After a wet night that involved me setting up my rain tarp at 3am, and a 6:30am wakeup call, I was pretty tired. Anyway, I packed up my gear and resumed picking my way downhill through the dew-soaked grass

Once I reached the bottom, I was in for a few-mile road walk. Joy.

After that, I had another couple of miles of roads to get back on the trail. Phew.

Once I got to the trailhead, there was a big parking lot and a bunch of day hikers packing up their gear. I took this chance to eat some breakfast and filter some water before starting the big 2000-foot climb to rejoin the trail along the ridgeline.

Once I started the climb, I was back into thick clouds, where I couldn't see anything that wasn't right in front of me

It was a pretty cool hike regardless; I felt like I was in Lord of the Rings or something.

Along the way, I looked ahead at my afternoon plans, and got pretty dejected. After lunch, I was due to drop from 3200+ feet all the way back down to sea level, and then immediately climb back up into the clouds, peaking at 4400+ feet. And then dropping right back to sea level again at Voss. And then climbing again. And then dropping again.

Only then do I do a final climb up into why I'm here: to traverse the Hardengervidda nasjonalpark.

Ugh.

I spent a few hours thinking it over while I hiked, and eventually came to a reluctant decision. At the end of this descent, I was in for another few miles of road walking before I even started this climb. I'm just going to hitch or whatever to Voss and skip this section.

I really don't like this, because it leaves the task unfinished, but this isn't why I'm doing this. I'm out here to have fun and see this awesome mountain plateau, and given that I only took ten or so days off for this hike, this isn't how I want to spend it.

After an hour of descending, I finally broke through the clouds and could see the pretty valley I would be entering (and not climbing up the other side).

Once I hit the road, I saw that there was a bus stop, with three people waiting for the bus. So I asked for their advice, and wound up bussing to Arna and then hopping on the train to Voss. I finally got there about 5:30pm, and it was time to get back to hiking.

This involved a sizeable climb out of town, but there were great views of the fjord. It wasn't too long until I rejoined the trail that I had left.

And was disappointed to see that "trail" meant "road". Bleh. Oh well, crying about it won't help.

This road had a tunnel I needed to go through which was scary because I'm sure any cars that might come along were not expecting a pedestrian.

Spoiler: I made it through.

I hiked along the road for a few hours before finally finding two trees that would work for me and setting up camp early. I'm hoping to make up for last night's sleep tonight, so that I can put in the (road) miles tomorrow.