Galdhøpiggen(2469m) and Glittertind(2452m)

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[youtube=Wm-X2f4_9uU]

Early the 4th of July Cathrine and I drove the 5 hour long drive to Juvasshytta(1841m), and Galdhøpiggen(HP of Norway and Oppland). It might be worth mentioning that we killed a badger on the way.. Stupid animal ran out in front of the car, and no way we could possibly dodge it. Poor thing.

At Juvasshytta we were definitely not alone! Grouping up with over 60 others and three guides, where two of them actually are Nepalisean sherpas spending the summer in Norway trying to sell of some trips to Himalaya. Dawa Sherpa has been to Everest eight times!

The walk to the summit is divided into two seperate parts. First one walks in an individual tempo to the glacier styggebreen. From here the guides tie you up with the proper equipment and lead you across the glacier. The walking part is done in less than 2 hours, but you have to add somewhere around 40 minutes for preparations and waiting for the rest of the group before crossing the glacier. On the other side you are free to walk in whatever tempo, but you are told to be down within 1 1/2 hrs. I think we spent 30-40 minutes on the way up, 30 minutes at the summit and 20 minutes down. It's somewhat steep so the descent is far quicker than the ascent. At the top there's a little hut where you can buy coffee and snacks. It surely removes much of the "out in the wild" feeling, but the view was spectacular nonetheless. Turning around and walking down to the glacier again, same routine and we were down at Juvashytta around 4pm.

Now we were going to sleep in a private hut outside of Lom somewhere. Only problem was that the cottage owner didn't arrive in Lom until late that night, and we were really sleepy. We ended up at a Hotel just out of Lom, but no need for vacany since we were there for the swimming pool! After killing some hours with bathing and sauna, the others arrived (some hours after planned and I'd been awake for ~36hrs). Really nice cottage indeed!

Fifth of July
Drove towards Glitterheim (1390m) for our summit attempt on Glittertind(2452m, and Norway 2nd HP). Excellent weather conditions, and we had increased our group with 3 members. Thomas(Cottage owner, or atleast his family owns it) together with Ingrid and Marcus(same guy as in the previous blog entries). On contratry to Juvasshytta one cannot drive all the way to Glitterheim. So it's a gread advantage to bring bicycles for the 7km between the toll gate and Glitterheim. Starting off around noon from the toll gate we arrived at Glitterheim approximately 25 minutes later. Half way up(2hrs 10mn) Ingrid had more and more problems breathing. This was really like an asthmatic, and she had no other options than to turn around walk down. Cathrine joined her. (..Now they were supposed to make us dinner, which never happend..) The guys proceeded onto the glacier and reached the summit in little under 4 hours, pretty slow actually, but in this weather there was no need to hurry. This glacier is much safer than the one at Glittertind, so it's ok to follow a fresh trail. Snapping some photos (thanks to the French guy for taking a photo of us alltogether) and enjoying the view for 30-40 minutes and then we started on the descent. We spent approximately 2 hours from the summit to the toll gate, way faster than the way up. Great day!

The next morning I woke up sick, had to frequently visit the loo and blamed it all on some wine we "enjoyed" after returning to the cottage. Now I was ill for another 5 days, and I've never experienced a five day hangover before, so it had to be something else. Now my mom read in the paper that six other guys had been drinking mountin water on Glittertind the same day as we, and they turned so ill they couldn't summit. Now this was a bit more extreme than my occurence, and all of the others in my group did drink the same water as me. But I did fill up one of my bottles with it, and therefore did drink much more than the others..

//Sorry for the lousy video quality.

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