The weather was finally doing good things. It was quite warm and reasonably sunny and there was a decent helping of blue sky above. We set off from our camp site and headed slowly up hill to the DNT (the Norwegian hiking association – they have a huge number of huts all over Norway) hut named Sota Saeta (actually written with a funny ae contraption). The friendly staff there lent us the DNT cabin key and we carried on cycling towards a second hut further up the valley named Slaeom. We dumped our bikes and extra gear in some bushes and wrapped our spiffy all purpose camo-tarp around everything. Now that our gear was invisible to all but the most hardened military types we set off on foot towards the hut.
The route in was nice and we were treated to some sunshine amongst the rain that had started during the bike ride. The track took us up a wide valley winding over large flat stones, through rivers, plenty of bog, and then onwards along the left hand side of a big lake. It was looking more snowy by this time and we trapsed through the occasional snow drift me, in my jandals.
We reached the hut around 9:30 pm and it was mighty nippy. We used our magic key and let ourselves into a really nice little mountain hut. In fact there were two, one larger and a smaller one not far away. We failed to get the gas stove going in the bigger hut so lit the fire instead. It wasn’t long until the cold had been banished and we had sauna temperatures. We cooked a feast on the pot belly stove and amused ourselves looking through all the food in the store room of the hut.
DNT huts are extremely nice. I really like NZ huts but DoC could learn a thing or to! I guess it’s a different style. It’s possible to walk in carrying just some warm clothes to one of these DNT huts. Food, cooking facilities, cutlery, and duvets are provided. And it being Norway rather than one of the backward countries in central Europe you can pay for everything by writing your credit card number on a form and posting it in the payments box.
We got stuck into the hot chocolate and Twinings earl grey tea. Mmmm both were very good. We were amused to see that most of the food was past its best before date. Amused but not worried. Rice can’t really go bad that quickly.
Yay for our little mountain hut.
