Witnessing Global Warming on the Storbrean Glacier

Chris Veldhuis
Feb 25, 2015
2 min read

Our trip to Jotunheimen had a bit of a false start. First our plane did not bring one of our backpacks, so we were stuck on Gardermoen for the entire first day. We had flown in from Amsterdam around nine in the morning. Our bus to Jotunheimen left the airport at eleven in evening and when we finally arrived in Lom, a village at the park's border, it was five in the morning. We found a place to pitch our tents and took a powernap.

As the bus into Jotunheimen National Park did not run anymore (the service had literally ended the day before) we decided to walk twenty kilometres and get there ourselves. We took a wrong turn. Eventually we found a bus that would get us somewhat closer, but we had lost yet another day.

Early the next morning we managed to find the road into the park. It was the service road of the Leirvassbu hut. The weather wasn't that great. It was very cloudy with some rain, which did mean beautiful ominous clouds for my photos. I would say typical Jotunheimen weather. The river valley we walked through was beautiful, with rugged mountains on both sides.

Halfway through my brother and I spotted a beautiful glacier and we tried to convince our friends to take a little detour and climb up to it. We failed, so it was just the two of us. We left our backpacks at the beginning of the trail and headed off.

The trail was quite steep and rocky. Along the way a research team had left signs to show where the glacier had been in the past. In the Middle Ages it had reached all the way down into the valley.

When we reached the sign that marked the terminus of the glacier in the 1970s, we were amazed by how fast it had shrunk to its current state. Since 2004 Storbreen has split into two glacier arms and has melted ever faster. It is so weird to be there and see with this with your own eyes, this seemingly unspoilt place, where everything seems timeless. This experience left a strong impression, in a way books and films could never have done.

As we walked down and continued walking to the destination for that day I was very tired. It had been a five kilometer detour up and down a mountain and we still had five to go. When we finally arrived chocolate milk and a card game were waiting for us in the hut.