Europe > Norway > Jotunheimen > Lom > Articles > Galdhopiggen and Glittertind

"... or you could use the swimming pool,” said the receptionist. " You’re joking," I gasped.

He wasn’t. The pool, housed in the basement, may have been only eight metres long, but it was clean and heated. As well it might have been, for this was the Spiterstulen mountain hut, nearly 1200 metres above sea level, standing on an acre of permafrost at the head of the Visdalen valley in the Norwegian Jotunheimen. To west and east lay the glaciers and snow-topped summits of Galdhopiggen and Glittertind, Scandinavia’s two highest mountains. I expected something much less luxurious.

The previous day,after a week climbing peaks in the wilderness of the southern Jotunheimen, I had emerged, following a five-hour trek, onto the Sognefjell road. From necessity rather than choice, I booked a bed in the £100-a-night Roysheim Hotel.

Roysheim is a former farm. The wooden buildings and outhouses are preserved with almost museum-like attention to detail, though its history of tourist accommodation reaches back well into the 19th century. Ibsen and Grieg both stayed here on a number of occasions, drawing much inspiration from the wildness of the surrounding mountains. The interior decor was of an antique splendour that has led to the hotel being listed among the most notable houses in Norway. The staff wore national costume and the evening meal, while perhaps not providing the high calorific requirement of the active mountaineer, was of a quality that would satisfy the most fastidious gourmet.

The next morning’s smorgasbord was sufficient to keep anybody going for a day, and following that, I strolled the hundred metres to the road junction and watched a deer grazing in a field opposite, while I waited for the morning bus from Lom.

Two buses each day, not to mention numerous cars, make what seemed to me to be quite a perilous, 10-mile journey to and from Spiterstulen. The road is narrow and unsurfaced, and rises gradually through forest and above some very steep drops. Where the many gorges and waterfalls are crossed, the bus has to negotiate these by means of wooden bridges strengthened only by a pair of planks set a wheel distance apart. At Spiterstulen itself, earth-moving vehicles stand permanently ready to repair the frequent damages caused to the road by water and snow.

I booked into the hut and was given a single room furnished with a bed, table, chair and just enough floor space to hold my rucksack. Though the cost of a night here was less than a quarter of that at Roysheim, the contrast was much less than the difference suggested. Opting for a day of rest, I accepted the offer of a session in the swimming pool and its adjoining sauna, then spent much of the afternoon looking at the quite outstanding view through the window of the large, comfortable lounge. The Norwegians clearly see no virtue in avoidable hardship.

Glittertind is officially the second highest mountain in Norway. While the height of Galdhopiggen is generally accepted as 2469 metres, that of Glittertind seems to cover a range of values between 2452 and 2470 metres, depending on which map or book you are looking at. The source of this inconsistency is almost certainly the huge bank of snow that covers the summit and varies in thickness from year to year. While climbing Galdhopiggen, three years earlier, I had observed a Glittertind almost free of snow. This year was to be very different.

Though the mountain huts of Norway are linked by a network of tracks, few of these pathways lead to mountain summits. Such is the lure of the highest peaks, however, that Glittertind is an exception.

The track, marked at intervals by a large red T painted on the rocks, led steeply up the hillside to the north of the hut. About 300 metres above the valley floor, it levelled out at the rim of a broad plateau. From here, Glittertind looked no more formidable than a distant Scottish Munro. Indeed it was comparable, for I was already at a height of 1400 metres, and the summit was barely 1000 metres higher.

A flock of young grouse, perhaps approaching a dozen in number, pecked at the negligible vegetation, apparently oblivious of my proximity. Farther on, a broad river flowed over the plateau, forming no bed, but rather trickling around rocks and boulders as if it could choose any of ten different courses, as probably it could, so flat was the terrain. The track crossed the river simply by ignoring it.

A mile farther, I met a man accompanied by his dog. He had camped on the plateau, after having reached the summit in the sunny stillness of the previous afternoon. His description of its magic left me envious, and regretting having fallen to the seductive comforts of the hut and its swimming pool.

After about three miles, the plateau ended at a rocky ridge. Though free of difficulty, this required the extensive use of the hands for its ascent, and gave way, after some 400 metres, to a gentle slope covered with a thin scattering of snow.

From here, the gradient remained constant. Only the depth of the snow increased as I gained altitude. Much of the covering was crusty, and broke intermittently underfoot, so that I found myself staggering, knee-deep toward the occasional rock, or if I were lucky, series of rocks that poked through the crust.

The temperature was now low, so the patchy cloud that blew across carried showers of wintry flakes, which along with the cloud, became more persistent. The rocks disappeared, as did everything else, including the gradient. Some five hours after leaving Spiterstulen, I found myself enclosed in an utterly white cocoon. A few metres to my left was the edge of the summit cornice, only just discernable through the whiteout.

I waited for several minutes, hoping the cloud might clear. It thinned for a few seconds, just sufficiently to reveal a small group approaching the top from Glitterheim, the hut that lay on the other side of the mountain. A few others arrived, having followed my route up from Spiterstulen. Photographs were taken, purely for the record, for it was obvious that no view would be seen this day from the summit.

The return trip took me three hours. As I stood once again at the edge of the plateau, overlooking the final drop to Spiterstulen, I looked across Visdalen toward the mists that covered Galdhopiggen, and back at those that still clung to the top of Glittertind. I had not been able to enjoy what must have been a tremendous view. I did, however, allow myself a sneaking satisfaction in the possibility, and it was no more than a possibility, that with the depth of its summit snow taken into consideration, Glittertind might just, this summer, have been the higher of the two.

Articles

• More from Anthony Toole