning in circles or ramming other kayaks.
When we did come to the narrow part of the lake Maritha told us about, we stopped first for a rest and some more information from our guide. She pointed out a few small icebergs, that we were now close enough to see. We had been kayaking for an hour, and she explained that we were still about 30 minutes away from our landing point. We also began taking guess on how big the front of the glacier was. It looked to be no more than 50 feet tall, but I knew that it had to be more than that. Quickly crossing the middle of the lake, Fleur and I came upon our first iceberg. It was a baby, maybe 8 feet long and 2 feet wide. Looking ahead I saw several more. The closer we came to the glacier, the larger the icebergs became. The biggest we saw started out seeming to be no bigger than the first we encountered, but as we got closer it grew. When I was within 30 feet of it, having been instructed to go no closer in case it overturned, I estimated it to be 40 feet tall and 60 feet long. There were long deep shelves cut into its side like a Z. the shelves were 6 feet thick on their face and were at least 4 feet deep into the ice. While the iceberg was all shades of white and blue, the shelves were a deep iridescent blue; very mesmerizing and nearly impossible to explain in words. We stopped for a while at this iceberg, taking turns posing our kayaks in front of it, before continuing the last 10 minutes to our landing point.
Getting out of the kayak and onto land proved to be tricky, but we made it, and Fleur and I pulled our kayak high up onto the rocks away from the waters edge. Maritha explained that if the glacier calved (ice broke off its face) while we were climbing, the resulting wave could wash our kayaks out to water. And it would be a very long walk back. I unpacked my lunch from the small storage container in old yellow (my kayak) and set on a boulder the size of a house to eat (I had mostly buffalo jerky & sausage from Jackson Hole, thanks to cousins Sean and Stina!). Even though we had kayaked for an hour and a half, we still had a short walk to reach the glacier; now the glacier seemed to be 100 feet tall out of the water. While eating my lunch in the sun, I couldn't help but notice to hear the sound of rushing water. While I could hear a waterfall, I saw none.
After lunch we followed Maritha along a trial to the side of the glacier. Standing on bare rock I finally saw the source of the water I had heard. The snow melt from the glacier had formed a river along the glaciers edge that was mostly under the ice. From holes in the ice I could see the water churning. While I tried not to think about the possibility of falling into the river and being trapped under the ice, we all began to gear up. My harness barely fit around my thighs and ass, but it did, and after I got my crampons (2 inch metal multi-spike boots) on Maritha hooked me onto the rope line. Having spent the entire morning in the lead of the kayaks, I now found myself the last in the rope line. For safety reasons we were all tied together about 5 feet apart; Maritha handed us each our ice-axes and began explaining the other safety rules and procedures to us.
The glacier was large, according to Maritha it is nearly 400 feet thick in the middle; it had steep sides that we would have to climb up. As I approached the glacier I could see that the sun warming the rock had melted the ice that touched it, so that the edge of the glacier was a razor sharp blade of ice 6-8 inches off the rock. Between the rock and the blade of ice I could see and hear the glacial river. I was genuinely scared to take that first step off the rock onto the the ice, afraid the ice would break, dumping me into the deadly river below. My heart beat mightily as I prepared to take the step up onto the glacier, I had to be careful not to let the short length of rope attached to the person in front of me pull taught and yank me down, but I was clumsy in my tall spiked shoes that creaked and slipped as its sharp steel points tread upon the face of the ice-worn-smooth rock. They say the journey of a lifetime starts with a single step, and when my turn came, I did just fine; my steel shoes now crunched and dug solidly into the ice.
As our group began our ascent up the steep edge of the glacier, I turned on the altimeter function of my watch to graph how high we would climb. Looking up, it was clear to me that the start of our journey was a long hike up a steep incline, made to seem all the more daunting as I was at the end of the line, and I had the view of each person on the rope-line getting smaller as they receded in perspective. As we walked I would occasionally hear the sound of the unseen river, every once and a while I would find a fist sized hole in the thick ice, the sound of flowing water emanated from within. I realized that while the ice was hard packed and solid on top, underneath there were caverns, canyons, cracks, rivulets, streams, and rivers. The ice on the side of the glacier was black from dirt in the atmosphere that had settled, but Maritha had us all taste a handful; despite the dirt, there were little to no pollutants and was safe to eat.
400 feet above the face of the bare rock we finally reached the top of the glacier, walking out onto level ice we stopped to survey all below us. The group rounded up in a arc-shape as we took photos while listening to Maritha talk about the glacier. Our game plan was to walk towards the middle of the glacier, before slowly and carefully making our way towards the front.
It was not long before our rope line reached a gash in the ice, several hundred feet long but only a few feet deep, at the end was a shallow pool of blue water that drained slowly into a small dark hole. We began encountering more gashes that occurred with more frequency, each running parallel to the front edge of the glacier (formed by the glacier moving over rock and breaking and bending as the rock drops) and each getting deeper as we progressed.
