Pulk placement from Kvitsteindalstunet

11 km, 245m Ascent, 245m Descent.

A scenic round trip planned for today along with dropping a pulk off 5.5km along tomorrow's route. We still had deep snow to contend with but a nice bit of navigating round Nordumfjellet and Litlumfjellet gaining height gradually brought us to our initial highpoint with views over Sandtjøndalen and beyond to the shoulder of Melkfjellet where we plan to leave the pulk. After that we'll return along the shores of Kaldvatnet and explore the Lapp village there.

The drop down into Sandtjøndalen is pleasant enough and we manage to navigate across the various streams and round the many trees in the valley and start the climb up the shoulder of Melkfjellet. That's when we notice a large trail heading towards Kaldvatnet - a large trail being made by a large party, hopefully heading for the Lapp village and not towards Kvitsteindalstunet. There's only 10 beds there and we're currently using 7 of them.

We continue on and drop the pulk as planned and then descend to join their trail. It's fast easy going following this motorway of a trail and fairly soon we catch up with the party that's making it. There's 12 of them and they're making for Kvitsteindalstunet. It's an Outdoor Education group and their leader keeps saying "no problem" as we explain that there's already 7 of us there.

The system with the Norwegian huts is those arriving have priority over those that have been there for a day or more. They are touring huts, you spend a night and then move on. So in theory we should move out and let this new group have all the beds. This is one of the reasons we always have a three man tent with us, a little bit extra accommodation if required, but there's not a lot of volunteers to spend the night in a tent in the Arctic winter if there's a corner of a warm hut that can be squeezed into.

At Kvitsteindalstunet the 10 beds are spread over two huts - six in one, four in the other. We're currently spread over both huts. We head off in front to rearrange and tidy up. The seven of us move into the hut for four, which really is no great hardship, four in beds, two on the sofas and one (thanks for volunteering John) on the floor. The situation in the other hut will probably be six in beds, four on the sofas and two on the floor. We leave the larger hut tidied up with a good supply of water, logs and the stove on the go awaiting the arrival of the other group.

Today's photo courtesy of Mick is of their arrival.