Snow Patrol

Snow Patrol


By Nancy Bazilchuk/Photography by Per Breiehagen
Published: November-December 2008

He fell asleep in the soothing calm of a snow cave but awoke in the suffocating silence of a tomb. Outside Roald Amundsen's improvised shelter lay Norway's Hardangervidda Plateau, a desolate, wind-blasted piece of tundra so vast and inhospitable it had not yet been traversed in winter.

Roald and his brother Leon were attempting to be the first to do so, in 1896. Bad luck and worse weather had already forced them to turn back, their only map destroyed and the last of their food bags lost in a whiteout. Amundsen slept beneath a snowy blanket that night as the temperature dropped ever lower, sealing him in a sarcophagus of ice. He might have gasped his last breaths from within the icy crypt if it weren't for a few telltale hairs from his reindeer-fur sleeping bag that showed his brother where to dig him out. "The training proved severer than the experience for which it was a preparation," Amundsen later observed dryly, "and it well-nigh ended the career before it began."

Amundsen's bane is now my fascination. What kind of place could defeat a man who was later able to cross-country ski nearly 2,000 miles round-trip across uncharted Antarctica to be the first to the South Pole? Trying our skills on a long-distance ski trip, my husband, Rick Strimbeck, and I, and our two daughters, Molly, 17, and Zoe, 13, have come to Hardangervidda in late winter to find out. Along the way we hope to realize another, possibly more elusive ambition: to catch a glimpse of the park's shyest inhabitants, western Europe's largest herd of wild reindeer. But instead of Amundsen's sleeping bags and snow caves, we'll have the benefit of the cozy mountain cabins, or huts, that dot the region, now protected as Norway's largest national park.


Hidden under this winter blanket lie Lilliputian trees and miniature Arctic flowers. Whole lichen colonies, winter fodder for reindeer, smother exposed ridges. Snowy owls, they of Harry Potter fame, have their southernmost nesting grounds here, where they feast on lemmings, mouse-sized animals whose population, combined with that of the area's other rodents, can top 180 million animals--or 20 times the total biomass of the 7,000 resident reindeer.

Photographers Per Breiehagen and Doug Haynes have joined us on our journey, an 80-mile traverse along the park's eastern side, from Rjukan in the south to Finse in the north. At about 12 miles a day, we'll need just seven days to reach Finse, though we've allowed extra time in case bad weather pins us down. The route should maximize our chances of encountering reindeer, because the herd winters in the east. And while we're all experienced cross-country skiers--both girls started skiing as toddlers--we've brought Sebastian, our four-year-old German shepherd/border collie mix, to beef up the odds of completing our trek. He's equipped with a sled-dog harness, and will willingly tow a tired teenager (or worn-out mom) for miles if need be.

The huts we'll use along the way are part of a network of roughly 400 scattered throughout the country's 29 national parks and other recreational areas and operated under the umbrella of the Norwegian Trekking Association, an outdoors group. More than 20,000 skiers come to the association's huts within the 1,321-square-mile park during the popular spring ski season, which typically starts several weeks before Easter and lasts for about a month.












By the time I arrive at Helberghytta hut, tucked away behind a small rise, Rick has a fire roaring in the woodstove and our supper already warming on its top. Unlike every other hut we'll visit, this one has no staff--it's operated on an honor system, where you pay in a locked box for lodging and any food you use from the hut's well-stocked pantry. But like virtually every other trekking association hut, this has a comfortable sitting room and four-bed bunkrooms appended to the main kitchen/sitting room. We snuggle on a cheery blue couch and savor an after-dinner tea. 


The reindeer continue to elude us over the following days, although the skiing remains steady. The winter birdlife seems to be trying to make up for the lack of mammals with cameo appearances. We're cutting big lazy turns down a long gentle slope that will drop us onto Lake Mar when I see a gyrfalcon, the largest falcon species, harassed by two ravens. The ravens wheel and dive like angry black bees, but a few vigorous wing flaps and the falcon has outpaced its tormentors.


