Jeff: Rafting

Rafting day was upon us and Catherine decided that it was a tea on the road kind of morning to give us enough time to get through, A – the longest tunnel in the world (25k) and B – get another ferry across the fjord towards the Luster Kommune. The tunnel was fully open and very quiet. It was also quite unremarkable and if you didn’t know it was the longest tunnel you would be forgiven if you drove through it none the wiser given all the other long tunnels in the area. The locals are all a bit worried about planned maintenance to the tunnel due to start in 2025. It looks like they will be closing the tunnel at 6pm every evening overnight for a few years to carry out the works.

We got the ferry and was parked up at the rafting meeting point with plenty of time to spare. We scoped out who would be potentially rafting with us and we met a German family with a 11 year old girl who would be joining us. The dad and the daughter looked game but the Mother seemed unsure saying she has issues with circulation in her fingers (she was just a bit anxious). We had seen the glacial river we would be rafting in our drive up and it looked crazy. We have been rafting a couple of times before but this was next level rapids. The plan was to spend the first hour on the family friendly section with some level 1 and 2 rapids, then we would drop off the girl and then complete the level 3 rapids (Elvepurka) which translates to ‘Mother Pig’ as the mothers told their children not to play there as the pig would eat them (Mother wasn’t wrong!). We had 3 staff members looking after us. We had our rafting instructor ‘Rasta’ who steering the raft and gave us commands to paddle. We had a guy from Ecuador who was our safety Kayaker, he stayed close by to pick up anyone who fell out and couldn’t get back to the raft. We also had an Aussie women who drove to point down the river to take photos and pick us up at the end. Given our previous rafting experience we were told to go up front. Being at the front means you have to lead the pace of the paddle and keep in time with the person next to you. You also get a front seat view of what lies ahead and you take the brunt of most of the water crashing into the boat. It turned out we had a fairly strong teams between us and the 11 year old was very good and seemed to be loving it and we had done a few sizable rapids by this point, with the next ones getting a little bigger. We stopped briefly to discuss the next section and the mother was not up for the final big rapids and she didn’t want her daughter to go either. Rasta was unsure whether it was safe for only 4 of us to go because the raft needs to weigh a certain amount to prevent us getting thrown around like a rag doll in the level 3+ rapids but he thought we were up for it. As we approached the final rapids Rasta said ‘Not to scare you guys but if we flip the boat then just swim to the sides’. The issue was that there was very little space between the rapids we were about to do and the Hog Boss section which in todays conditions was a level 5+ (not suitable for us 4 by any means). We hit the rapids with the intention of skirting around the side to avoid the middle. No suck luck. Rasta shouted for us to crouch down but we didn’t hear him. Catherine was now behind me and I was paddling up front with the German father. The Raft was pitching up steeper and steeper and I was convinced it was going to flip. I leant forward to not fall backwards and the boat levelled back out. I looked behind to only see Rasta and no sign of Catharine! I dropped my paddle and jumped to the middle of the boat. Catherine was hanging onto the rope and the side of the raft, paddle in hand. Rasta was shouting at me to ‘Rescue Her!’. We had shown us on land how to perform a rescue. Once I got Catherine paddle off her I was able to drag her back in. Rasta then shouted for us to get back into our paddle positions and paddle as fast as possible as we had overshot our landing point and were heading towards Boss Hog! After what seemed like an entirety we finally got over to the side of the river and moored up against some rocks and into a random farmers field which was not intended. We dragged the boat across the field and got picked up by the Aussie who had the German mother and daughter. Safe to say the mother was glad to not have been in the raft although with the added weight the raft may not have tried to take off as it did! We got some great photos which you can see below. We got back, dried off and said our goodbyes. We found a spot for the night which was right next to the fateful rapid and got out to have a look. To our surprise the Germans had the same idea. All in all it was great fun, if not a bit crazy.

The following day we got up and headed to the nearby visitors centre near the Nigardsbreen glacier. There are many tours to the glacier where you can walk on it and explore but we aren’t sure we want to do that so we wanted to get a better idea of our options. After abusing their WIFI for a bit (and uploading all the blogs/pictures) we decided to hike to the glacier and see it and then decide if we wanted to book a tour for another day. There was the option to drive to the next parking but we weren’t sure how far that would be from the glacier, how busy it would be or if Jeff would fit so we thought we would walk it as that was a maximum of 3.5km to the parking. We went down the footpath which ran mostly near the road but was strewn with boulders and about half way we decided that we would be walking back on the road as it looked easier and quicker. We eventually made it to the parking (Jeff would have fitted no problem) and then started the hike to the glacier. Again here we had two options take a boat some of the way or walk it so we decided to walk it as it wasn’t far that the boat takes you. It was rockier terrain now and there were some ladder/stairs to help climb over the boulders. Again we managed this section with very little issue and then started the final climb up to the glacier past the rivers where we could see chunks of ice from the glacier floating down. It was getting colder as we got closer and when we finally got to the view point we could see almost a glacial cave where the water rushed out of. There were a few climbers on top walking slowly and lots of tour groups all around. We kept meeting tour groups on our descent and it made us glad we hadn’t booked a tour as I think it would have been a very slow walk with not much more seen than we had been able to see.

The issue was we still had the longer than expected walk back, while I had seen the sign I assumed it was about 3.5km to the glacier (not just the parking) when really it had been over 6km there so we had just over 6km to walk back. The first descent was mostly spent trying to get around the really slow tour groups who were either coming or going and then trying not to slip on the wet rocks (as guess what, its raining again!) and once we made it back to the parking we stayed on the road and walked, with short jogging sections, all the way back to the visitor centre. There we made some lunch in the van as we were starving before coming back into the visitor centre to abuse the WIFI a little more. We are trying to plan the next few days and get all our admin done.