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My friend and I planned a hike to Trolltunga, which is a rock in the mountains of Norway that looks like the rock in The Lion King that Rafiki stands from while he reveals Baby Simba to the tribe. And just like Simba's story, we ran into some bumps in the road (no pun intended) just like he did, but in the end, we got a happy ending.
Our first mistake was leaving at 11:00am. Take note for future reference that when you are about to go on a ten-hour hike in a country that is known for its massive mountains, leave early in the morning. Chances are that it will be a longer hike than you think. Both my friend and I are really into photography, so we stopped frequently to take pictures and also breaks which don't seem like a lot of time at the moment, but in the end, it adds up.
Our second mistake was obvious if you were to just take one look at us. The kind of hiking gear we had was suitable for the places we studied in - Barcelona and Florence. If you plan on going on this hike, you need gear for every darn season. We hiked through beautiful sunny weather, swamps, rain, lagoons, and snow.
For the average hiker, it should take about eight hours to complete this hike. It took my friend and me eight hours just to get to the rock! By the time we were there, it was about 7:00pm. In Norway at that time of year, the sun sets at about 10:00pm, but if we were to head back we wouldn't have made it in time before the sun went down. It had also started raining, which made the tracks muddy and deep to the point where it came up to our knees if we stepped in the wrong places.
Whenever I tell people this story, they always ask me if the thought of turning around and bailing on the hike cross my mind. And oh, did it cross my mind at a time a little too late - right as I was crossing a river with a waterfall and strong current I tried to convince my friend that we should turn back, but she said that there was a town on the other side of the rock we could get to. After going back and forth, I agreed to keep going and proceeded to cross the river when I then lost my footing and fell into the freezing current.
As it turned out, the town on the other side of the rock was a little further than we thought it was...
We were exhausted, freezing, soaking wet and hungry with no proper camping gear, no change of clothes and no food. I know that people have been stranded in the middle of nowhere before have survived longer than just one day, but at that point, I honestly thought we were not going to make it out of those mountains.
Somehow by the grace of whoever it is you believe in, we ran into a group of hikers that passed us about an hour prior to our fateful realization of being stranded. They were setting up camp, which at first I thought was a bad sign but it turned out to be the blessing we needed. I asked them what the chances were of us making it back to campgrounds, and they said it would be slim to none.
Fortunately, this group ended up being amazing people who opened their doors (or rather, unzipped their tents) to us, gave us warm clothes, food, and a place to sleep. There were two women who were from Bergen in Norway, one man from Milan, and two men from Little Rock, Arkansas - one of whom was doing this hike with a prosthetic leg! They said they all met on another hiking trip somewhere in Europe and really kicked it off, so they now do other hiking trips together.
My friend and I slept in a two-person tent with the two women from Bergen and their small dog. Looking back on this experience is crazy - this group of hikers just took us in and gave us the equipment and support that we needed when we were complete strangers to them - but then again, I don't think serial killers would hike Trolltunga to find their victims...
Hiking back down the mountain.
It ended up storming that night, but luckily our campsite was set up against a small cliff where we wouldn't get hit too hard. By the time we woke up the next day, the skies had cleared up a little bit with the sun peaking through, and the view we had when we walked out of our tent was the most unbelievable thing I have ever seen in my life. Moments like these are what make you realize how small you really are in the world.
The view from our campsite.
When we all eventually got down to the start of the hike, one of the men from Little Rock came up to me and said how lucky we were that we crossed paths with them. Other scenarios that I thought of wouldn't have had a happy ending - if we were to huddle up under a rock somewhere, we wouldn't have survived the cold and if we were to continue to hike down the mountain in the pitch black with absolutely no lighting and no town nearby, we could have lost our footing and taken a nasty fall.
This terrifying reality turned into a great adventure. Looking back, if I knew what we were getting ourselves into with this hike I would have either thought twice about doing it or invested in some proper hiking gear. However, one thing that I do regret is not taking down their contact information to keep in touch with them. My hope is that sometime in the future, one of them will read this story and reach out to reconnect!