After several hundreds yards we came to what I would consider to be our first crevice, short in length, and maybe only 15-20 deep. We walked around it, briefly looking in, our anticipation growing as we looked further down the glacier to where the bigger and deeper crevices were. Maritha guided us on a zig-zag path that always brought us a few feet within the end of deepening crevices, purposefully avoiding running directly into the middle of one. Most of the crevices were only 4-8 feet wide at the most, but they were all the time getting deeper and more cavernous. All the while I walked and managed the short rope line, and took photos at the same time.
I sensed the people ahead of me becoming excited, unable to see around the line of people, I just waited to see what was the matter. Maritha stood off to the side and recounted the rules of looking into deep crevices.
1.one person at a time, don't crowd around.
2.always view the crevice from the end, not from the side.
3.Keep your ice axe at the ready and don't lean to far forward.
The best part about being at the end of the rope line is that I don't have anyone behind me urging me to hurry up, the worst part is that the whole group is ready to move on, so everyone is watching & waiting on me.
From there we encountered a unique situation where two glaciers nearly met, coming with 10 feet of each other, we passed between the two, looking down into the deep blue on our right and left. We stopped and gathered again, Maritha explained that we were now as close to the front of the glacier as we were going to get, just a couple ten yards ahead the crevices criss-crossed back and forth; the front of the glacier looked like the deep-carved and long used trenches on the front lines of war.
Now we walked parallel to the front in the direction of where we started our trek. Ahead I saw Maritha pause, survey a crevice, and then continue on. Ahead of me I saw each person pause briefly, before cautiously proceeding. When it came my turn I saw that a particular crevice had melted in such a way that there was a spite of ice that jutted out and connected to the other side, only 3 feet wide at the most and maybe 6 feet long, I had no choice but to cross over on the narrow ice. To either side of me the ice dropped off steeply and a simple stumble would find you at least 30 feet down into the cold blue, and just a tumble further from there and you would disappear into a dark and jagged blue of which I saw no bottom. Walking cautiously my metal spiked boots crunched eerily, and I could hear the powerful roar of water from all around me, I was glad to have that thick rope tied to myself and 15 others.
Feeling triumphant from our brave crossing we leaped the next crevice, really, it was only 18 inches wide (though moderately deep), one at a time we leaped across, not hard really but the crampons we wore made things interesting. Maritha brought us to the edge of another long and deep crevice, and this time each person posed in front of it. The Russian posed on his knees in front of the crevice with his axe crammed into the ice, it was a good pose and would make a good photo. Again, the last person I handed my camera to the German guy in line in front of me, and mimicked the Russians pose. The camera didn't click and jumped up to see what was wrong, I turned the camera on and went back to the edge of the crevice to pose. As I turned to face the camera the metal spikes on my left boot caught my right pant leg, I reared back and my shoulders tilted towards the crevice, like slow motion I felt my momentum carrying me backwards, my foot still caught on my pant leg I couldn't stabilize myself, I quickly thrusted my arms forward and hammered my axe downwards, holding on to the last few inches of the handle I had just enough length that the front tip dug into the packed ice. I heard the shredding sound of fabric and my leg came free, and my momentum stopped and I fell forward onto my knee. It all happened incredibly fast and no-one but Maritha and the German saw my near accident. Looking up at the camera I smiled and said, “ok, take the picture.” The German took several quick photographs and I got up, my heart still beating. Maritha rushed towards me, “Are you alright?” she asked. I replied I was fine, that I had just caught my spikes on my pants. She looked down and said “uh-oh.” I saw what she meant, the spike had caught the pant on the inside of my right ankle, and when it broke free it shredded my pants in half, from my right ankle, up the inseam and down my left thigh, almost to the knee. I might as well have been wearing a thong bikini because the pants were beyond repair. Luckily being at the end of the line I didn't have to worry about flashing the rest of the rope line. We were just a few yards from the top edge side of the glacier, so I took one last look around the glacier, the surrounding mountaintops, and the cold blue glacial lake, then began my descent back down the bare rock. As I walked, my pants flapped in the wind (nearly standing straight out – I was all legs!)
At the bottom back on bare rock we all had a relieved laugh that eased the tension that had mounted during our trek. I looked at my watch and noted I had little more than an hour until my bus at the glacier center left for town. Luckily I had packed rain pants in case of an impromptu storm so when I got back to my kayak I took off my shredded cloths and put on the rain pants. Within minutes a small motor boat arrived to take me back to the car. Because I had taken the bus to Jostedalsbreen rather than driving my own vehicle, I didn't have time to do the full day trek and still make the bus, so we prearranged to have a motorboat pick me up and save me from the hour and a half kayak back to the car. On the ride back, towing an extra kayak, we did a few circles at top speed around some large icebergs, then continued on to the cars. At the car I got a ride back to the glacier center with Carlos and another guy who was actually the owner of Ice Troll Adventures. We had a brief but nice chat, arriving at the center with about 15 minutes until my bus left.
