Ski trip on Jostedalsbreen (Jostedal glacier)

This trip was organized by Petter Bjørstad in the end of May, 1995. The trip has been a tradition for him during many years (see e.g. last year's experiences by Jeremy Cook.)

Jostedal glacier is the largest one in Norway. We started our trip on a sunny morning from Luen by Innvikfjorden.

The picture was taken at our first breath-stop about 300 m. height. At this point it seemed almost unbelievable that the next three days we will be able to see only snow, ice and rocks: forgetting all about spring and warmth. We started this day from a few meters above sea level and came all the way up to the 1848 meters by the end of the day. We could put on our skees at level of about 400 meters.

The mountain path up to Skålatornet

is said to be the steepest one in the whole Norway. This picture was taken on the next morning near a tower-like house (that was btw. built as a tuberculosis hospital sic! more than a hundred years ago.)

Our way went through Skålabreen the next day. It was quite a lot up and down on there. During the whole trip we went almost 5000 meters up as a sum. Most of that was made on the first two days.

Sometimes we had to use also some mountain-climbing equipment. After one such climbing.

Towards the end of the day we came onto Jostedalsbreen itself -- enormous amount of ice.

and climbed up the mountain Lodalskåpa at 2083 m.

The weather was excellent and a very big part of Norway (namely, the one consisting of ice, snow, rocks and ...air:) could be seen from Lodalskåpa.

The second night we slept in tents. As the wind was quite strong we had to build some protective walls of snow.

The next morning: preparations for leaving.

The third day was more easy in the sense that mostly it was flat as we were moving on the glacier south-west. But this was the day with the largest number of kilometers covered. On the way we were enjoying beautiful view onto the lake

Lovatnet.

At last on that day we came to

the cabin of Lunde at the height of about 1000 meters.

On the next morning we came down this crack

in the 800 m. high wall-like rocks around the place called Lunde.

A few more hundred meters down and suddenly one could mention something really strange to one's ears after 3 days in the kingdom of snow and ice: the birds were singing!!

An excellent meal was waiting us then at Lunde's house. This is also been said to be the kind of tradition on these trips in many years.

April 5, 1996 / Eero.Vainikko@ii.uib.no

Back to my homepage