Trolltunga; or, the Troll's Tongue

It's been a minute since I've posted, so here's a big one (with lots of pictures!):

On Monday of this week, my roommate (German), myself, and three other Germans embarked on a trip to Trolltunga, a 12 km hike up and down a mountain to the tongue, and another 12 km back down.  The entrance to the hike to the Troll's Tongue is about ten minutes by car from the town of Odda,which is about a five and a half hour drive from Kristiansand:

Because I'm a foolish good American, I stayed up until 2:00 AM watching (American) football the night before with the intention of getting some sleep in the car.  The plan was to head out at about 7:00 AM, get to Odda by about 1:00 PM (13:00 in rest-of-the-world time, which has been a difficult adjustment - everyone just gives me blank stares when I refer to AM or PM), reach the tongue by about 18:00 or 19:00, and find a place to set up our tents and camp for the night.  When we actually started the drive,though, I was unable to sleep because of how incredible the sights were.  Every direction you look there's a breathtaking mountain, gorgeous lake, fjord, or river, trees and mosses combining into seemingly endless shades of green, or a combination of all three. I think I eventually nodded off for about 45 minutes at some point in the middle of the drive.  Since we were on a timetable, we only made a couple stops to take pictures; had we stopped for pictures every time we wanted to, we might still be on our way to Trolltunga.  Here is a picture from each of the two stops we made on the way:

After completing the five hour drive of twists and turns up, down, and through the mountains of southern Norway, we finally arrived at Odda and made our way to the Trolltunga entrance.  Here's the view from the bottom:

There are two ways to complete the first leg of the trip to Trolltunga.  The first way, or the "suggested" way that is open to the public, involves taking a "path" up to the top.  The second way, marked by confusing signs indicating that the following property was private and (?) public, was to take the service stairs of the track for the site's out-of-commission since 1998 cable car.  Had you told me, or had I been more prepared/informed, that I would climb 2 km up somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 - my best guess, I regret not counting - "steps" to complete the first stage of the Trolltunga hike, I would have replied, "No I'm not."  And I probably wouldn't have if I weren't going with a group, but I can't let the others think I'm a coward, can I?  Of course not!

I wouldn't say that I'm more afraid of heights than your average person, but I have what I like to consider a healthy fear of heights.  The first ten or so minutes of the climb, I kept thinking, "Okay, if you fall, you're going to break your legs and probably fall and roll to your death."  As you can imagine, that wasn't exactly helping to ease my nerves, so I began to focus on taking each step and thinking, "You'll be okay.  You have done harder things physically.  You'll do harder things physically."  Whoever was tasked with building these steps is a much braver person than I am.

Next thing I know, it was 45 minutes later and, although I was drenched in sweat and very glad to be running on less than four hours of sleep, I had reached the top of the stairs.  There was another group of international students who had taken a trip to Trolltunga the weekend before our trip, but they didn't bring any camping or hiking gear with them - just their clothes and water bottles; they claimed that the stairs took them about 30-45 minutes.  It took me and the one other from our party about 50-55 minutes with my backpack - containing a change of clothes, jacket and hat, sleeping bag, and some food - and a tent strapped to my back.  It took the other three about 75 minutes to complete the stairs.  Here is the view from the top:

And here is what it looked like in the other direction:

The remaining 10 km of the trail to the top of Trolltunga is marked only by periodic "T's" that were oftentimes part of cairns that I assume were put together by the trail's visitors.

Here's a picture of our group shortly after finishing the stairs and setting out on the trail:

There are many opportunities to get fresh water on the trail.  The bottle of water I filled up and drank after completing the stairs was some of the best water I have ever consumed.

After about a 2 km hike uphill, or up-mountain, I guess, we reached the first peak of the hike.  This is what the view from the top looked like:

Here are a few pictures from around roughly kilometer four through seven:

Kilometers four through about seven were pretty easy going as the incline was not very steep.  Once we hit kilometers eight through ten, though, the path led up and down and up and down and up the side of the mountains where progress seemed extremely slow.  Somewhere around this point we were offered our first view of the fjord from above:

Here's a cool rock formation about a kilometer away from the tongue:

After about five hours of hiking, some hours being much tougher than others, and numerous breaks to eat and recover, we reached the tongue.  All along the way, the views in every direction were spectacular - a perfect postcard nearly everywhere you look.  I have seen some pretty incredible nature on TV and online in my life, but the feeling you experience while consuming these landscapes with your own eyes is one that I could never replicate in my wildest dreams.  The following pictures hardly do justice to the most incredible world class terrain I've ever seen:

Really anything I can write or show with pictures from here can only be less impressive than the view of/from the Troll's Tongue, but after standing around dumbstruck for about twenty minutes, our group headed back about a kilometer and set up camp for the night.  After putting up the tents, we found a nice spot to watch the sun go down and ate dinner like people who had just spent the last six hours climbing a mountain.

I probably could have brought more warm clothes, another change of socks, a warmer sleeping bag, an actual sleeping pad, but I survived the night with what I had.  I guess the only remarkable thing I can say about sleeping at Trolltunga is this: it was cold.  We woke up early the next morning and sleepily packed up the gear surrounded by fog while trying not to mention how cold we all were.  Here are some pictures of the hike back to where we took the stairs in the morning fog:

Once we were back to the top of the stairs we had a decision to make: climb down the stairs (and hope that nobody happened to be coming up the stairs during the descent) or take the "path" back down.  It was an easy decision for us; everyone had had their fill of the stairs for one go.  The first part of the "path" consisted of mud, more mud, and, where there wasn't any mud to be found, some mud.  Having spent most of the hike up and down trying to avoid walking in mud, I was absolutely thrilled to be a part of the All-Mud Trolltunga team.  After what seemed ten kilometers of walking in and around mud, we reached a dry portion of the "path" that consisted of rocks of various sizes and tree roots.  Walking down this section of the path seemed to require just as much energy as walking up the steps.  Here are some pictures of the non-mud part of the path back down:

Finally! Daylight:

This was easily the most intense hiking/outdoors adventure I have ever completed, but it also happened to be the most rewarding.  I've seen some big country that is indescribably beautiful.  I hope there will be experiences for me in nature that can live up to this one, but I will be pleasantly surprised when they come.  Trolltunga set the bar pretty high.