Freezing overnight hike to Stavali

We woke up in the morning and checked the weather app to see what hike we could do in the following two days. Our plan was to sleep in a cabin on the mountain over night and hike down the day after. The temperatures had dropped quite a bit and there was snow on the top of the mountains. Plus the app also indicated lightning at some spots in the mountains, which obviously meant we couldnt go there. There was however one hike to a cabin called stavali, which seemed doable despite these conditions and we decided to go for it. We drove with the car to Kinsarvik and listened to some motivation songs since it was raining quite heavily. But after screaming „feel the rain on your skin, no one else can feel it for you only you can let it in……“ (song is called unwritten), we were ready to go. The hike was 14 kilometres one way with about 1100 meters of elevation. It lead past 3 huge and impressive waterfalls and up quite steep and slippery rocks. The hike was very long and it took us 6 hours and a couple of mood swings from desperate to laughing all the time, to get to Stavali. We had to cross a couple of rivers on our way so our feet were DRENCHED. The hut was self-service, which means that there‘s no one and you have to put on the fire yourself, cook and do everything. We were SUPER LUCKY that two norwegian guys, Chris and Ronny had arrived about an hour before us and had already put on a fire so the cabin was nice and warm when we arrived. They had even lighted some candles and it all looked very inviting. Although the cabin has 62 beds, it was only the 4 of us. Norine and I cooked dinner, we made some Sodd, which was avaiable at the hut with potatos, carrots and meatballs and warmed it up in a pan from the kitchen. After dinner we talked to Chris and Ronny for a long time, we shared a ginger beer, played games drank hot chocolate and heated ourselves up at the fireplace. The talks with the two of them were very interesting. We went to bed at around 11 and decided that we were all going to have breakfast together the following day.
The night was quite rough because the fire was gone at some point and it got very cold. I dont even know how many layers I slept in. ALSO i had gotten a notification that the results of bioanalytics exam had been uploaded BUT our phones didnt have any connection after about half of the hike so I had to wait until the next day and it was freaking me out. This and the cold really made it an awful night in which I constantly woke up. The next morning we woke up and cooked a big pan of hot porridge with cinnamon and honey for all of us. We got ready and hiked down. My back was hurting, probably from the hike of the day before, the heavy backpack and the bad night. The shoes and socks were still wet even though we tried to dry them. But we knew that as soon as we would get to Lofthus we would go to the sauna, and this gave us so much energy that the hike fown was actually quite nice. Even the sun came out for a while:) after 5,5 hours we were sitting in the car, happy that we had survived our 2 day trip and ready for the spa to warm us up again:)Leggi altro