Gold Key Goals

I've mentioned Olav Thon on this blog a few times before. I first heard of the Thon name from seeing Thon hotels around Oslo and during a visit to Tømtehytta, I happened to find a book about Olav Thon and his contributions to the trekking association. What I came to learn was that he is a very, very wealthy 93 year old man who loves hats, colour blocking, and DNT. Olav's contributions to DNT cabin life have taken a few of my cabin stays to the next level. And I too love cabin trips, hats, and power clashing, so it was only natural to dress up as him for Hallowe'en.

© EvenFoto.no (CC BY 3.0) - http://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/thonproperty/images/olav-thon-453727

The costume itself was pretty simple to put together: blazer, baggy collared shirt, necktie, and toque. I also wore wool socks pulled up over my pants and opted for hiking boots when we went out. Props included an issue of Fjell og Vidde, DNT's member publication, and some play money.

Most people were able to guess who I was when given a hint, so I'd say the costume was a success! Happy Hallowe'en!

The hike into Øvresaga was lovely. That is, after we got past the first few kilometres where we just walked alongside the road. The fall colours in the forest were beautiful and we made ourselves at home atop of a hill overlooking the lake for lunch. There was a cabin nearby so we may have technically been eating in their backyard but we didn't mind and they didn't seem to either.


On our hike into the Øvresaga I was extremely pleased to see that there were still (small) blueberries to be found! Whoever said you can't pick blueberries in October wasn't trying hard enough. Østmarka is a blueberry gold mine. (And a beautiful place to hike in the fall.)


We didn't stay at the cabin for very long in order to catch the bus home at a reasonable hour. At a glance it seemed like an average cabin with a two bedrooms and a canoe that can be borrowed if you're staying overnight. The water was super calm that day -- great conditions for a paddle if we had had time! We hiked back along the roads instead of the trail to cut back on travel time. But to our dismay, we didn't stand far enough out of the shelter and the bus drove right by us. The next bus didn't come for another hour and we weren't exactly dressed for standing around.


To add insult to injury, there was nothing to do around the bus stop. No cafes, no points of interest, just a bunch of houses and a lake. Walking to the nearest station was a bit of a crap shoot. Some of the stops on the way in seemed basically as good as getting dropped off in the forest. At least here we could get away from the main road and still be near civilization. We managed to catch the next bus and have been vigilant about being very visible at bus stops since!

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To the best of my knowledge, that statement is true. Or at least it was true on July 1, 2016 when we finally made it to Presthytta and crushed all former records with documented evidence. Not that it was a competition.



Luckily a sign to Presthytta caught out attention: only 1 km to go! Surely it couldn't be up the dirt road to the left? That road looked like it had been recently dug up. Skeptical, we followed the trail. It was mostly a bulldozed path of mud and fallen trees in an otherwise relatively clear area. We stopped when we came to a very steep hill that had effectively turned into a river/waterfall of sorts with all the runoff. We caught our breath and climbed up thinking surely the cabin was at the top. Nope. The runoff stopped but the bulldozed path continued.


We went higher, and higher, thinking it would be over every hill and it wasn't. And, where were the blazes? After following the bulldozed path through the woods, we hit blue blazes again. What path had we been following? Should we follow the blazes left (up another hill) or right (into the forest)? 1 km? How inaccurate was the sign we passed? We decided it wasn't worth it to go up any more hills and took a right. We followed the path until we found ourselves back at the abandoned barn and the sign for Presthytta that said 1km to go. Then we had an important decision to make: should we try again?


We did. We followed the blazes very carefully and came once more to the waterfall. But we weren't going up that hill again until we found a blue blaze. Finally we found what we were looking for, in the forest along a small path through the grass beside our muddy "trail". Soon we were at Presthytta and the rain poured down. We took shelter in the cabin and played Yahtzee while we waited for it to ease up. I won against all other recorded games by a pretty respectable margin while eating a Kvikk Lunsj. My spirits were completely restored. The rain stopped and we went back to Drømmen.

Presthytta had been hard to find but it had an amazing fireplace inside and the outhouse was less buggy than the one at Drømmen. It was a bit bigger than I prefer and even though there is a living room, all the beds are in the same room as the kitchen. But there were tons of raspberry bushes outside. Too bad for me they weren't ripe for the picking!

For the record, looking at the map with less tired eyes, the bulldozed path was a municipal boundary clearing between Hole and Ringerike. That's a mistake I won't be making twice!

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We made a fire, put on dry socks, and sat down to eat with plans to visit the other nearby cabins in the coming days. Looking through the cabin log book it seems like this is a fairly popular spot and we heard from some friends that they had been a few weeks after us and seen our entry! Not hard to see why it's popular -- the location is great (save the mosquitoes) and the cabin is super cute, private and recently renovated (it's also accessible by a nearby road instead of the hiking trail).

More to come on the other cabins we visited in the following weeks!

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All in all, it was a great mid-week trip! If I were to do it again, the only thing I'd do differently would be to reverse our hike to take the long way in and the short way out so that we might have had the energy to visit the lookout on the shorter side of the hike.

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The Tømte cabins are not far from the city and a popular place to visit. We went to the "little" Tømtehytta mid-week so that we'd have the place to ourselves (the "big" Tømtehytta is right beside the little one but on a Wednesday in June nobody had made any reservations at either except us). We left after work and didn't get to the trail head until around 8pm but there is lots of sun in the summer and we had a few hours of daylight ahead of us.

From the bus stop, a sign notes that are two ways to get to the cabin, one is 7.5km and the other is 3.5. We chose the 3.5km route based on the fact that it was "steeper, but also 4km shorter". What the sign did not mention was that the route we chose was substantially steeper than the alternative. (Not pictured because that was not a fun time.) When we finally had just 500m left to go, the switchbacks started.


Eventually we made it and it was so worth it. This is another cabin that has been renovated with funding from Olav Thon's DNT Foundation and it was at this point I became an Olav Thon super-fan. There was not one, but two couches, as well as a guitar, rocking chair, and cow-print footstool. Plus at least 10 decorative pillows and a loft space for sleeping. AND new ikea cabinets in the kitchen and a brand spanking new outhouse with a poured cement foundation. We lived the dream cabin life for one night and loved every minute of it.

The next day we popped over to the "big" Tømtehytta and took the longer route back, but more on that next week. If we were to do this trip again, I'd take the 7.5km route in. It's also uphill but much less gruelling. On the way out (in the 3.5 km stretch) there is a side hike you can do to a nearby look-off. For us, having walked up that path already, we were not prepared to hike back down (and then up) those switchbacks to see it. Maybe another time!

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