05-Jan-2002 -- This was another confluence that required a small expedition to reach:

We started by driving 2 hours from Oslo to Porsgrunn, where my parents live. The next day my father Hans joined me and my son Fredrik for the 3+ hours drive from Porsgrunn to Øvre Birtedalen in Fyresdal, Telemark.

The evening before I had phoned an old lady living in the area to ask about the road that leads almost half-way along the valley to the confluence point, and after receiving her confirmation ("Yes, that road is plowed, 'cause there's people living at Birte") we arrived safe in the knowledge that we would only need to ski the last 4 km (each way) to the confluence, which should be a nice cross country trip.

However, as soon as we left the main road, we met a padlocked gate! Another car arrived from the other side of the gate, but it turned out that they had forgotten their key back at their cabin, so they could not help us.

The man in the car suggested that we might be able to get a key from the local general store, so we drove over to 'Birtedalen Hytteservice' where the lady behind the counter was more than happy to rent us the required key, against a 20 NOK (about $2.20) fee.

With the key we passed the gate, drove to the end of the plowed road, and started skiing. The temperature was about -5 C, and with an old snowmobile track going in the right direction, we had a beautiful trip from Birte to lake Krokstøyl where the confluence is located about 200+ m up the hill at the south end of the lake.

After taking a set of photos, plus the required GPS shot, we started back to the car. At this point a strong wind had picked up, not too cold, but since we were heading directly into it, the trip back to the car took almost exactly as long as getting there, even though we now had mostly downhill skiing along our old tracks.

We made it back to the store in time to return the key before they closed at 15:00(this was a saturday).

Going back down the very steep hill towards Fyresdal allowed a very nice view of the valley, see the last photo!