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Jotunheimen ("Land of the Giants") National Park contains Norway's highest peaks, Galdhopiggen (8,100 ft) and Glittertind (8,047 ft), and around a hundred other peaks just below the 8,000 foot mark. The park is about 200 kilometers north of Oslo and encompasses around 3,900 square kilometers in area. It is a dense collection of snow-capped jagged peaks on a high mountain plateau with many glaciers, lakes and river valleys. Jotunheimen is also one of Norway's most popular hiking destinations. Luckily for me, September is not the most popular time for hiking in Norway, so I was able to enjoy the park without having to deal with crowds.
I was so impatient to get to Jotunheimen that I took the early morning bus out of Oslo instead of waiting for the afternoon bus. The five hour journey to Gjendesheim (with a change at Fagernes) meant that I would arrive around 2:00 o'clock in the afternoon.
I'm not accustomed to beginning a long hike that late in the day, but I was so eager to explore the park that I knew I wouldn't be able to wait. The bus ride was comfortable, but I found it to be pure torture: the scenery was so beautiful outside the bus window, and the weather so perfect, that my impatience only increased by the minute. I wanted to be outside on those sunny hillsides ringed by evergreens beside the clear streams. Instead I was on a bus, waiting. At a certain point in the journey north from Oslo, the highway climbs onto a mountain plateau where the trees simply vanish. All around there is nothing but rock and water. Long thin poles mark both sides of the highway, presumably so that the road can be located in the winter snows. Although the highway climbs and dips and turns, the rocky, treeless scenery never changes.
I had mixed feelings upon seeing the strange new scenery. At first I was shocked. Had I made a mistake? Did I really want to spend a week hiking without seeing any greenery or trees? Would it snow? Where the heck was I? When the bus dropped me off in the parking lot at Gjendesheim, I felt like I was in the middle of nowhere. Ahead lay the glittering lake Gjende. DNT operates a lodge at Gjendesheim and I could have checked in and spent the night there. But it was a beautiful afternoon and I was ready to go, so I decided to push myself and start the trek to the Memurubu hut. It was summer so I had enough daylight hours (so I thought) to get there before dark. If I left immediately and hustled I should arrive by 8:30 – 9:00 pm.
The excellent (but expensive) hiking map I had purchased from DNT very clearly marked the park trails and hut locations. Instead of marking distances on the trails, however, it marked hiking times.
 For example, the ridge trail from Gjendesheim to Memurubu is marked as a 6 hour hike. At first I liked this concept, as I believed I could plan my hikes according to the "official" time estimates. (I assume DNT provided these estimates). Then I realized the problem with such a system. Some people hike faster than others, some people like to stop and smell the roses. Was this a 6-hour hike, or a 5-hour-plus-rest-stops hike? If I hustled would I just barely make it, while zooming past the beautiful scenery, or would I have a chance to actually enjoy what I'd traveled so far to see?
Luckily, I had no idea I was biting off more than I could chew. I had only my own ignorance to blame. I forgot to factor in the elevation change in the trails and was completely ignorant about the level of difficulty of the Norwegian trails. This was my first hiking trip (and definitely will not be my last!) in Norway. The hike from Gjendesheim to Memurubu climbs rapidly from an elevation of about 3,000 feet up to a ridge almost 5,200 feet above Lake Gjende, and eventually (6 hours later?) redescends to the opposite lake shore. In other words, the trail makes a 2,200 foot elevation gain and 2,200 foot descent. I was foolish enough to undertake this effort after a 5 hour bus ride, relatively late in the day. Perhaps
that's why the Norwegians whom I encountered returning to Gjendesheim gave me such wondering looks!
At a certain point I realized I would have to really hustle to make it to the Memurubu hut before nighttime . . .
© 2000 by Robert Cannon
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