Camp below the southern mouth of Dolbotvagge

This day had a theme of walking on rocks and covering elevation, most of the tour happened in higher altitudes, over 900m, and involved a lot of stepping from rock to rock.

I started at 990m, went down to 630m, up to 1270, down to 1100, up again to 1210 and ended at 910m. Quite a few of the climbs and descents were rather steep!

Got woken up by heavy rain around 4 am this morning and lay listening to the drops falling on the tent for quite some time before I fell back asleep. Next time I woke up the rain had stopped and when I got up at 7 am my first action was to wipe off the tent so it could dry in the wind.

Wasn’t hungry at all so I just had a plain coffee without any fat while going through my morning routine and getting ready for the day!

Just shy of 9 am I picked up my backpack and went down to the glacier river, this time planning to give it a try upstream of the sediment delta. It worked out pretty well, I just had to change to get over the last stream and the bottom was made up of rocks so this was so much easier.

Once past the stream, the descent back to the gravel road was rather swift and soon I had made my way to the next trailhead and back into nature!

I love the hike up to Smaileriehpas, it starts with a fun river crossing (there’s a new bridge close to the lake that I deliberately ignored) and the valley is wild, beautiful and always different. This year there was so little snow left on the other ridge and an almost inconceivable amount of water came down from the snowfields and glaciers.

The ascent was rather heavy, yet I can’t say if that was due to the late evening climb up to Storsteynshytta or my fatless morning coffee.

I reached my favorite spot, right next to a little waterfall, close to the highest point of the pass around 1 pm and stopped for a coffee with PF, some jerky and walnuts.

The sun came out behind the clouds and warmed the air, yet as soon as it got obscured again the temperature was rather chilly and I moved on after an hour.

My plan was to continue for 3-4 more hours, or until I find a really nice spot for my tent.

Compared to last year the tour was rough, no snow at all, just rocks and some small patches of dirt. Even for me, it takes a lot of concentration and mental focus to keep the pace on that kind of ground and after some time it becomes rather tiring.

I got to the south end of Dolbotvagge in good time and originally wanted to do the 3km gravel road leading over towards the nest stretch of trail. Mainly to avoid having to do it first thing in the morning tomorrow.

Yet on the way down, I spotted a great campsite near the waterfall coming down from the mouth of Dolbotvagge and quickly decided to stay in the wild and do the gravel tomorrow.

Thereby, it turned out, I also got my tent set up just in time to get inside before the first rain shower really got started. And since then the rain has barely stopped at all…

There’s definitely been a complete weather change from the first week out and I’m so grateful that the girls got to experience the nice weather!

Even down here, at about 900m of elevation, the evening is rather cold and I’ll probably get into the sleeping bag early!