Day 6: Kåbtåjaure – Pauro

Next stop: Pauro! We start fully motivated, with bright sunshine and also quite early in the morning, alarm clock at 7, at 8:15 we leave. The way leads along the lake – not too close to the lake, but also not too high on the slope is the motto and as always it is a constant up and down. The road changes between almost grass-like vegetation and more or less rocky areas – overall we make fast progress and see a reindeer, too.
A Reindeer a day keeps the worries away!

Now the first two hours are over, we leave the Kåbtåjaure behind us and have now the Bovrojávri in the view, at whose south bank we now walk along. Pauro itself lies on the north shore, from there we are separated by a bridge, a peninsula and a rowing course. Exactly at 11 am we reach the Swedish-Norwegian border and this time even one of the special border stones, the Rr 252. This has immediate effects: firstly there is a Selfie and secondly the marking gets better suddenly.

The next picture shows the discharge of Noaidejávri or Lake 718 into Bovrojávri. If you go with an older mountain map, you will try to find the bridge here – but there is no bridge here anymore. The bridge was destroyed and then built further west, you have to go around the Noajdetjåhkkå until you reach the narrow place between the Noaidejávri and the lake 718 and there you find the bridge.

The bridge is a classic Norwegian suspension bridge and really nice shaky. Elisabeth is not amused and that’s where I come in: bring my backpack over, return, pick up Elisabeth and walk over with her, return and transport Elisabeth’s backpack. 6 times the fun for me ?

Anyway, the bridge is there at all, it was destroyed at the beginning of August and there was only the possibility to ford, but it was repaired within a week. On our day the water level was high, I guess the water would have gone up to my chest, difficult to get a dry backpack over there.

From the other side of the bridge you can now see the Noajdetjåhkkå very nice.

On our way we now cross the peninsula until we reach the lake on the other side. This is the most spectacular part of the day. In front of us are the reddish Paurofjellet and the turquoise-blue Bovrojávri, and the peninsula is lush green. It is absolutely windless and so the Paurofjellet is reflected so strongly in the lake that one often wonders where the border between water and land is. But see for yourself!

We are now a little nervous as we come to the key point of the day: the boat passage. In the past there were always problems with aborted boats or just two boats on one side and therefore none on the other side. In the hut books in Pauro and Røysvatn one can read stories about it, among other things the story of a (male) hiker who waited desperately whether from the other side someone translated with the boat arrived until then on his side a young Swedish woman who got the boat swimming. Later on the tour someone told us that the boat passage should also be replaced by a bridge, but I haven’t found any confirmation online yet.

Finally we get a view of the harbour of Pauro and of course we are lucky: there is a boat on each side. We go down, put down our backpacks and prepare the boat on our side. The boat is moored with innumerable windings and knots at the intended fastenings, someone really played it safe here. The boat is actually a nut shell and a bit shaky with both of us in it. Moreover, it is so small that we first take only a backpack with us to the other side.

I’m responsible for bridges, Elisabeth is rowing, that’s how the division of labour works in our team. After a long journey we reach the other shore on an exciting zig-zag course ?, unload the backpack and free the second boat, which is also heavily tied, and hang it on our own boat. Then Elisabeth rows us back to the other side on a sightseeing course ?, where a boat will be left behind and our second backpack will be taken along. And then it’s over again, already on a more direct course ?. We pull the boat ashore and moor it as laboriously as we found it – you remember, always leave everything a bit better than you found it, those are the rules! ?

After that we shoulder our backpacks and walk the last half hour to the hut. The hut is marked too far west on our mountain map.

On our arrival in Pauro all cabins are locked, we are the first guests! We move into the double room in the larger hut – because there is a cozy couch – and sign the hut book. Then we warm ourselves some water, in order to wash ourselves outside before the hut. While we wash naked in front of the hut, we see a lonely hiker on his way from Pauros harbour – and he or she certainly sees naked people 🙂

Not much later he arrives, Markus from Thübingen, a name I can remember well ?. We sit then a while together before the hut in the evening sun, gossip and enjoy the view. To Elisabeth he says that he followed “her small footprints” the whole day ? and sometime later quite a complaint follows, how one can moor boats only so laboriously…
Of course he’s right: With the wonderful weather today you can make it all comfortable, but in cold, rain and wind the whole thing looks different. On the other hand we didn’t want to go into the hut books of 2019 as guilty for aborted boats…

A little later a second German comes from Sitas, but he prefers the small hut and then comes to the big hut only for a short chat. Our evening consists of food, more gossip and reading in our Kindles. At 23 o’clock we go to sleep, before that we do some Antara exercises under the starry sky. To be on the safe side we set ourselves an alarm clock for 2 o’clock and actually there are weak northern lights in the sky. We watch for a while and then go back to the warm bed, it is only 5°C outside.