HIKING: Part 1 - L

Last Monday (we're a little behind on the blogging, sorry!) we went hiking in the mountains behind the farm. The weather wasn't the best, but it was good enough for it to still be fun. We took off on one of the marked trails toward Nippen, the pointier rocker peak to the left of this picture. Though we didn't run into any other hikers on our excursion, we did find these guys in the middle of the trail (still a logging road at this point) and promptly decided to walk (distantly) around them.

Eric recognized these as Highland Cattle and though they look a bit wild they're a domesticated breed (from Scotland!) and really not that scary, especially the little one which looks like it belongs in a herd of Ewok-cows. Anyway, though the trail was a little difficult to discern from the vegetation, it was handily marked with red spraypainted T's on trees and rocks. Also, whoever marked this trail definitely didn't go out of their way to ease the trail's incline. It may have pretty much gone straight up the mountainside, but for all of the giant steps involved it was definitely worth it to see views like this! A great big glacier is there just over the tops of the mountains to the right and the town below isn't Herosund but the next one over, Uskedal.

We had just reached the top of Nippen in this picture. It was considerably chillier up here since the clouds didn't seem to want to let the sun through, but we stopped for a brief lunch and to sign the log book. We weren't the first names of the day, but we never did run into whoever else it was out there. The picture to the left shows Eric on the top of the pointy peak you can see in the first picture of this blog. Behind and below it is the farm we're working on. From Nippen we went on to the higher peak, Manen, which was high enough that there were several large patches of snow left and very little vegetation and the temperatures definitely reflected that. It's a good thing I had my dependable Ole Choir fleece to keep the winds out. Haha.
To the right here is the view inland (east) from the peak of Manen. And then below that is the view west and the peak marker! There are still a lot more pictures to go through from the rest of our journey so this post will be continued in part two which I will hopefully manage to post sooner rather than later. In the meantime hopefully Eric will put up a post about our ice cream selling weekend in Roldal. ^.^