12 Sept – The Buer Surprise

From Norway

My plans for this weekend changed a few times, and on my third time around, I settled for the goals of finding good hiking trails and not too far of a drive (~3 hours). My chosen destination: Hardvanger National Park. It’s the largest national park in Norway, you can see 1/6 of Norway from the peak/plateau summit, and it has the largest herd of wild reindeer. Yes folks, this is Santa’s herding grounds. As for this chosen destination, never quite made it there.

Saturday morning started on the road just shy of 8am, after the hotel breakfast. It was meandering evergreen hilly roads passing by pristine, empty lakes. An hour and a half into the drive, I go by the town of Sejford where more than half of the car traffic is exiting. I drive-by curious as to the event, and see hundreds of campers, then carnival rides, then tents. Okay, my curiosity has got the best of me. I U-turn (afterall the Norwegian highways are many times just 2-lane roads) and return to the “exit”. The parking attendant explained that the festival started as an animal petting zoo many years ago and has expanded into a crafts fair and carnival. Since so many locals were in attendance, do as the locals do! After paying to park and paying to enter (yes, entrance fee!), I passed the carny rides and headed for the tents. 92% of the craft tents were junk… black t-shirts with wolf or Indian emblems, cheap camouflage gear, trinkets, etc. It’s stuff you find in the 99cent stores at home, however they have no such stores here so it’s a novelty. The 8% that were appealing were either antiques (old farm, kitchen, or bathroom tools/toys/décor) or a wool yarn table. I purchased a wall-hanging white bucket from the 1920s that says “Sepe” (which the guy told me means soap... I just checked and it does). It’ll be a good flower holder on the wall next to the front door.

After an hour or so, I’m satisfied with my "crafts fair" visit and had bigger and better places to see so I continued on. Another hour or so of driving passes and it’s lunchtime. I pull off at an exit that looks promising (on my map) to have a lake and decent hiking on the edge of the south side of the national park. The exit quickly becomes a residential climb up a hill. The asphalt morphs into dirt road with aspen-like trees all around. Corner around corner around … what?! There’s a herd of sheep at my front bumper. I didn’t have to wait long, they moved due to the pestering of the Australian Shepard Dog and the Human Shepard. Of course I took a picture after the harrowing experience was over. The novelty was that each sheep had it’s own bell on its collar! It made quite a ruckus…. dozens of bell ringers walking down the dirt road. The lunch hike through sheep pasture was uneventful, yet pretty. Good views of distant green hills.

Back on the main road again, I went through some high country… think above tree line in Colorado, but in a wetter climate. There were more lakes and more green flora. Some snow was nestled on some of the peaks still too. I was awed by this scenery, and had to pull the car off the road to adventure out for another hike… though this one was more of a walk. Stunning.

Again, behind the wheel, I was finally determined to make the rest of the drive without distractions. I made it through many tunnels, down the pass, out through a tunnel and to my right, alas! A rainbow at eye-level (I was on the side of a mtn) and the rainbow went down into the valley. It seemed very close, however you can never tell how close they really are. Grabbing for my camera was out of the question… left to my memory only. I took my exit from 134 to road 13 North, through a small town, and got side-swiped by heavy mist. A quick nod to the right revealed twin gushing waterfalls. Pullover and take more pictures. They were big for being that close to the road. Impressive!

Back on the road, really getting there now... I promised myself at least. The water from that fall had let out into the stream next to the road. A few more tall and skinny waterfalls later and that stream next to the road matures into a fjord! My first one. Within 20 minutes I was at the town of Odda and gawking at the opposing mountain side across the fjord. Whoa! A glacier! I’m definitely going to hike to that! So, I’m taken by the Odda exit and deposited at a sign of 6 arrows. I decide to follow the “Buer” arrow as that sounds like a fitting glacier name. It took me up the old-residential valley to a farmstead with a single red house. The Buer trail starts along this houses’s driveway. It’s 4:30pm, plenty of time to hike to a glacier. I booked up this trail, to the surprise of downward mountaineers (carrying crampons + axes). Apparently they don’t see alone females hiking up such trails in the late afternoon. I assured them I was only going to the bottom of the glacier & would turnaround. That sufficed their interest. I made it to as close as I was comfortable within an hour. It was quite windy, on rocky terrain, and the sign had threatened that Buer can be unstable in areas, (let alone the fact that my own two feet were unstable from all the hiking of the day), so that meant I was about 200 feet away. They recommend touching it when you are with guides, so I'll save it for that day. Next, returned down the trail with my energy just about wasted… stumbling feet, loopy head, and wondering where to find a bed.

And I drove on. An hour later, at 8pm, I parked for the night at the Best Western in Kinsarvik. It looked like a good town to use the next day to approach the National Park Hardvanger (still the weekend “goal”). I fell fast asleep within the hour. Afterall, I had big plans for Sunday… my weekend was only 50% over!