Leaving Alta airport I went shopping. Not much opportunities for that in the small provincial capital on a Sunday evening, so I settled for the cycle tourer special: a hotdog and some sweets from the gas station.
Karasjok was where I wanted to be at the end of Monday but the forecast for the next day was grim: it predicted rain all day and temperatures as low as three degrees in the morning. With no accommodation booked in Alta I was flexible and decided to ride through the night, which while still cold should be mostly dry until the early morning hours. Thus I left Alta at eight p.m. headed south.
The first sightseeing stop of the trip was the canyon of the Alta river. While you can catch a glimpse or two of the canyon from the road, there's one prime viewpoint a couple kilometers outside Alta where it can be viewed in its full glory. To reach it one has to follow a 6 km trail starting at a parking lot -- well, a bunch of exposed rocks, really -- on the roadside at around 400 m altitude. During planning it was proved difficult to find any information on the condition of that trail, so I had hoped I could cycle most of it. Unfortunately it turned out to be an MTB trail at best. A sign at the trailhead warned of three river crossings that in ideal conditions might not result in wet feet.
Since I was really excited to see the canyon, I gave it a shot. However after a few meters I had to get off the bike and push already because the terrain proved too much for my gravel tires, and a couple hundred meters into the trail I got quite chilly from the wind which had increased steadily with altitude, while the temperature dropped. Suddenly the Garmin was showing temperatures in the negative degrees and limbs got freezing cold from lack of movement. This hike was too much, another five kilometers of this could have killed me. So with a heavy heart I had to do the reasonable thing and turn around.
Back on the road I decided to continue towards Karasjok. The forecast didn't look too bad, I could easily hand five degrees, I thought. However I hadn't expected there to be such a strong wind. On the high plateau that followed I often struggled to stay upright. The severely degraded road didn't help either. The next 20 km basically were a rapid succession of steep gravel climbs followed by steep but cautious downhills -- the last thing I wanted was a mechanical up there in the freezing cold.
After I was finally on smooth tarmac again I still had another 50 km to the junction where I would turn left on the 92 road to Karasjok. The scenery got a little less barren the deeper I got inland, the roads now were lined with trees and I crossed many a noisy river -- a textbook tundra setting.
Despite the forecast, the temperature wouldn't go up again. The cold was manageable though in a windjacket, two sets of gloves, and longsleeve hiking pant over my bibs. I had toured on that stretch to Karasjok before and knew it would be hilly, but I didn't remember just how many uphills it entailed. After turning east the wind had changed from a merely annoying crosswind to a full on headwind which spiced up the hilltops quite a bit.
At around seven a.m. it started raining. Zero degrees were manageable, but not in the rain. And I had another 90 km to go. Soon the gloves were soaked and my hands started to get numb from the cold. My feet remained dry for longer thanks to the overshoes but water inevitably made its way down my socks. And I was completely exposed too: the few resting places along the route didn't offer any shelter. While the road isn't entirely uninhabited, the sparse Sami settlements don't offer much in terms of protection to random passers by. Not unless they're reindeer anyway. While I was battling the elements I counted the kilometers to Karasjok where I knew I could at least grab lunch someplace dry.
I reached Karasjok campsite around ten a.m., more or less as I had calculated, and inquired for a cabin. At that point, despite the atrocious conditions, I was still undecided if I would continue riding for a while after lunch. But when the receptionist confirmed there was a free one and I could have it right away, I jumped at it. It wasn't too expensive by Norway standards either. Five minutes later I lay down on the couch for the first wave of sleep.
gps tracks
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