The old man has gone fishing again, from 30. June to 30. August. He has lived in atent now for more than a year and a half.
The short version is that everything went well. My physical condition proved to be good enough, I caught enough fish for food, and the weather was variable, withmore rain and wind than before. Few warm and sunny days. So this meant more cooking and eating inside the tent.
I saw and met relatively few people, but it was a pleasure to talk with a few I had met on previous trips. I particularly appreciated the fact that some of them left me with a lot of food and head worm (for bait), that they did not need themselves before they returned to civilization. Mads and Morten even gave me a big piece of ham and a glass of pesto! (Among other things.)
I made two trips for provisions also this year. The first one only after a week, because there was a lot of ice on the lakes, and therefore bad fishing conditions. I had just enough food, tobacco, cognac and gas for cooking this time, too. More due to sheer luck than good planning. The two last weeks I also found a lot of cloudberries, that I made jam from.
WhenI started my walk into the mountains I carried a backpack weighing 43 kilos,and that was after I had trimmed down food and equipment to what I thought was a minimum. So I was a bit apprehensive when I started out: For some strange reason the old man had not become any stronger when he turned seventy. There had been heavy snowfalls this winter, so the melting had not finished. In addition there had been a lot of rain, so the rivers were big and the terrain wet and difficult to walk in. This made me choose a couple of kilometers detour crossing a bridge over Stordalselva. On the other side of this bridge my body went on strike, so I had to put up my tent there and then. The next day I made it to my usual intermediary camp on the Orrek Lake. And the day after I finished a full day’s march to my base at the Little Kjukkel Lake.
2011 is a year of small rodents in Norway, and I saw a lot of lemming and mice. As usual this leads to a big population of birds of prey. For the first time in Børgefjell I was visited by a couple of owls. And then there was an unusual large number of long-tailed skua. Last year I left a store of provisions and equipment under a boulder, but the lemmings had taken care of most of it, i.a. bags of mashed potatoes, soups, salt and sugar. Also some good plastic storage bags. The lemmings had even nibbled away the edges of some rectangular veneer boards that I had used to put pressure on the filets of cured trout. Now they looked like some advanced items of modern art. This “food” may not have been so healthy, because I found some dead lemmings at the crime scene.
The acts of terror on 22. July in Oslo put a solid damper on the ambiance of my trip. I followed the news closely on the radio, but was spared the pictures in the media. I met a few people who had not heard the news.
I made several long and enjoyable day trips, but did not catch much fish. On the whole the big fish did not show up during this trip. The biggest trout I caught weighed 0.8 kilos, but then quite a few were around half a kilo. These were good for making cured trout (with salt, sugar, dill and juniper). Delicious and well preserved.
This year I brought along what we in Norwegian call a “gapahuk” for shelter. This looks like half a tent, open on one side. This I put up over the kitchen/cooking area. It worked beautifully, because it provided shelter from the easterly weather, which was the prevailing one. Thus I could make food and enjoy my meals even when the rain was pouring down.
I did not see much of the Sami with their helicopters and motorbikes this year. However, on 7. August two of them appeared on motorbikes on the south side of the Kjukkel River, about a kilometer from my camp. They stopped for an hour and did some fishing and then continued east, with the normal heavy noise.
The return trip took two days, with a backpack of 43 kilos. The weight of the food had been replaced with that of the extra equipment I had dragged in during the two trips for provisions. The weather was not bad, and I had tailwind. But after the heavy rains the terrain was so soaked that walking was difficult. A few times I almost got stuck in the marsh. During the end of my stay there were no people around, and I met no one on my return trip. This had not happened before, and I got to know when I was back that the track to the Jengel Lake had been reduced to a contiguous chain of mud holes.
The trip this time was tougher than before, so I am happy I made it successfully.There is a limit to how much hardship the old man wants to expose himself to, so I think this was the swan song for my trips to the Børgefjell National Park. Perhaps next year I will make a shorter trip to the Blåfjell and SkjækerfjellaNational Park in the county of North Trøndelag.
View on the Jengel Lake during return trip:
