CROSSING OF MOUNTAIN PLATEAU HARDANGERVIDDA

Hardangervidda is the largest high plateau in Europe. It is also the biggest national park in Norway. Number of rivers snake through mountains and valleys as far as you can see. Even today, this place is hardly touched by our civilization.

Due to the high altitude and specific environment with almost arctic conditions, Hardangervidda is a place which have attracted many adventurers and Polar explorers since beginning of 20th century. To successfully traverse this plateau in winter was a big appeal even in early days of exploration and one of the attempts was made by well known Roald Amundsen – the first man in the world who reached the South (geographical) Pole in 1911. However, he wasn’t the only one who considered Hardangervidda as an ideal place for training. Robert Falcon Scott, Ernest Shakletton, Rune Gjeldnes, Borge Ousland ... all of them were testing their abilities, endurance and luck in the hostile mountain conditions. There is hardly any expedition now which would not spend at least one week in witer Hardangervidda.

Our goal is the same as Roald Amundsen’s 100 years ago – to traverse high plateau Hardangervidda in winter conditions. As a start point we picked up town Voss which is approximately two hours by train from Bergen, second largest town in Norway. Our choice was inspired mainly by its easy approach and relatively close distance from Hardangervidda area. From Voss we will use only our own power and set out on 80 – 100 miles long journey through places where there are no roads and where almost nobody lives. Should everything go according to the plan, meaning we are not stuck in our tent for a few days due to a bad weather, we would reach the other side of the mountains in ten days and descend to little town called Haugastol, our destination. From there, we just travel by train to Oslo and then fly back home. We will have 15 days to do the traverse, including all the transits. Our success will depend, therefore, on weather and pace we will be able to keep. Unfortunately, none of it is quite possible to predict or plan. We may approach area with very deep snow which could significantly slow us down, it may constantly snow for couple of days and prevent us from further progress etc. There are many „if“s and we can only hope that we will be lucky and accomplish the traverse.

Compared to Amundsen though we have a big advantage today. If the lack of luck was almost death sentence for Amundsen many years ago, in our case we can rely on conveniences of modern time. Part of our equipment is not only PLB – personal locator beacon which we can use for emergency signal transmission but also satellite phone with reception anywhere in the world. Although we will be staying in the wilderness our chance of survival in case of an accident is utterly different than almost hundred years ago.