We start our 18-kilometer hike here. The tour buses are all at "Nord Kapp", the second northernmost point in Europe.
Soft, Arctic tundra. We head to the point on the horizon.
A stone cairn. We're on the right track.
We continue from cairn to cairn...
...to cairn...
...to cairn....
We cross mushy places.
We continue going from cairn...
...to cairn...
...to cairn...
...to cairn...
...to cairn... (Do you see the red "T" for "trail"?)
...to cairn.
The landscape changes.
A lake!
We are still walking from cairn to cairn.
Where is the next cairn?
A foggy patch announces a change.
Follow the cairns.
The foggy patch interrupts the monotony of cairn to cairn to cairn....
The land takes a definite dip into the fog.
But our cairns do not take us there.
White rocks!
We can see the second northernmost point of Europe, on a different peninsula, from here.
Our trail continues north.
And what's this?
A patch of tiny flowers brave the Arctic cold.
We continue.
Another lake.
A small trail marker.
Quite wet hee.
Another hiker overtakes us. (We saw only six other people.)
Someone lost a scarf.
More brave flowers. It is Spring, after all!
Aha! We can now see the famous Nord Kapp tourist center, the second northernmost point in Europe.
But we have a different destination.
A fallen cairn.
Another one.
A reindeer emerges from the fog.
We begin our descent to the sea.
Down, down, down.
We follow what we think is a trail.
The going gets a bit rough.
We thought we had arrived, but the GPS told us otherwise.
We walked northwest along the coast.
More hardy, little flowers.
The fog and cold leave us feeling very isolated.
We see a reassuring red "T".
I don't think the tour buses would make it.
Passage was a bit hard to negotiate.
The last cairn!!! N71° 11" 08'
We're hungry, tired, and cold but happy.
Lee signed the book to commemorate our exploit.
After a quick picnic, we somewhat retraced our steps.
We didn't see this huge boulder on the way north.
The craggy coast clears up a little.
An entire herd of reindeer!
We follow this stream.
Nice lake, nice sky.
We have a good view of "North Kapp".
A calm, blue sea and sky have displaced the gray fog of the morning.
One last look back.
Snow has melted, revealing fast-flowing streams underneath. We had to be careful here, not to fall through the snow.
Goodbye, Knivskjelodden.
