Gygrestolen
It was one of those rainy weekends when even Norwegians stay inside. But for me, deprived of mountain activity for almost a month, it was no option to stay home for another weekend. I had to get out somewhere. Even if the whole sky was falling over my head, I needed some outdoor activity. I found an interesting spot on the internet, as shown in the photo above.
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These interesting rocks are located in the Midt-Telemark area, near the town of Bø. The place is called Gygrestolfjellet (or Gygrestolen) and is a popular destination for climbers. There is a 7-kilometer trail for ordinary hikers like me that starts and ends at Uvdalstjønn Lake. About halfway the loop you can meet these two vertical rocks.
As I mentioned, the weather was rather rainy and I did not find any other cars in the large (and free) parking lot. Someone up there has to watch over me, because as soon as I started my journey, it stopped raining. The break in the rain actually lasted until I was already leaving the path, more than three hours later. It does not mean that I was walking on dry ground. Definitely not. Forest paths ran down, creating swift streams. I even found a name for this phenomenon: path-river.
When I got a little higher and normally I could hang my eyes on some views, in the present conditions I only saw white. But I walked on, hoping that, like the rain, the Someone up there would take mercy on me and take away the clouds for some views. And He did take mercy. Not only that, the sun even started to peek out from behind the clouds. And as soon as I started taking pictures, I saw the Brocken Spectre in the clouds surrounding the Gygrestolfjellet rocks. I am so lucky. For those who are not in the subject, the Broocken Specter is an optical phenomenon most commonly found in the mountains, when the sun casts the observer’s shadow over the clouds below. Sometimes this shadow is surrounded by a rainbow circle. This optical phenomenon is named after the Brocken peak in the Harz Mountains (Germany), where it was first observed and described (1780).
I would like to spend the whole day there, because both the rock formation itself washed by the clouds and the spectacle of sunlight breaking through the clouds made an amazing impression. But it seemed that the weather would start to break down again any moment. So it was time to go. The further road led through the forest again. And again, a large section of it led along another path-river. The rain continued its flood process just after I had finished my trek.
Trips like this can supercharge internal batteries and it works better than an evening spent on the couch watching a good movie. But they can also be addictive.
