Gaustatoppen hike

Gaustatoppen - with 1.883 m the highest mountain in the Telemark region in Southern Norway. Always wanted to hike up there! The view from the summit - accessible on foot in the summer, on a rocky pathway of medium difficulty - is impressive, as one can see an area of approximately 60.000 km², one sixth of Norway's mainland.
Also my friends Ginta and Marina always wanted to hike up Gaustatoppen and so we had arranged a hiking weekend end of August. Ginta's boyfriend Hadrien wasn't too enthusiatic about this excursion and Marco had to work, but Marina's boyfriend Paolo joined us as well. So it was the four of us for this short weekend escape.
Stavsro, the starting point of the hike, is just 175 km, i.e. a 2,5/3 hours drive away from Oslo and thus easily feasible within a 2-day/1-night trip.
On Saturday morning 26/08 we picked up the car we had rented through Nabobil and headed Westwards towards the area of Rjukan in Telemark.

On the way we stopped in Heddal for a quick visit of Heddal stave church.

In the afternoon we arrived at the lake in Stavsro where the hike starts and where we set up our tents for the night.

Around 4 p.m. we were ready to begin our hike.

 

The summit is in sight!

Some two hours later we reached the top.

View from the top of Gaustatoppen mountain.

Sunset.

I know, we had started our hike quite late. But as you can see on below picture, there were many people still going up when we were already on our way down. The reason was that for that night it was organized a night hike up to Gaustatoppen, with a concert at the mountain station on the top. Since it was for all four of us the first hike up to Gaustatoppen we wanted to enjoy the view and the panorama from the top during daylight. (Ginta and Marina had actually considered at an earlier stage of the planning of that trip to do the hike twice that day: during daytime and during the night event!) Once we had reached the summit, it was too early to stay up there all the time until the start of the concert at 11 p.m. or so. Of course, we stayed for a hot drink and a waffle, but we couldn't wait for another 3 hours up there. The little café would have kicked us out without any further consumption. And waiting outside was out of question. It was actually quite cold that day, especially up at the mountain top. We would definitely have needed a blanket and much much warmer clothes for staying up there for further 3 hours waiting + 1 hour concert without much moving. And that we didn't have and didn't want. So we started our descent towards the valley.
The only problem: we were in four going down on the same narrow path that approximately 5.000 other hikers were coming up. We were definitely marching against the stream. It was nearly impossible to advance!

It was the period shortly before the elections in Norway. At one point along the hike a political party had a variety of those signs with political goals that one could take a photograph with.

I think it took us about 2,5 hours to get back to our base in Stavsro. We finished our hike with a warming cup of tea at a café and enjoying our well deserved "turmat" (quite tasty freeze-dried mountain food that just needs to be mixed with hot water) :-) Yummy reindeer stew!

Quite tired after our hike, we fell into our "beds". The temperature was quite chilly, especially during the night, and the humidity tried to penetrate our sleeping bags. By 5 a.m. all four of us were already awake and none of us was in the mood for porridge breakfast in the cold or for morning fishing by the lake. The car heating was too tempting. So, unsurprisingly, within minutes we had dismantled our tents and had packed everything for our early bird return to Oslo.

Yes, it was early and cold, but we were rewarded with a super beautiful sunrise. The light was spectacular; our cameras though didn't manage to catch the light with its full beauty the way we saw it with our eyes. 

 

 

On our way back to Oslo we made 2 stops. One at the place of a friend of Ginta and Marina. The second one around lunchtime in Drammen, an hour before Oslo. Here Ginta knew a Lithuanian restaurant where we had lunch. Hadrien had taken the train to Drammen to join us there to have some typical (and not very light) Lithuanian dishes: cepelinai (potato-meat dumplings in cream sauce) and a sort of meatball gratin.

Thanks, Ginta, Marina and Paolo for this nice weekend :-) I really enjoyed it and am happy to have finally done Gaustatoppen - in great company!

(Thanks also for letting me use some of your pictures on this blog.)