I've been hiking and fishing in the northern parts of Norway for more then fifteen years now and the last trip was a special one. Not because of my photography. That was hampered by my DA*16-50 misbehaving (repaired after a fall, but with a optical flaw that seems to manifest itself more and more and the autofocus failing) and unusually warm weather with boring blue sky's or to much contrast. The last two day's of the nine day trip I used a Alpacka raft to get back to civilization with my DSLR safely tucked away in my big backpack on the raft. I cut the trip short because of thunderstorms which prevented me from crossing a big lake. The trip was special for a couple of unusual and sometimes touching events.
1. Reindeer. Normally I don't see that much of them so far inland in the summer. But they had a cold spring and there was lots of snow.
2. And here are the people responsible for those animals.
3. A shadowselfie...
4. I met a friendly Finnish father with his son. (Brought there by a Sami guy with a quad. Their journey to this river lasted hours, mine day's because I walked.
)
5. I knew there was a chance of encountering lots of mosquitos this early in the year (early july) and unfortunately that was the case. Tent with mosquitos...
6. Mosquito bonanza!
7. I moved on and on the way to a mountain lake rumored to have very big char swimming about I saw a helikopter passing by...and turning around. Eventually it landed and a military guy got out and asked me if I had seen a guy in his late forties (with some more details). They were part of a search party. Later I learned he was found, but it was to late...
8. The mountain lake I mentioned with another one above it. I camped at the mount of the stream linking both lakes. On my way there I thought I saw something moving on a small hill. I went there with my phone and GPS alarm (Spot Connect) thinking it could be the missing person but it was only some junk on a sled and flapping plastic left by some careless Sami people.
9. On the way down to a rather big lake I saw a camp on the shore. I was welcomed by a woman that didn't speak any English but that didn't prevent here from making me a fresh brew of coffy with cakes! Later here husband and I think her son came back from their fishing trip and I got a serving of fresh fish, pork meat, bread, two lukewarm beers and two shots of cognac... A welcome break from the insect infested world outside and an example of how to welcome 'strangers'.
10. I asked if they could ferry me over the lake and they did.
11. On the way over the lake the guy in the photo above said he saw two black birds on the lake which he couldn't identify. He continued telling me about the time he saw a elk swimming over the lake. You could tell that was a special encounter to him. Eventually we got the 'black birds' in sight.
12. They were two elk; female and male. They probably went for a swim because of the mosquitos. They had lots of insects on their noses.
13. My camp on the other side of the lake with some mosquitos...
14. Two day's later my rafting adventure started. I've been on the water, sailing, boating and canoeing since a very young age but with limited white water experience and a river that was wilder than I anticipated some boundaries had to be crossed. A section with two meter or perhaps even higher breaking waves really scared me and there was more stuff that I had to endure that really tested my judgement and abilities. At the last rapids at some point I simply deflated my raft and continued on foot. Photo made with my iPhone because I was to lazy to get the K-3 from the backpack strapped to the boat.
And that's why it was a special trip... Even though the sun that never went under awoke me very early in the morning and the many, many mosquitos, me being so tired that my fly fishing really suffered and losing quite a lot of body weight I have no regrets.
Cheers,
Remco
Originally posted by Fries 
Post #1 by Fries
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