Blåisvatnet Lake Hike

Today we woke up to another gorgeous day! There were some clouds in the mountains, but sunny and perfect for hiking (though we were mostly hiking in the shade this morning)! We headed off to go to Blåisvatnet Lake at the base of the mountains. The first part of the hike was really nice, lots of soft wide paths to walk down, but it quickly turned into just walking through a giant field of rocks. In some of the photos you can see red marks and those are the trail markers through the rocks…though it didn’t really matter that much until you got closer.

We were walking up the first rocky incline when we heard bells and looked and a bunch of reindeer crossed the path ahead of us! It was break time and I had been thinking we should get to the top of the ridge and see if we can see anything, but we decided to sit and watch the reindeer instead! That turned out to be the right decision as it was just up and over a rise only to see more rocks on the other side.

Finally you got up to a much bigger rise with bigger rocks (the photos where Raymond is standing on top of the rocky area after the reindeer) and you think okay! The lake has to be on the other side of this! And…nope. More, bigger rocks to walk through! Though you are almost to the lake by that point it was still like we are never going to get to the lake! This is our life now, constantly waking up to the top of a hill to see another hill we have to get over.

When we did make it to the lake it was gorgeous!! The water was beautiful! Light chalky blue with little fish swimming by the lakeside. The sun doesn’t get high enough to go over the mountains so it was in shade and pretty cold! Earlier it might have been high enough to go between the peaks, but who knows. I had planned on taking a long break there and eating lunch at the lake, but it was freezing and so we eventually headed on.

There was another couple up there already and another that was following us up, they both left before us, but on the way down there were so many people coming up! Just a steady stream of people which was kind of crazy since it was more people than we have seen on all our hikes combined! But there were 10 other people with hiking poles! We are usually the only ones! And a lot of Americans (or Canadians) which was odd. We don’t normally run into many on our hiking adventures, but it felt like half of the people coming up were. So this lake trail was a very popular one!

On the way down we finally got the sun again and phew it was hot! I was glad we got up early and hiked up in the shade! There was also a second lake you could walk to on a side trail so we did that…and it was definitely not as nice! The trail to there was a muddy mess and very narrow and not great. Plus the lake was just okay after the other one with no real lakeside to sit on unless you go out into the rocks. So we didn’t stay very long, but on the way back we saw some people driving up the riverbed and then sat by the river at one point and put our feet in! That felt so nice after all those rocks we were walking on! Raymond was like I don’t know if nice is the word I would use, but I was like it is wonderful! So cold and feels so good on my feet!Read more