Norway 2011 Roadtrip - Part II

The first week has passed and some nice runs were done. After Rauma river we drove to Dombås to run the Upper Jori. The Jori is an awesome creek with very cool slides. Probably the very first big slide is runnable but the entry drop has some bad consequences in the landing zone. So we didn’t run the entry drop but the rest of the slide.

Just after the next bent there is another cool and very long slide of 200+ meters with some nice gradient. After the first half of the section the sky darkened and it looked like a heavy rain would come down within the next hours. So we had to hurry a bit and didn’t took too many photos of the second half. But there will be a video coming soon.

The next day we went to the direction of the famous Sjoa valley. On our way we ran the Store Ula, a small creek in the middle of nowhere. It is starting in Rondane National Park on a high plateau. When you’re at the put-in parking lot you cannot imagine that there is a river somewhere in this area. As far as your can see there is just the typical and beautiful Norwegian Fjell landscape surrounded by mountain tops up to 2000 meters. It looks a kind like the landscape in Lord Of the Rings. You have to walk a dirt-road for about ten minuets until you catch the Store Ula.

We had a very low level but nevertheless it was much fun to run the slides and to enjoy the landscape. There are two slides with a little eddy between followed by a 9 footer and a 18 footer. The higher one needs to be ran exactly to avoid injuries. You have to cross the river over a small slide from left to the far right side to boof a curler onto the final table before the drop. Then you just have to wait for the right moment to set your boof. If you miss the line there are rocks left and right of the landing zone.

Alex portaged the slide combo completely, Susanne just ran the very first slide and portaged the rest. Reiner and I ran it completely. I was first on the slides, we both catched good lines and met up in the eddy right before the drop. Reiner went first. From above it looked like a good line, the others gave the ‘Okay’ for me and I started. I got the perfect line in the entrance so I could set a well timed boof and had a very soft landing.

Fully stoaked I took the next eddy where Reiner was standing. His face was full of blood and his right hand too. He hit his boats’ deck and had a deep cut on his thumb. He had to quit and went to the hospital. The rest of us finished the section and hoped there would be enough water for the three drops at the end. Unfortunately there was not enough water to huck’em.

The following days we spent in Sjoa valley and did different sections. The most demanding section is the Åmot Gorge. It a classic big water run here in Norway. A friend of us who is a local raft-guide joined Alex Keller and me. It is a short but intense run in a partially narrow gorge. Especially one of the first rapids needs an exact line because of a siphon. I missed the line a had to roll just a couple of meters before the siphon…not the best way to do this rapid ;-) The best part of this section is the V-drive, a 300 meter long section in which the walls get closer and closer.

At the end of the V-drive is a nasty hole which is the perfect place to show your freestyle abilities in a creek boat.

All in all Åmot Gorge is the best section on the Sjoa and the perfect evening run.

Today it started raining so we took a day off waiting for better weather. Maybe I drive to the west coast to meet up with some friends in the village of Voss. We’ll see.

Cheers, Max

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