Glacier Hunting 1001

(*ed. note: to see pictures from the entire trip...please check out my Flickr page...http://flickr.com/photos/28276957@N03/)

For those of you who dont know, I have been absent from the blogosphere for the last week+ because I was on a compulsory excursion for a class of mine. Now you might ask, "what kind of excursion?" or "what do you mean by excursion?" or "where did this excursion take you?" or "what did you see on this excursion?"...I will be honest in telling you that it will be very difficult to explain exactly what I saw and did...but here goes....

I am taking a class titled Geomorphology of Nordic Countries, which basically means the class is about glaciers and glacial landforms in Norway. When I say glaciers, I mean massive, massive sheets of ice...and when I say glacial landforms, I mean the landforms that are created when a glacier moves over the bedrock such as smoothing of rocks, carving of valleys, moving of boulders, sorting of sediments, deltas formed when the glacier melts, and other physical markers of where a glacier was and how it moved. Glacial landforms are present all over the world, for example just north of Madison, WI is the boundary of the furthest glacial advance of the Wisconsin Ice Sheet that covered almost all of Canada way back in the day. Some of you may have noticed it as you drive north on I-94 between Madison and Minneapolis when the terrain changes from more jagged, fluvial (river carved) shaped landscape (where there was no glacier) to a smooth, rolling hillside landscape where there was a glacier. Anyways, it is signifiers like this that my class intended to find, document and study as we set off for a week-long excursion into South Central Norway.

In order to more fully appreciate the magnificence of the trip that ensued, I might redirect you to a previous post of mine when I was talking about how I didnt have enough adjectives to describe the scenery of the Telemark mountain region (near Notodden) when I visited with Amy earlier this summer...I am being completely honest when I say that that experience doesnt hold a candle to what I saw last week. The landscape, scenery, glaciers, mountains, fjords, glacial landscapes, wildlife, etc. was so unbelievably spectacular that no words or pictures can ever truly convey. Now yes, I was on this trip with a class...but no it definetely did not feel like school...in fact it was mostly just driving around to different amazing sites and experiencing Norway to a degree that I never would have gotten on my own.

Our trip started on Monday, September 1st. On this first day we drove for most of the morning (we left at 9:30 AM) and early afternoon, arriving in the Flåmsdalen region in late afternoon. We stayed in the little town of Flåm, which is located at the far end of Aurlandsfjorden. Flåm is known as the start point of a train journey that takes you up into the mountains (according to my Dad the steepest set of train tracks in the world). We did a little geology along the way and when we got to the region, but it the day was mostly for driving. However it was not the landforms along the way or the mountains we passed through to get there that made the first night so memorable. It was the view that I had from where we were staying that, at the time, was the most beautiful site I had ever seen. I took pictures (the first picture on this post is one of this view), I even took one with me in it...but it legitimately looks like I was put in front of a green screen, or some fake picture...thats how unbelievable it was.

Our second day started off with a bang and never slowed down...after waking up to what I thought was the most beautiful view, we drove up to the top of the adjacent mountain (which is basically part of the fjord), and had another view that was more spectacular than at the bottom. While taking pictures and trying to keep my jaw from hitting the ground, our professor was telling us all sorts of cool facts about the fjord and how it was made, pointing out the U shape of the glacial valleys and the V shape of the fluvial valleys, the difference between the old Tertiary Landscape at the top (mostly flat and plateau-ish) and the newer (remember these landscapes are on a Geologic time scale, so they "newer" still means tens of thousands of years old) Quaternery Landscape down the side of the valley, etc. It was a great way to start the day.

Over the next few hours our trip took us down the other side of the mountain, across a fjord channel on a car ferry, through some more mountains and glacial valleys. We finally ended up in Jostedalen ("dalen" is Norwegian for valley) at the base of Nigardsbreen ("breen" means glacier), a tongue of the big ice sheet Jostedalsbreen.
Again to put it in perspective, I say "tongue of the big ice sheet", but by no means is Nigardsbreen small...in fact, it was the first glacier I had seen up close in person and it was an impressively colossal thing. It is at the far end of a glacial valley with a lake between the entrance road and the glacial edge, thus requiring a boat to get close. One of the cool things about the lake though (other than the fact that its at the base of a massive glacial tongue) is that because it is fed by water rushing out from under the glacier, it is loaded with very fine, clay-like sediments giving the lake a strange, bright blue-green glowing color. ANYways, back to the glacier...did I mention it was big? If any of you have seen a glacier in person you can probably understand, but for those who havent, try and imagine a sheet of ice at least 5 city blocks wide, at least 5 stories tall, that stretches up a mountain side up and out of view...enormous right? In addition to the size, this 5 block by 5 story sheet of ice also has enormous crevasses that glow a magnificent blue that starkly contrasts the dirty white/grey that is the color of most of the surface...pretty cool huh? I thought so...

After the glacier we boated back across the lake and drove on to a little cabin camping place near the town of Skjolden (my cabin was across the street from a water fall...no big deal). In the ensuing two days I would travel to the tops of a couple mountains, see a few more glaciers, go on a hike or two (in both good and bad weather), stay in the towns of Lom and Hjerkinn, and continue to see phenomenal landscapes.

On the 5 day we spent all day hiking in the Stroplsødalen part of Dovrefjell. This part of Norway is especially neat because in addition to the glacially influenced landscape, it is the home to Norwegian population of the "muskus" or musk ox. A musk ox is a prehistoric looking cross between a bull and an buffalo that has imposing horns and a thick skull, which are both used when they crash heads together in territorial or mate inspired battles. Musk ox are mostly found in Greenland, but there is a small population of roughly 200 in Norway, of which the majority live in Stroplsødalen. So luckily we got see nearly twenty of them at different times throughout the day from both far and too close. You have to be careful around muskus though, because if you get closer than 200 meters they can get unnerved and charge, at which point you are essentially skrewed. Luckily though, the one that we stumbled upon as we hiked over a small ridge (we were probably 75 m away) decided that going back to her herd across the river was more interesting than raveging 11 University of Oslo students...other than that brief episode of uncertainty, the rest of the day was filled with a wonderful hike in a glacially carved and molded valley. With mountains all around and wild blueberries growing everywhere, I dont think I could have asked for a better day.

On our last night we stayed in the small town of Grimsbu and essentially headed straight home the next day. All in all, the "school sponsored, educational excursion" was truly amazing. To see the landscapes and scenery I saw is the exact reason that I came to Norway. And it is a trip that I will cherish and remember for the rest of my life.