It's been a while since I've done an overnighter, and now with the mild spring producing plus temperatures overnight, and the Påskeferie (Easter holiday for non norsk speakers), it was a fine time to have a go.
Setting off from home it was nice to walk from the door, rather than taking any form of transport to get to our hike. Not quite on the Gail and Mick scale of walking from their home to Torridon for the start of their TGO Challenge, but hey, I'm effectively starting from scratch yet again! So, off towards the southern end of Østensjovannet and about 45 minutes from home we were at Skraperudtjern, admiring the beaver felled trees on the bank. No rest for the wicked, we carried steadily up the track before taking the forest track to the right at Hullet.
There was a lot of water coming down the bekk (yes, it's another Norwegian word), as we walked up the track, following two runners who were also finding the track a bit steep. We paused at Fjelstad which was shut after the winter ski season, and started as two mallards whooshed over us to land in the still pond in front of us. A wavy coated retriever bounded up eagerly, full of energy as its owner, less full of energy, stopped to take a seat at the picnic bench. We were off again, passing Fjelstadbakken and on, down towards Katismyr along the tracks still to Øgården, which must be one of the sweetest looking places to live! A woman was sat on a bench nearby, sunning herself in the warmth, before we started upwards to another lovely place I remembered I visited two, nearly three years ago, when I first visited Thomas. It was a large stand of birch trees, this time leafless but back then the leaves were green tinged with gold at the start of the autumn. It was very much in the mood of a Klimt painting, so I was happy to take a break for a coffee, ahead of the leaves, sure to visit this place again.
We're trying out the GSI filters to make coffee, spoiled by the great coffee we make at home, so used those to make a brew at the side of the birch stand, enjoying the peace and quiet before an incoming phone call. It felt quite incongruous, to be connected like that, although I had connected up to a Norges-serie map to track the route. Still, we continued after a while, back onto the track with hvisveis (white wood anemones) and becks bordering the track. Wanting to go somewhere neither of us had been before, we took the track up to Gullsmeden, which turned out to be an unexpectedly nice surprise!
I had thought the name would be something to do with Oslo having it's own mini gold rush, but no, it was the name of one of the earliest inhabitants, Samuel Gullsmed, according to the plaque erected on a tree for him.It was tempting to stay put, but, despite a lovely Peacock butterfly, we decided to head on to see where the track took us. Well, we knew from the map that it would be down towards the edge of Elvåga, and, because of the lake being one used for drinking water, our decision was confirmed by a sign precluding camping within 50m of the water.
Onwards onto the next part of the track, which the map handily showed to be another stretch of forest road. Foolhardily ignoring the red stripe next to it we set off into some gloriously seldom used forestry, old pines covered with lichen and shaggy fallen birch, masses of glowing moss, reaching like extra terrestrials into the sunlit beams, ready to teleport any unwitting animal. Well, it felt like that as we started to bog hop, get side tracked by the beauty of the place, only to realise another bit of squelchiness was upon us already. Ah, Norwegian wood. Or bog. There's masses of the stuff and it brought back memories of being sucked in almost to my hips. I don't advocate just loosely tying your shoelaces here - if you do that you risk losing a trail shoe. I saw the odd bike track and cursed the creator for making the track worse. At a glance it didn't even look so bad, but moss can be so deceptive, laying there, seductively plump, encouraging you to tread on it with no obvious indication that there is no bottom! No bottom! Trickster!
Actually, it wasn't that bad really, but my nightmares only made it so. We emerged onto a gravel forest road (hurray!) that lead down to Pettersbråten, a place I remembered liking a few years ago but haven't been through since, and headed up on a trail to Langvannet. Wrong trail, but the snapshot below was worth the detour.
Going back it was easy to see the right, blue marked trail, which took us on the other side of Sotåsen, which we aimed to go around to pick up a red marked trail (for the skiers) to take us to the lake.
It wasn't to be, but we did meet some super trail, soft pine needle duff with boulders and reindeer moss either side, the lowering sun shining on the pale jade. Wonderful!
More mire (myr) to come, though not too bad, especially when you just accept your feet are going to get wet, but no red mark! Huh? We double checked against the paper map and the Norges-serie on my phone which clearly marked both our position and the path, but find it we could not. We continued to head south on the blue trail, passing a couple in their twenties who looked like they were out for a stroll (hey guys, this is serious hiking going on here!) and emerged out onto one of the main tracks leading from Østmarkkapellet on the Flyktningruta (refugee trail from WWII).
