On Friday afternoon, me and 9 other adventurers met at the train station in Bergen. We hopped a train to Bulken where we were met by a party bus style taxi. We rode up to the trailhead and had a short, fun, rainy hike up to the cabin in mild rain with some tiny hail and driving wind right at the end. That weather really set the stage for the whole weekend. It wasn’t until Sunday afternoon that we saw the sun and even then the rain was spotty. The highlight of my weekend was easily dinner on Friday night. Our tour leader, Lise, cooked the most perfect traditional Norwegian stew with reindeer meat, onions, mushrooms, cream sauce and cranberries over mashed potatoes. It was so so so delicious that there was nothing left! We played a couple of group games with all 10 of us before hitting the bunk beds.
Saturday morning started with breakfast, preparing for the hike, cleaning the cabin, and hoping the weather would improve. Spoiler alert! It did NOT improve. After a scenic, wet, cold morning hike stopped for lunch in a little cabin. There were some older Norwegian hikers already there so we briefly talked to them before they left to brave the weather again. We couldn’t all fit inside the tiny cabin so it was nice of them leave so we could get a break from the rain. I think this is where everyone got really cold from sitting still too long. After a group discussion, we decided to abandon our original plan to hike to a new cabin and instead decided that it would be safer/nicer to turn around and go back to the same cabin. At this point we were only 1/3 of the way to the next cabin so i think it was a good choice. The scenery was pretty when you could see it but mostly it was very foggy and even more rainy.
I wasn’t able to take very many photos during the trek since it was so rainy. Here’s the few I did get:
On Saturday night, I learned a super fun new game for a group of people called Werewolf. I seriously recommend playing. All of the Germans knew the game, though they didn’t all know each other previously, so it must be all the rage in Germany. After a few exciting rounds, some people went to sleep while other of us stayed up to play a rousing game of Spoons! I came in 2nd place! Wooo!
We changed our Sunday plans and hiked to Voss to catch the train. It ended up being 21km total over an incline up from ~600m to 1200m and then down to 70m above sea level. I am still sore more than 24 hours later, so you know it was a good weekend of hiking!
berginbergen 