12-Aug-2009 -- Finally!

I've looked at this confluence for 8+ years, it is the second-closest to our mountain cabin, and it really seemed like a winter trip would be perfect (no need to stand in a freezing meltwater stream to do the zero dance :-), but I had to wait until today, a fine summer day in the mountains to get there.

I got back from my previous trip, to 60°N 6°E two days ago so I checked the weather forecast and it looked really nice for today.

Tone & I started just after 9 in the morning by driving for 1 hour 45 minutes across the Hardangervidda mountain plateau and downhill towards Røldal and then to the end of Valldalen where the path up to Vivassdalen and the confluence starts.

The first km is quite steep uphill, ascending about 150m, then we got to the point where you have to decide which side of the valley (and the river in the middle of it) you want to walk. We decided to take the west side even though this path is much less used because both the topo map and the aerial photos we had shows that the confluence is closer to the path on this side of the valley.

We took it easy up along the valley, with a lunch stop about 2 km before the point, the only real problem was the number of streams coming down the hillside which we had to cross. The final and by far the most serious crossing was just 250 m before the point, where I first waded across carrying our gear, then went back and carried Tone on my back. This worked OK, except for a very scary moment when I slipped on the stream bottom scree but luckily didn't fall. :-)

I knew that the point is located in the middle of a stream so we first stopped about 75 m away, on a little hillock where I took the main 360-degree panorama.

Doing the zero dance today was really cold, the point is located in the middle of the strongest current, and there was still some snow on the highest hills around us.

After getting all the photos we decided to ford across the multiple streams to get over on the east side, this allowed us to take the marked DNT (The Norwegian Mountain Touring Association) trail from the Litlos cabin to the parking area down in Valldalen. Taking this path meant that we had to start by skirting around a big marsh area to get to it, but from that point on it was very easy going.

On the way down we stopped to admire the amazing restoration work that has been done on a set of very old stone cabins by the edge of lake Vivass. The couple who did it didn't even ask permission first, and the area is part of the huge Hardangervidda National Park so you cannot normally do any kind of development work at all, but when the authorities saw the results they were soon forgiven!

The entire hike took about 4 hours, add 3.5 hours of driving and a short stop for groceries and it added up to a full 8-hour day.