Pausing to check our bearings, although there wasn't much doubt, we saw a middle aged couple with a dog, all looking a bit miserable, which we saw why when we saw a quagmire worthy of a hippo. A hippo on a trail bike. Nice. Negotiating planking, stones, mud and mud we 'made it' to our exit point - a red trail heading up to Langvannet! (Hurray!) Of course, red trail equals skiers equals snowmelt equals... more mire! Opportunity to wash mud from the quag off and have a lovely cooling foot wash in frigid water for 200m. Wonderful!
I hope you can detect the sarcasm in my voice...
Langvannet opened up to be somewhat foreshortened due to a peninsular (it looked like a nice place to camp), but we stayed at the south end, tired (me especially) and wanting to just chill out a bit, eat and go to bed.
Thomas pitched the Scarp 2 that we'd borrowed from Tor Magnus and then fired up my side winder for some chilli while I fired up a fire, or tried to – it was so wet the fire took hours to be at all sustainable. Enough dead heather gave intense blasts of heat but without a saw for dead wood (there's plenty) we didn't have enough larger chunks to just burn. Anyway, the Scarp 2 looked great, we had full tummies and more coffee and the masses of down we'd brought with us were fluffing up nicely.
We were joined by a pair of Mallard ducks. It took some debate to decide which of the two was the noisiest, but decided on the female as Thomas saw her take a beakful of water to gargle out a quack. They were pretty friendly towards us, fighting for our attention with a Canada Goose, the friendliness regretted as they kept up an almost incessant quacking for a couple of hours. Clearly mating season with a bachelor Mallard being swam off by the male of the pair.
It being April, as soon as the sun dipped below the trees it started to get cold, our thermometers confusingly reading 0C and 6C. We weren't sure which was right but it didn't feel like 6. I elected to head for bed so after a wash with warm water (such luxury when you're hiking) and feeling much better for it, I headed off to bed first. It was a struggle to negotiate the layers I had brought with me - my Western Mountaineering Alpinlite bag with an MLD 28F Spirit quilt on top, plus my Rab Neutrino plus, and a lovely hot water filled Nalgene bottle Thomas was lovely enough to make for me. For once in recent memory I was actually warm. Bliss!And then the warmth started to fade as the burning chill I got from my thighs and bum started to remove the feeling of warmth from those regions (my feet were still warm though – yay!), and I started to feel my torso get cold. I ran in my sleeping bag but to no avail, and, because the pitch was just so slightly slanted, Thomas's mat, bag and body were sliding into mine, pushing me against the very cold inner tent wall. Did you know inner tent walls were such great convectors of heat? I hadn't realised how efficient they were, especially when combined with a touch of condensation. I started dreaming about creating a pair of Primaloft pants with pockets to put strategically placed chemical hand warmer things in – butt checks and thighs. But my turning, bag running and rearranging kept disturbing Thomas, and he must have been almost delirious with tiredness because he suggested he went cowboy camping under the stars. I reluctantly agreed in the hope he would get some sleep rather than hypothermia under his JRP quilt, but as soon as he left the building and I moved away from the sides, I started to warm up and to fall asleep.A moose call woke both of us in the night (actually, it was me – I screamed/grunted myself awake from a bad dream), but I could hear animal noises so I fell back to sleep knowing that Thomas was alive.
It being April, as soon as the sun dipped below the trees it started to get cold, our thermometers confusingly reading 0C and 6C. We weren't sure which was right but it didn't feel like 6. I elected to head for bed so after a wash with warm water (such luxury when you're hiking) and feeling much better for it, I headed off to bed first. It was a struggle to negotiate the layers I had brought with me - my Western Mountaineering Alpinlite bag with an MLD 28F Spirit quilt on top, plus my Rab Neutrino plus, and a lovely hot water filled Nalgene bottle Thomas was lovely enough to make for me. For once in recent memory I was actually warm. Bliss!And then the warmth started to fade as the burning chill I got from my thighs and bum started to remove the feeling of warmth from those regions (my feet were still warm though – yay!), and I started to feel my torso get cold. I ran in my sleeping bag but to no avail, and, because the pitch was just so slightly slanted, Thomas's mat, bag and body were sliding into mine, pushing me against the very cold inner tent wall. Did you know inner tent walls were such great convectors of heat? I hadn't realised how efficient they were, especially when combined with a touch of condensation. I started dreaming about creating a pair of Primaloft pants with pockets to put strategically placed chemical hand warmer things in – butt checks and thighs. But my turning, bag running and rearranging kept disturbing Thomas, and he must have been almost delirious with tiredness because he suggested he went cowboy camping under the stars. I reluctantly agreed in the hope he would get some sleep rather than hypothermia under his JRP quilt, but as soon as he left the building and I moved away from the sides, I started to warm up and to fall asleep.A moose call woke both of us in the night (actually, it was me – I screamed/grunted myself awake from a bad dream), but I could hear animal noises so I fell back to sleep knowing that Thomas was alive.
