13-Aug-2004 -- The DCP is a nice project. Almost all confluences in Europe have been visited, but not N62E8. Why? Is the area too difficult? This was my first question. I'm from Germany, so N62E8 is too far away for a Sunday afternoon excursion. I ordered a topographical map of the area to get a first impression. Well, the contour lines looked good. No steep slopes at the destination. But a small river (Stamåi) to cross, and the 1:50000 map showed the confluence exactly on the shore line of a lake. 1:50000 means 1 Millimeter on the map is 50m in the nature. Depending on the water level, the confluence could be in the lake! To be prepared for this problem I took a rubber boat with me :-) After a positive weather report for Friday, 13th I decided to travel to Lom, a small city 36km south-east of the confluence.

At Friday, 13th, 09:15 I started the tour from N61°56'51.3" E7°58'25.9" Ele. 580m. I followed an unpaved way up to Ele. 780m where I wanted to get on the hiking trail Stamsætri-Sveinbui to follow a preprogrammed route via Grönnhöi to my final destination. There are some sheds for sheep, but I didn't find the trail. So I followed a trail towards the small Stamåi river. Above the tree line the area looked good enough for cross-country hiking. I forgot the preprogrammed route and followed the GPS route pointer to N62E8 almost directly. At this point I knew why nobody has visited N62E8. It was definitely not a Sunday-afternoon family-walk. The 770m elevation difference is very demanding. On the other hand I felt like Barney from the Flintstones: I had to walk over a lot of stones! To protect the ankle I highly recommend high cut boots. During wet weather conditions the stones will be slippery!

During the planning phase I calculated with an moving average of 2 km/h for the 8km distance. After two hours I reached the confluence. I was surprised to get so fast through the area and happy because the lake had low water. The confluence is a few meters before the shore line. So I didn't need my rubber boat to reach the point. At the beginning I thought that I would reach an area that had never seen a human being. But at the east side of the lake are two huts (See south-view, upper left corner) and two fishing boats. There is no way to get up there by car. How the hell did these huts get into this area? By helicopter?

Howsoever. I took the photos and after a short lunch break I walked around the lake to make my way back. I didn't use Garmin's TrackBack function. Furthermore I wanted to take a look at some of my preprogrammed route points (6 and 7) and headed towards route point 2 to see if the hiking trail is there. Yes, it is there. You can see the trail when you are on the trail. The trail is printed in a 1:315000 map. Based on this scale I would expect a big trail but the trail is rather small. I followed the trail the way down and reached my car at 14:00. The Garmin trip computer showed 16.5km walking distance, 4:15 moving time and 3.9km/h moving average.

Coordinator's Note: Mountain log cabins in Norway were normally constructed by pulling all the logs and planks up on horse sleds in winter, then wait for summertime to put them together.