23-Jun-2011 -- We started out from Oslo around 9 a.m. using the GPS in the car. We headed ENE through Kongsvinger crossing the border to Sweden on a rather modest country road which brought us to road 45 going southwards. Somewhere along the road the GPS sent us on a gravelled road to the west and we ended up at a point about 300 m from the c.p.. By foot we crossed a small river jumping from stone to stone and reached the confluence point within a few minutes. The weather was good, no sun and it was a little too cold for the mosquitoes to bother us. The forest had been thinned and it was fairly easy to get a good reading on the GPS. We had the zero, but it slipped away whenever we clicked the camera.....

To begin with the forest was almost totally quiet, but then we heard a couple of finches and, surprisingly, a cuckoo. They usually "sing" earlier in the spring. We found some old droppings from a grouse or capercallie and some old droppings from an elk. Half way back to the road we saw her: a big, dark grey female elk. But she saw us too, and before I managed to focus the camera on the animal as big as a large horse, she was gone. She was about 50 m from us. We heard a sound in the forest in the same direction, perhaps she had a calf with her. If so, it is essential not to get in between the mother and the calf, the cow might then be aggressive.....

When we reached the spot where we saw the elk the ground was so overgrown that we could not distinguish any footprints to find out whether she was alone or not.

To ZHANG Jie this was the highlight of the mission. She is a city girl from China and this was the first time she had seen a live elk. While we were driving back towards Charlottenberg on the border to Norway, her parents Skyped her from China and were just as thrilled about the elk.

To me it was also a special mission: I have now successfully visited 100 confluence points....