Gjendesheim - Glitterheim

What do you do when you have three days off work? You hike of course! Eastern Jotunheimen is a wilderness area I’d never been to before, and a doable distance from my summer job at Venabygdsfjellet. During the 2+ hr drive from Venabu, I’d stopped at a local food mart to purchase a bag of small homemade cinnamon buns for the ride. As I got back into my car in the middle of nowhere, I realised I am kindof living a life not too different from the “solo female traveller living in a van”-type Youtube videos I always get recommended. I work in outdoor adventure tourism and have my own car that I can drive around to wherever I want to hike. Now that is a neat freedom!

I left my car, affectionately known as the Ladybug because she is tiny and red, at the long-term parking next to Gjendesheim DNT hut on the edge of lake Gjende. Jotunheimen is known to be much hillier and rockier compared to the softer slopes of my home turfs in Rondane and Hardangervidda. And no horsing around, right of the bat I faced a big hard climb on stony staircase steps carved into the mountainside. Welcome to Jotunheimen y’all.

Finding my trail legs is no longer a hard-won process requiring days of breaking in, they spring out right off the bat. Once I found the rhythm of step, pole, push, repeat, I could breeze along comfortably, passing a Danish guy who remarked “That’s quite some pace” as I hopped by. Once over the edge, I entered a barren moonscape devoid of any life except occasional nests of bright pink wildflowers. This part of the park has few trails and fewer intersections, so I could keep heading in a straight line past Besshøe and down to the edges of Russvatnet. The Danish guy passed me as I stopped to filter water, and I passed him in turn as we descended towards the lusher lakeshore where the trail snaked north. I found the landscape unremarkable under the overcast skies, and figured I might as well engage in some chit-chat about where this Scandinavian cousin was going and all that jazz. He took the bait instantly, and I soon regretted my decision as he bit into my steps like a tick.

Don’t get me wrong, hikers sharing the same trail get into long conversations all the time. Heck, Toby and I ended up hiking more than 1000 km together on the TA after our coincidental meeting. But this guy… His urban Danish was so hard to decipher that I could only make affirming remarks to about half of what he said. And what he did say wasn’t much to cheer for either. Blabla taxes are too high, blabla students are spoiled and take out too much loans, blabla single mothers are selfish because boys need father figures because you know, the difference between men and women is HUGE! Positively ENORMOUS! Blabla cultural Marxism and feminists have brainwashed the younger generation to believe there is no difference between the sexes, but in reality; men and women are like TWO SEPARATE SPECIES! People who don’t have kids are selfish and miserable, especially women because THEY ARE WIRED DIFFERENTLY FROM GUYS! And did you know that a woman’s appearance PEAKS AT 22? (Well dang, should have capitalised more on that year - which I mostly spent hiking in the same two pairs of underwear for months on end…) I have encountered his kind a million times before, and only chuckled to myself as I hiked stoically on while he ranted himself into a frenzy behind me. We came to a long climb where I sped up, relishing the challenge. Mister Fragile Masculinity fell further and further behind, until he stopped to shout:

“So, do you work with some kind of fitness thing or what?”

“Nah”, I shouted back over my shoulder, flicking back my pigtails and flashing him a cutesy smile. “JUST FEMINISM!”

And thus, the mountains were all mine again. On Mondays we smash the patriarchy ;)

I could enjoy my lunch in peace, sitting hunched in the wind and view the lonely landscape. I reckoned I was about halfway, and still had 10+ km to go to Glitterheim. Mister FM was now only a tiny figure in the distance, and I crossed shaky swing bridges and lost the trail big-time (a hard feat on a DNT trail, but the boot tracks in the mud indicated I wasn’t the first victim). All DNT-trails are marked with frequent red T’s pained on rocks. Unlike PCT or TA markers, which were unreliable and rare, the red T’s usually appear every 100 meters or less. These trails are supposed to be fool-proof, anyone could hike them in good weather without a map. However, the trail I though I was on had simply evaporated. I was standing on a massive, bare slope in complete silence, no other hikers in sight. Sigh. I’d neglected to bring a map for the stretch because I didn’t want to splurge on a new one, but my (admittedly worthless) sense of direction estimated that the trail would be up and to my right.

Spot on! After five minutes of stomach-clenching dread, I was back in the game in the midst of a long string of German hikers. They all wore brightly coloured pack liners and looked comically like a long caterpillar bobbing up the trail towards a high snowfield. I’d mentally prepared myself for a long day, and was taken aback at the sight of Glitterheim from the snow-covered saddle. Sure, it would take me over an hour to descend to the hut, but how sweet isn’t it to eye your destination from afar!