I went inside to use the restroom, and look around, passing by the front desk I for some reason had the thought, maybe I will ask the desk attendant where the bus leaves from, she looked down at her watch, “it leaves right now” she said. I had somehow gotten the wrong time in my head and hadn't bothered to check my schedule. With my bag I ran to the door, just in time to see the top of the bus drive on down the road. I charged down the path and leaped into the bushes, which were thick hearty plants that immediately tore at me and bogged me down. “Shit” I cried, “shit shit shit,” as the bus drove out of sight. Hearing a yell I turned back and saw Carlos holding up keys and pointing at his car, “get in get in” he cried, “we can catch it.” I jumped in the passenger side as Carlos tore out of the parking lot, “did you see if it took the right fork or the left?” he said, “I didn't know there was a right and left fork” I replied, “well lets try this one” Carlos said as we curved left and down a winding road. Carlos drives like a mad man when he's not in a hurry, but now he was really going all out. The road was narrow and crammed in between a rocky mountainside and a steep ravine. Carlos' little rusted car creaked and grinded as it careened around turn after turn. After three minutes of clutching the door handle and the left side of my seat, we rounded a corner and saw the top of the bus up ahead. It was the first indication we had taken the correct road, I was relived. Soon the road straightened out and widened at a small junction where the bus came to a stop in front of a small set of low painted-wood buildings including a small but busy convenience store. Jamming the car into stop I hurriedly thanked Carlos and jumped out of the car and ran frantically up to the bus before it took off again. I caught the door in time and told the driver what had happened, paid my fare, waived to Carlos, and took my seat. The bus ride back, like the one up, was beautiful, again stopping at many small quaint towns each deserved of a postcard.
Once I arrived back to Sogndal, I took yet another breath-stealing cold swim in the fjord. Like the night before I waded about while watching the sun sink behind the mountaintops. Just a few buildings from my cabin is a small supermarket called Rema2000, not wanting to spend a small fortune on nachos like the night before, I decided to try and find something at the market. The market was small, even though it was probably the largest in the region. Most things I could recognize, and there were many more fish products than I am used to seeing at a store. I eventually bought what looked like a decent frozen pizza, some pita bread with tzatziki sauce, wax-wrapped cheese, and a six-pack of beer. Oddly enough they store only had one kind of beer, made locally, and it was about 40 cents American per bottle. I knew it had to be too good to be true. It was.
Back at my cabin I popped a beer and walked my frozen pizza over to the kitchenette. In the kitchenette I found a small sink, two empty counters, and a table top toaster oven. Thats it. Nothing else. There were no utensils, plates, or glasses, the only pan was a small metal pan that fit the toaster oven. I couldn't believe it. This was going to be interesting. I placed the frozen pizza on the pan and leaned back against the empty counter to sip my beer. A small of stature Italian man came in and started boiling a pot of pasta in his own stock pot. I forgot where he was from, but we got along well and shared meaningless stories until my pizza was done.
Ripping a corner from the pizza box I attempted to pull the pan out of the oven. It did not work. I sipped my half-gone beer and reassessed my situation. This time I ripped the box open, took a look around to make sure the owner was not about, then jammed the pizza box down under the pizza crust, it didn't work so well because the pizza was mostly burnt to the pan. But I managed to wedge it half under the pizza. Jamming and wedging, and tilting, I managed to get most of the pizza on top of the cardboard box, but I had also managed to slide half of the cheese, sauce and toppings down the back of the toaster oven. The Italian shook his head, but I did not feel bad for the mess I had made, “this wouldn't have happened if they stocked some damn cookware,” I said.
Back at my cabin I opened a second beer and tasted the cooling pizza. It was god awful. The sauce was not quite as rancid as the skinka (translated as either ham or buttock, I prefer to think it was ham), and the cheese was lacking in anything to desire. I folded the pizza and half and tried another bite from the other end. It was equally disgusting. Now keep in mind, I will eat most anything, and I was at this point starving, and yet I could not bare to bring myself to take a second bite. I was pissed because I had paid over $10 for that piece of shit. I walked out on the porch and spit up the last two bites, rinsed my mouth with beer, and then tried to eat cold stale pitta bread with overly garlicky and not so fresh tzatziki. It was pretty bad, but not as much so as the pizza. By now I was sitting on the cabin steps looking out across the fjord with my 5th beer in hand. The beer wasn't very good, it was missing several things that make a beer desirable, I am not sure what it was, but it didn't have it. The fifth beer half way down I looked the label over, still in disbelief that in the land of $10 dollar beer I had bought a sixer for less than $3. It had been a long day, and now I had something for my stomach to gnaw at, the breeze was soft and cool, the sun was setting, and I was too drunk to care the beer I had bought was non-alcoholic.
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