The Story With the Picture: A Very Long Night

3 10

It started out as a regular winter hike in Norway: cold, snowy, beautiful surroundings. Our first day of hiking was great. But by the end of the day, the wind was really picking up. It took four of us to erect even one tent, and everything lighter than, say, a bottle of water would blow away as soon as you put it down. Dinner was harsh: it took some effort to find a spot shielded enough for the cookers, and our food was cold before we were half way trough our meal. But we can handle stuff like this. We just finished eating as quickly as we could, and retired to our sleeping bags. Inside it was warm and snug, and everything would look better in the morning.

The night was long, and the tent was beating and flapping like a galleon in a storm, be we were safe and warm and all was well.

But the next morning, the wind was still blowing like it needed to get a whole fleet across the ocean. There was now way we were going to walk. The snow was blowing up pretty high, making it difficult to navigate. Plus, every time you would try and get something from your pack – a snack, gloves, whatever – you would run the serious risk of things blowing away. Not to mention the horrible windchill. All in all, doable in an emergency, just plain nasty any other time.
Never mind, maybe in a few hours…

So we stayed put in our sleeping bags, venturing out only for bathroom visits (i.e. the nearest rock). Incidentally, dropping your pants in a storm is not on my top 10 list of most fun things to do. Not only is it freezing cold, but snow in your undies? Yuk. One of the tents was big enough to put up a cooker safely, so we had an ongoing supply of thermos with hot water. We talked, we read, we ate.

The hours passed. The wind kept blowing. It became clear we would not be walking that day. sigh Tomorrow. Right?

Wrong. Still that wind! We were pretty much done talking by then, and were grateful for our books. To be a bit more social, we read each other stories, especially the Norse mythology seemed appropriate. We almost didn’t dare to go to sleep that night, afraid tot what we might wake up to.

But, thank god! The next morning greeted us with the sweet sound of silence. The wind had – well, not gone, but at least quieted down enough for us to finally leave. I have never been so happy to leave my warmish tent in sub-zero conditions. I felt like a cow let out of the stable in spring after a long winter inside. I didn’t even mind having to dig out my tent, pack, snow shoes and an errant bottle of gasoline from under half a meter of snow.

Pretty soon we were set again, ready to take off into the great wide open. Glad to leave the 60 hour break behind us.