Three hundred reindeer are close enough--yet far enough away--for us to make out the dark of their muzzles and the flicking of their ears in the wind. They nibble here and paw there, moving in unison across snow dyed an icy indigo by the shade of the hills above. Spindrift smears the animals' feet and blurs their outlines, adding to the sense that they're a single organism.


The spell is broken. As Per, Doug, and I linger, Rick, Molly, Zoe, and Sebastian head for our evening's destination, Marbu hut, now barely visible on the lake's rim. Per has just enough time to take a quick compass bearing and then the sun winks out.


A tense 45 minutes passes before the spectral shape of a birch wand appears, whipping frantically in the tempest. Another five minutes brings us to the welcome sight of Marbu hut, where a forest of skis stuck bottom first in the snow rattles outside the front door. Hatless and in slippers, Molly bursts out of the hut to hug me, her teenage insouciance temporarily suspended. "Were you worried about me?" I ask. Molly looks me in the eyes. "Yes," she says.

The possibility of sudden storms was never far from my thoughts--it had been the rapidly changing weather, after all, that had been Amundsen's undoing. And signs of nature's power are etched everywhere into this landscape. In places the snow is terraced in intricate topographic forms, like the Styrofoam landscapes architects create around their model buildings. Elsewhere, gusts have sculpted razor-edged ridges of snow called sastrugi, some as big as backpacks.

Our weather remains mostly windy and cold though manageable, with the exception of our mini blizzard on Lake Mar. That is until we ski into Kraekkja, our second-to-last hut and the oldest trekking association facility on the plateau.


But storms are one reason Hardangervidda has proved so perfect for wild reindeer. The herd's slow seasonal waltz from east to west across the plateau is governed by the weather patterns, which cause the heaviest snows to fall in the park's western part. To the east, the snow is drier and there's less of it, allowing winds to sweep ridgetops clear, exposing the lichens reindeer graze on. The park's western part is also much more likely to have snow interlayered with ice--a bad situation for reindeer, both because of difficult footing and because it makes it harder for them to get at their food.

Climate change threatens this relationship by increasing the likelihood of icing in the east. Warmer temperatures will also change the distribution of the plants reindeer eat. At the same time, Norway's oil prosperity has fueled a boom in vacation home or hut construction that's nibbling away at habitat. All of this has Norwegian scientists warning politicians that more land will have to be made available for the wild herds to survive.

The message hasn't fallen on deaf ears. The Norwegian Ministry of the Environment's state secretary, Heidi Sorensen, was on a national news program in May to underscore the government's commitment to expanding reindeer areas outside of the park. "We have to give reindeer first priority," Sorensen said. "That means we have to see if there are roads that should be closed in winter, or whether there are private huts that will have to be bought up and moved."

All of this is in my mind on our last day's ski, up the Hardangerjokulen glacier from Finse hut. At 13 below, it's our coldest day by far, and the sharpness of the vistas is matched by the chill against our cheeks. We take a few hours to ascend a gentle slope to the mounded dome of the glacier's high point. The climb is so easy that we can't really detect the exact top--the only clue is that from where we stand, the rest of the glacier seems to fall away from us in an undulating carpet of white.

Distant mountains punch up against the sky in all directions save west, where the white of the glacier contrasts with the deep blue of Eidfjord, only 12 miles away. To the north, Norway's two highest peaks, Glittertind (8,084 feet) and Galdhopiggen (8,100 feet), poke up over waves of snowcapped mountains before them. And nearly 90 miles southeast is the dark form of Gaustatoppen, like an arrow pointing skyward over our starting point.

We've fought our way through blinding snow, numbing cold, and biting wind to reach this spot, the realm of polar explorers and wild reindeer, and the feeling is magic. Somewhere in the vastness before us, the herds are beginning their slow walk west in anticipation of spring. But nestled up next to the glacier is the tiny town of Finse, surrounded by its micro-suburb of private huts, evidence of the kind of encroachment that could hem the reindeer in. It won't be easy for Norway to protect these animals, but if any country can do it, I think this one can. And as the girls savor the view, I'm hopeful they'll return, drawn by Hardangervidda's infinite vistas and stark beauty--and by the promise, perhaps, of reindeer over the horizon.

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Nancy Bazilchuk


Type: Author | From: Audubon Magazine

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