Unstaffed cabins sit by themselves in the mountains, waiting for hikers to come, start up a fire, cook themselves dinner, enjoy the evening, and clean when they leave. Here, you fill out a form with your information, number of people in your party, and your bank account information to be charged for your stay. The rates and information are on the wall and you fill out the form accordingly. Periodically, cabin staff stop by all of the cabins to pick up these forms and charge the guests. These cabins have fully stocked cupboards with soups, pastas, canned food, and almost anything non-perishable you can imagine. There is a price list on the wall for all of these items and you include on your form what you used and ate and you are charged for that as well. All on the honor system.
Staffed cabins, on the other hand, are basically hotels in the middle of nowhere. They have a dining room full of long, family style tables, and serve three-course dinners, wine, beer, after-dinner drinks, and a reception desk. There, you check-in, pay when you leave, and they have a cleaning staff on site. Sleeping rooms vary from two or four person rooms, to dorm style rooms for many people. They also serve breakfast made with locally grown ingredients. True luxury.
In the warmer months, you get to these cabins by hiking. In the winter months, Norwegians strap on their skis and cross-country ski for hours to reach these cabins. Skiing to a cabin is a totally different experience. As winter is so dark, the majority of the trip is without sunlight and over many many feet of snow. The first group to reach a specific cabin after a while has to dig their way to the door of the cabin. They are greeted by freezing temperatures inside, frozen walls, and have to start fires immediately to warm the cabin and themselves. I think I prefer the summer...
My father's cousin (70+) does one trip every summer with three of his closest friends and spends over a week hiking from cabin to cabin in the moutains, hiking up to 20 miles a day. They try to alternate between unstaffed and staffed cabins and pick a new route every summer. Many Norwegians use these cabins and it becomes a very social event to meet other hikers in the cabins and share stories over food and coffee as the sun goes down (only to come back up an hour or two later).
So, having heard about this for years, I have been dying to try it out.
We decided to start with a cabin that was not SO far from a road or civilization so I could test the waters. And we decided to start with just one night, and an unstaffed cabin. The cabin we went to was about a 3 hour hike from a parking lot where we could leave our car. However, we drove for about an hour and a half from Bergen into the mountains, so by the time we parked the car we were pretty much already in the middle of nowhere. We had our backpacks packed, made a few stops along the drive, and parked the car. After some last minute wardrobe and backpack adjustments, we were ready!
Sunglasses? Check! Let's go!
Looking from the parking lot out into the vast expanse of wilderness we would be entering. Somewhere out there is a cabin waiting for us.
Along the walk, before we got above the tree-line.
Still happy! (Because I wasn't the one with the map, thus I didn't know how much further it was to the cabin)
These are the trail markers. Rocks placed upright and marked with a red T. There are millions throughout Norway marking "turruter" or tour routes. They are very frequent and very helpful.
Above the tree-line! No civilization as far as the eye can see.
More views
Here's Oddmund and I, halfway through the hike. (I found snow, naturally I had to do this)
Don't we look a little bit like the viking cave drawings used during the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer? I thought so...
Mmmm delicious fresh mountain water. By the way, this is incredibly difficult to do with the backpack on. This picture is a lie, the backpack kept falling and hitting me in the head before I could drink any water. But still, it was a good idea.
Can you see it?? That's the cabin! That dot down there by the lake. If not, don't worry, we get closer.
Can you see it now? It was a beautiful sight after the hike to see our destination and home for the evening. Not to mention how amazing the location was.
Yes!!!
After dropping our backpacks, we decided to do some fishing, courtesy of Oddmund's telescoping fishing pole and some spoon lures that I picked up at a gas station along the way.
Our fishing hole (also, this was the source of our drinking water). They leave you a bucket and a pan to scoop water out of this lake for cooking, drinking, etc. It was delicious.
So beautiful, so calm. And this was about 8:30pm.
Gotcha!! After patiently waiting, I finally caught a fish! When we had been fishing earlier, there was nothing biting. We went inside to start dinner and all of a sudden we could hear hundreds of fish jumping in the lake and the stream that feeds into it. It was amazing, so we stopped dinner, ran outside and fished some more. And I caught this one! It was a little rainbow trout.
11pm?
Our kitchen. There was a larger cabin (pictures later) and this small, 4 bed cabin, made for people who brought dogs. There was a family with two young children staying in the large cabin, and the father threatened we would be woken up early when the kids got up, so we opted for the small cabin.
Cabin dinner. Candles, candlesticks, matches, everything is provided in the cabin.
I woke up at 4:30 to try fishing again, it was less successful. But we got to see this beautiful morning. That is the larger cabin.
I didn't try to fish in these weeds, I was merely chasing after my cast that had gone off-target.
Absolutely worth waking up early to see this. This is around 5am. So calm.
This is one half of the fully stocked cupboard in the larger cabin.
The nice, big kitchen in the larger cabin.
Family style dining room in the main cabin.
Hiking out. It was sad to leave this idyllic location. But, I have heard there are even more spectacular locations and cabins, so I am just ready for the next, multiple-night, cabin adventure!
