A Monster Slide In Central Norway…
‘It’s probably 100 metres long, in a gorge, but clean, and totally runnable. It doesn’t look very Norwegian though. The rock is kind of sharp…’
This was Hugh’s opening gambit, and the first thing I heard of the slide. He and Finn had been on a hiking mission and discovered what sounded like an absolute gem with a short hike in. Two days and a short-ish hike later, and we were stood looking at the thing. 100 m it turns out, was a conservative guess, and ‘clean’ had been downgraded to ‘pretty clean’. After scouting the rest of the river to discover a jagged Icelandic nightmare, we were just left with what later turned out to be about 170m of twisting slide, at the bottom of 30-50 m of walled in gorge.
Based on expert navigational information from our expedition technical adviser Gaute, we had chosen the shorter, steeper ‘over the mountain’ route (see above photo – x marks the car and the arrow our route over ). This turned out to be a bushy nightmare followed by a loose scree slope, which as you might have guessed is less than fun to climb with a kayak on your back.
So feeling a little sore yet keen for some actual boating, we decided that the slide was good to go, and I immediately discovered that somewhere on the hike I had lost my helmet. Hugh was keen to go first, and I (feeling like a prize chump) offered to photograph his run. After crossing the river and hiking down to the slide, we were gutted when Hugh signalled to us that the entrance drop didn’t really go, however the rest of the slide was still looking good and after finding his way down, Hugh had one final scout, and pushed out into the current…
The slide itself forms a long twisting s-bend, and there is no point on the bank from which you can see more than half of it. We were therefore only able to watch Hugh negotiate the first half of the monster before watching him come flying out of the exit a worryingly short amount of time later.
Having watched Hugh style the top half and come out grinning, I was feeling confident, and he kindly lent me his helmet for my run. As it turned out, the second part of the slide, after the right hand bend is significantly steeper, bouncier, and harder to control than anticipated. Curlers which looked insignificant from above turned out to be head high , and once into the steep part of the slide it was a white out all the way to the bottom.
After our two successful runs we were stoked but pretty worn out, and decided to hike back to the car, leaving our gear up by the river, to return the next day. My helmet, it turned out, was embarassingly still perched on the roof of my car.
The next morning Finn, who’d opted out of carrying his boat up due to an ankle injury, borrowed Hugh’s boat, whilst I crossed the river to find a photo angle of the steep part of the slide from river right:
The above picture shows the steeper part of the slide with Finn for perspective, and below is the final part.
Finn and Gaute both had sweet lines, although a slightly lower water level and a bonier ride resulted in them both coming out backwards, if still mostly in control.
So after two epic days adventuring, involving around 8 hours of hiking and 60 seconds paddling each, we headed to the nearby Bakery in Lom for coffee and the world’s best cinnamon buns.
Team photo from left to right: Myself, Hugh, Finn, and Gaute.
After close examination of satelite images, we measured the slide to be around 170 m long, and we think it loses 25 – 30 m in height. Throughout the mission we’d come to know it affectionately as ‘The Megatron’, which seems for now, to have stuck.
I’ll leave you with a photo of one of the local ‘guardians of The Megatron’, thanks to Finn Burrows.
Stay posted for more pictures and adventures, and a full video coming soon…
Take it easy,
Nick
(Photos from Nick Horwood and Finn Burrows.)
