Planning an adventure
Sometime during autumn of 2020, I was sitting at home looking up different hiking trails and areas I would like to go to. Or if we are being completely honest here, I was probably procrastinating doing something else that I should have been doing at the time. You know how it is. Sometimes the desire to go hiking is stronger than the will to do other things. Even if you can’t go hiking right that instant.
Anyways…. I came across a trail made by The Norwegian Trekking Association (Den Norske Turistforening), or DNT for short, called MASSIV. MASSIV is a 350km trail that goes through four of the major mountain areas of Norway. My first reaction was: “This looks awesome! I have to do this hike someday.” The next thought was “I’m probably going to have to do this one on my own, because I don’t think anyone I know is going to be crazy enough to join me on this one.” That was until around Christmas time when I told my mum about it.
For context, my mum and I regularly go on quite long day hikes throughout the year and normally try to go for a longer 2-4 day overnight hike every summer, but we have never done anything of this magnitude before. And quite honestly, I didn’t really think she would want to go trudging through the mountains, hiking 20km a day, every day, for three weeks straight. So, when I told her about this 350km hike I had found that I wanted to do, I did not expect the response to be a super exited: “That sound fantastic, should we do that this summer?” ……Like what?!?? You want to come? You do realise we would need like 3 weeks or something right? … And she said “Yes, of course I would like to come! It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. I can’t miss this!” And just like that I suddenly had a hiking partner, and the hike I initially thought to be something I might get to do sometime in the distant future had become something that would happen in about 6 or 7 months. And so, the planning began.
As soon as we decided we were going to go for it we started putting extra weight into our backpacks every time we went out hiking. Working our way up to the weight we would be carrying on the hike. This was to let our bodies get used to carrying the weight, and to generally get more fit to hopefully have a better chance at finishing the trail. Not that we weren’t quite fin in the first place, but we wanted to have the best starting point possible.
We started trying to figure out the map situation and looking at the route in more detail in February of 2021. We considered buying maps for the route, which would mean getting an awful lot of maps, but landed on printing our own which my Dad did for us on A3 sized paper. We then highlighted the intended route and copied the finished maps onto waterproof paper (which btw, actually turned out to live up to its name and held up amazingly to an awful lot of rain. I must however say that I have no idea how they make that stuff, but I can’t imagine that it is in any way or form environmentally friendly, so that is a big minus.). We then had 13 A3 sized double sided maps detailing the entire route in an approximately 1:50 000 scale.
Even if we had now decided to go for it and had figured out the map situation, we still had a few more things to figure out. Like how to get to the starting point, how to get home from the end point, and most importantly if we were going to bring a tent or hike form cabin to cabin. All the SignaTur routes are designed so that you can hike from cabin to cabin and based on previous experience with hiking for several days in the mountains with heavy backpacks we quickly decided on the latter option. This would be more expensive than camping, but it would in turn give us the best chance of making it all the way as we could hike with lighter backpacks and we would not have to carry all our food for three weeks, as there are no good resupply points on the route.
With that decision nailed down came the most complicated part of the planning. Booking all of the accommodations. The DNT system usually functions on a philosophy of there always being room for everyone. Which means that under normal circumstances you can just show up, and no matter how many people there are at the cabin they will make room for you. Even if that means digging up a spare mattress, or a sleeping mat and a blanket for you to sleep on under a table or in the middle of a hallway. However, the pandemic, that we are all too familiar with by now, forced DNT (along with everyone else) to implement restrictions to reduce the spreading of the virus. This meant that at the time that we were going to do the hike you had to book your stay before arriving at the cabin. For us that meant booking 18 different cabins, which had to be done separately as each cabin has individual booking sites and systems. Some could be booked online, whilst others were booked by e-mail or phone. This, as you can imagine, took a while, but eventually all the booking for all the cabins were confirmed and we could finally start looking at how we were going to get to Sota Sæter.
Since we live in the south of Norway the logical thing for us was to start at Sota Sæter and walk south to Haukelisæter where we could get a bus back home, or possibly even get picked up by family or friends at the end of the journey. We decided on taking the train from our hometown to Otta, via Oslo. From Otta we then had to get a bus to Bismo, and from there a taxi to Sota Sæter. Not the easiest route, but when you are going to the middle of the mountains you do what you got to do. After that it was just a matter of continuing to go on hikes several times a week and wait for the departure date to arrive.
But more on that in the next one… 😉
