Hallelujah paa (on) Sula!

Well, now Kory finally feels like we are in Norway again because we climbed a mountain today!  The weather report showed nothing but sunshine in the forecast, so we took off with my friend Tina, her son and daughter, and a friend of her daughters.  We had a little talk with God before we started, asking him kindly for some sun once we were up on top, as the cloud cover was pretty low and there would certainly be no point in hiking up to see a view if no view were visible.  We started out on faith that the gray blanket that covered the mountain top would dissipate before we got there.  It never happened, but God had something better in mind.

The plan was to climb the mountain called Sula that we stare at from our condo.   Kory climbed it a lot as a kid as it’s the backside of Langevaag, where he grew up.  I’ve never climbed it and he hasn’t been up there for sixty years.  I was also excited to see the cabins that dot the ridge, as they are barely visible with the naked eye from down below. The plan was to hike up to the top then walk about two hours out along the ridge to the very tip that juts into the Atlantic Ocean.  Round trip, it should have taken six hours or so, but I’m not a Norwegian so Tina wasn’t prepared for just how slow a person can go.

We started out a little before noon.  Kory and I both stopped a lot to take photos.  On the way up, a woman was taking her dog for a walk and she caught up with us slow pokes.  Kory struck up a conversation with her and it turns out she was an old classmate of his back in the 1950s.  She’s also good friends with his aunt, who used to live in that town, but moved to Spain a few years ago.  Too funny.

Another surprise of the day came when we approached a bridge crossing over a creek, and someone had carved a scene from the Three Billy Goats Gruff (a Norwegian folktale).  It even included the troll under the bridge.  Too cute.  Further up the trail was a small little cabin with a grass roof that was locked up tight this time of year, but in the winter, it’s Julenissen’s house (Santa Claus), only they play on the words and call it Sulanisse… because it’s on the mountain at Sula.  There’s a mailbox outside the cabin for kids to drop in their wish list and many people ski UP the mountain to get there in the winter and see “Nisse.”

We stopped and had lunch once we were up into the clouds, still hoping that the sun would break through at any time.  We sat on the deck of the Red Cross building while we ate.  Tina works with a woman whose boyfriend has a cabin up in that area but she didn’t know which one it was, so we played it safe and sat in a neutral spot.  Her friend had offered the use of her cabin, but the cloud cover was so thick we couldn’t even see fifty feet in front of us.  Tina was telling me there were cabins all around the area where we were, but we could only see the ones we were right next to.  It was a kinda cool experience to be up that high (over 2,000 feet) and be “lost in a fog.”

After lunch we kept hiking up and stopped again at a huge cabin that is run by the sport’s center in Langevaag.  They open it on Sundays and serve coffee and waffles.  It’s funny to think about going on a hike up into the mountains and then stopping in at a café for lunch.  The new Sunday routine though is to go on a hike, rather than to church.

Tina told me it takes about an hour to get to that café (above), but as she looked at her GPS tracking system she reported, “We have been going for nearly three hours; we’ve been standing still for 46 minutes and we’ve been walking for one hour and 52 minutes.”  I think she was trying to tell me there was no way we’d make it to the end of the mountain at that pace.  The boys were wanting to turn around and go back down, but I insisted we press on a while longer and wait to see if the clouds disappeared.

Further up the path was a huge stone structure marking the trail and a log book we all signed.  The clubs that keep the trails maintained like to know how many people are using it, so everyone “logs in” once they reach certain points.  In the past three months alone nearly 2,400 people had written their names in that book, so to say it’s a popular trail is an understatement.  Tina kept telling me the view from there was incredible, but all we saw was gray, gray and more gray.  At that point we decided to turn back because it didn’t seem like we’d have any view at all from that height and the sides of the ridge were looking very steep and a bit dangerous in the thick fog.

On our way back down, a guy came up the trail in an ATV pulling a trailer.  He was delivering supplies to the café we’d passed earlier. I said something to Kory as he passed and he heard me speaking English so he stopped and asked Tina who she was.  Turns out he was the boyfriend of her co-worker with the cabin up there, and he knew Tina was up on the mountain with Americans, so he invited us over to his cabin for a cup of coffee!  It was a much better treat than walking all the way out to the end and seeing nothing. And besides, we can make the trip again on a genuinely sunny day.

By the time we made it to his cabin (above), the clouds had lifted enough that we could see a lot of the area. I could have stayed there all day and night and the next day and the day after - just staring at it all.  It was more than my eyes could behold.  His grandfather had built a cabin up there in the 1920s so he is able to continue on the tradition, but others aren’t so lucky as the land up there doesn’t belong to anyone in particular and the county doesn’t grant permission so easily to build new cabins, so they are a real treasure to own.  This guy, I can’t remember his name, works on off-shore oil rigs so he works 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for 2 weeks then gets 4 weeks off, and most of that off-time he spends up in his cabin.  He says he likes the view and how quiet it is. No kidding.  It really was spectacular, and it’s so clever how people make due with limited resources up there.

The cabin has a solar panel to charge batteries so he has power, he takes water from a spring so he has running water, and he has made a very ecological outhouse to take care of those issues.  He even has a hot tub made from a huge wooden barrel and a metal box set inside half of it to hold a fire, so in the winter when there’s snow, he can fill the tub and take a hot bath.  His house was all decorated (even the ceilings – a man after my own heart) with old stuff from his grandfather’s cabin.  It was a magical place and I couldn’t believe how blessed we were to cross paths with him today and to get to sit down inside and have a cup of coffee! 

In our conversation with him, we found out his mother’s family bought the house that Kory’s family was living in right before they moved to America, so that was even more coincidental.  (Kory’s dad had built that house.)  Kory has ties to everyone around here, I swear.  And I guess that’s why those folks from England that run the B&B are so lonely, because they don’t have that “in” with the locals.  We are truly blessed.

Tina was running out of time as she wanted to go do some target practice tonight. She’s hoping to get a license to hunt reindeer and she needs to shoot 5 out of 12 shots right in the bulls-eye before they will give it to her.  We took so long on the mountain top, she had to run back down in order to make it to practice.  The others went with her and Kory and I took our time, stopping to pick wild blueberries along the way, enjoying the view a little longer and walking at a snail’s pace.  I don’t need to walk so slowly, but I’m very protective of my body parts and not wanting to sprain an ankle or break a bone, I’d rather be safe than sorry.

Toward the bottom of the trail we took a wrong path and ended up on the wrong end of town from where our car was parked, so we had a bit of walking through several neighborhoods to find our way.  We were both beat, but it was still nice to go for a walk, even if it meant cutting through people’s backyards to get where we were trying to go.

We got home after 8pm so it was a long day in the mountains.  We stopped to pick up Kaleb, and Daniel came home with us to spend the night.  Kaleb needs to maximize his time with friends while he can as school starts here in a few weeks and then life will be busy for everyone.

Our journey today wasn’t as we’d expected when we began, but no one was complaining about how it all ended.  Even Kaleb, who didn’t want to go this morning, was already talking rather fondly of the trip at dinner tonight.  Each day here is such a gift.