For our first full day in Norway we had to get up at 06:45 so there’d be time for showers and finishing packing before a 07:30 breakfast – we needed to be out the hotel by 08:00. By 08:30 we were on the road and heading for Karasjok. After exactly two hours we crossed the border into Finland – a customs building that just waves you straight through. For hours there was nothing but wilderness, but we saw the occasional reindeer. Just in time for 12:00 we arrived at a gas station with neighbouring souvenir shop. It was a last chance to get supplies before arriving at our destination.
Whilst at the gas station we took advantage of the cheaper Finnish prices to get food, drink and souvenirs. By 12:30 we were back on the road again. Early on we saw unusual rainbows in the distance that were like straightened rainbows, the locals call them snow dogs.
At 13:50 we crossed back in to Norway and the weather started to get worse. Snow fell for some of it, and eventually it turned to fog as the temperature dropped over a short distance. Alister really didn't want to turn the heating on as it would have made the windscreen freeze more once it was off. The road was coated in snow and ice, with huge mounds of snow either side, a buffer between us and the many trees that lined this seemingly never-ending road. A car passed us, one of the few we'd seen in some time, and suddenly Alister stopped the minibus. We looked behind us, and Phil, the one who was following us in a rental car, was now stuck in the snow mound. When that last car had passed us, he'd swerved to miss it, and had slid sideways down the road behind us, getting closer to the edge of the road until he'd gotten stuck in it. You have to be very aware of your surroundings at all times on snowy roads like this, and any lapse in attention can spell disaster.
Fortunately, Phil was able to get the car out of the snow, and continue with us on the journey. Alister seemed frustrated by this though, with his comment about Phil needing more practice at snow driving.
As we got closer to Karasjok the temperature dropped to -22C, the fog reduced the viewing distance to 5 metres, and it was getting dark. Alister was managing to drive is okay, but it can't have been easy.
Outside of Karasjok, 540 kilometres from where we'd started our journey, there were snow scooters waiting on the side of the road for us. It was strange thinking it was only 15:50 considering how dark it already was. The car arrived just after us, but Phil stalled it before he'd gotten it off the road, and couldn't get it moving again so we had to help with that first. Most of the group tried to push it back and forth but we couldn’t move it due to it being grounded on snow and the wheels were just spinning. Eventually we had to unload the car and with the entire group pushing and lifting we got the car moving so it could park up behind the van. If Alister was annoyed with Phil before, he was even more so now.
We then loaded equipment onto sledges, and put on some extra layers for what was going to be the coldest journey of the day.
There were two scooters both with sledges that could carry four people, two side by side. Once in you could then cover yourself with reindeer furs to try and keep warm. I don’t know if the actual temperature had dropped anywhere along the way, but when you’re travelling at 60mph across frozen lakes the wind chill makes the temperature feel 20 degrees cooler anyway. The journey by scooter lasted close to an hour and was approximately 20km. There were numerous times I got hit in the face by light branches which coated me in snow. It felt kind of surreal though, driving fast through trees and across the ice over lakes when the only lightsource is from the snow scooter, and everything else is complete darkness.
When we arrived at the cabins the first job was to unload luggage, and whilst people moved this into their rooms Alister got a log fire burning. Each room had four bunk beds and a wood burning stove, but it was recommended only the log burner in the hallway was used. After unpacking some of my equipment and reassembling my tripod I went back out into the elements to take a few night shots of the communal hut. Once done it was nice to go in there and get warm whilst having a decent cup of tea. With the clouds it looked like there wouldn’t be a visible aurora tonight either.
The huts were first built around 1890 though they were burned down by the Nazis due to their proximity to Russia meaning they could be used by the Norwegian resistance. These huts form a large network of huts scattered across Norway thst are each around a days walk apart. Oskar’s grandmother who ran the huts before him was recognised by the King of Norway for her keeping the huts running during World War 2, so where we were staying had it’s part in history.
The evening meal was a reindeer soup with carrots and potato in it, served with glasses of water from a nearby stream – so not the normal treated water you drink. For a couple of hours we waited in the communal hut for a sign that there would be an aurora. It was a good place to wait as it was warmer than the sleeping hut which at the time was -2C. It was going to be a chilly night sleeping in that room, and having the toilet outside didn’t help either.
At around 21:30 I went outside for a while and found it to be snowing, based on this I took my tripod indoors and went back to the communal area until 23:00. Alister warned me and James that his friend snores very loudly, and few brands of earplug can block it out. Great.