A night in Haukelifjell

I was eagerly awaiting another weekend and the opportunity to go to the mountains. I had planned a rather ambitious hike, which I will describe next time. However, I did not want to jump out of bed in the middle of the night to get there by 8 a.m. Following the description of one Norwegian couple’s expedition I just found, I decided that it would be a good idea to leave a day earlier and spend the night in a tent nearby, so that in the morning I would be rested and ready for a difficult hike. In the meantime, there was one more thing to do and the plan had to be modified a bit. Eventually, I ended up spending the night in the Haukeli Mountains, about 90 kilometers from my destination.

I chose a beautiful spot at the car park by the E134 road, with a stunning view of Ståvatn Lake and the snow-capped mountains around. I didn’t take a tent for this trip. Instead, I decided to test the tarp I had bought last year. I set it up, with some difficulty, between the car park and the lake shore, on hilly and uneven ground. It was a bit cloudy, but the forecast didn’t predict rain, which I was glad about, because my tarp probably wouldn’t guarantee me a dry night in case of rain.

It was still light after 10 p.m., which is normal for this latitude, even considering that the Haukeli Mountains are not located above the Arctic Circle. Nevertheless, I crawled into my sleeping bag. It is not easy to fall asleep when your eyes are feasting on such views. Besides, the uneven ground made it difficult to position your body comfortably and every now and then I would slide down a dozen or so centimeters. Eventually, however, my eyelids closed for good and I fell asleep.

The rain woke me up. It was not some terrible downpour, just a passing drizzle. However, it was falling directly on my head (in the future I will have to put more effort into setting up this type of shelter). Whether out of laziness or stubbornness, I decided not to move and wait out the rain. I just adjusted the tarp above me a little, thanks to which it stopped dripping directly on my head and I sank back into the land of dreams. And the rain really did have to pass soon after.

The next time I woke up to the cold. The sky was grey, neither completely night nor morning. I reached for my phone and checked the time. It was about half past three. It was a bit too early to get up already. It was cold though. In the evening, before I got into my sleeping bag, I changed into thermal underwear and a sweatshirt and put on warm socks. I even found a cap during the night, but I was freezing anyway. And the second thing is that I was uncomfortable. It was hard to get myself into a position where I could fall asleep again. Finally, at four o’clock I decided it was time to get up. In the toilet in the parking lot, I brushed my teeth, rolled up my stuff and set off without rushing. A hard hike awaited me that day.