Corda Blogg: October 2014

Skjomen

One weekend early September we drove down to the mountains just south of Narvik, in Skjomen, to look at some abandoned copper and gold mines. There are roads that go high up into the mountains for the maintenance of the many dams and tunnels for the hydropower. In summer these roads are open for the public providing easy access to the mountains. We drove up late on Friday night and once we found a campsite in the dark and put up our tent we were treated to a fantastic northern light show. The vegetation at sea level was still green, but high up the mountains at 800-900 m the autumn colours have started.

Autumn harvesting

August and September is harvesting time: this year we collected quite a variety of berries. From our garden we got black and red currants and a good harvest of delicious strawberries. In the forests we picked blueberries, cloudberries, stone brambles and arctic cranberries. We haven't picked any lingonberries yet, but there is still time to do so. In addition to the berries we have of course picked cantarelles and the occasional porcini.

Arctic cranberries

Strawberries in the garden

Blueberries

Cantarelles

Drying stone bramble, blueberries and cantarelles before freezing them

Breidtinden, Senja

I haven't posted anything for a while, we have been busy with painting the house and fixing the drainage around the garage. It is proper autumn by now with some very nice weather, light frost, clear and sunny. I will catch up with a few short posts with photos from the last few months. This first one is from a beautiful weekend in August on the island Senja, just southwest of Tromsø. We camped at Breidtindvatnet where we had a great view and beautiful sunset from our tent, and walked up Breidtinden the day after. Breidtinden is the tallest mountain on Senja and has therefore fantastic views all around. A nice steep ridge walk, well worth the trip.