Thomas was still alive the next morning and exclaimed how he couldn't wear his shoes - the thorough soaking yesterday in the last stretch to camp mean't that most marvellous of physical reactions of water expanding when forming ice had occurred. In his shoes, in his laces and in his socks. I got off lightly with just my socks and laces frozen into new species of animal shapes. Thomas reclaimed his Nalgene hot water bottle to warm his Terrocs while I procrastinated. The promise of coffee and things not really being so bad coaxed me out of my downy cocoon into the frozen wilderness where Thomas showed me the selection of frozen ice bottles, declaring that only his sleeping mat had been free from frost.
After breakfast we packed up as quickly as this blog post is long. Maybe about 4 hours. The birds were back, plus with a visitor in human form with green Norrøna pack, who made his way straight across the surrounding myr with confidently booted steps. He knew where he was going. A pale flash of flesh gave him away on the side of the back towards the peninsula.
After lots of coffee we were away!
I'd spotted a trail, not in the myr, leading up over the rocky outcrop to the south of us and edging the marsh. We took that route back to the mud trail, where the blue and red trails ran parallel, the blue trying to stay dry, the red not caring less.
We came down this path, in earshot of shrieking kids, excited to be out, were heard ahead so we took the road less travelled through some wonderful pine woods, following a narrow, stony stream bed to another forest track.
I was particularly excited at this point to know we were near Trollvann, excited just because of the name. There are lots of places in Norway with the Troll prefix - here we have Trollåsen (Troll hill), Trollvann (Troll lake), Trolldalen (Troll dale) to name just three. Yesterday we'd been near Trolldalsåsen (Troll dale hill), just to mix it up a little. All within 2 or 3 km of each other. I like the Norwegian preoccupation with trolls, and if you haven't seen it, check out Troll Hunter (film, English subtitles) for more cultural insight!
Lots of potential walk opportunities passed us by as, now tired from the night of little sleep and needing way more than 600ml of coffee to get me going, we stuck to the trail to head around the north of Trollvann and south of Østmakkapellet, passing masses of hvitveis, blåveis and hestehov (Colts foot).
This photo doesn't show any of those, just moss, but moss can be beautiful, right?
There were lots of planked paths, some reaching to terra firm, some sadly a little short. All was welcomed, much done by the DNT or Østmarkas Venner, of which Thomas is one!
Our brains had switched over into "Let's get home" mode, and my foot, two weeks on from a minor op on the underside, was still a bit tender, so we decided to stick to the forest road from Trollvann and to make our way towards Gronmo and from there to Mortensrud to catch a T (metro) or bus into Oslo for a Max burger.
Marked and unmarked paths ran off from the main track. So enticing. Maybe this is a potential next walk?
We had a quick pit stop at the golf range for some sausage and turmix (the Norwegian for trail mix) and spoke with a man who, it turned out, had roamed Østmarka all his grown life, who knew every millimetre of it. He had an orienteering map with him, showing so much more detail than the maps we had with us, or those easily purchased that we knew of. The mapping in Norway is something I am steadily becoming more familiar with but do get frustrated with because it isn't as simple as the UK Ordnance Survey system. Perhaps a subject for a different post.
Leaving the comfort of the stones outside the golf range, we proceeded along the hazard of the driving range, spotting while balls among the hvitveis and hoping we weren't a direct recipient. A guy on a fat bike, GoPro front mounted and looking serious(ly shattered) pushed past us. I wondered out loud if we'll be on a YouTube video in the near future.
We continued on into increasingly desolate countryside. More logging activity, more gravel, more lyslope lights, and turned off short of Skullerud to Mortensrud, passing a lovely ochre house along the way to the bus.
