In the dusty photograph I see him still. My father crouches in a hollow in the ground, like a man taking cover from artillery. Three other men huddle beside him. Their faces are dirty, their clothing torn and hair grown wild. They resemble creatures from long before the advent of the camera that has captured them on film. Beyond the men stretches a vast expanse of barren, treeless ground. It is the tundra on which my father and his geologist colleagues lived for months at a time, learning to read the languages of rock and ice, like blind men reading braille.
My father has been dead for 20 years, but here I am out on that same landscape, having brought with me the same gear he once carried in this place. Some of it is more than half a century old. State of the art gear in its day, it now belongs in antique shops or museums or, as it soon will be, in the book of fiction I am trying to write (The Ice Soldier). Set in the time period of my father's expeditions, I know that the novel must contain more than the borrowed revelations of an armchair mountaineer. So I have come out here, to the Rondane mountains of Norway, in search of answers to questions I do not even know how to ask.
One of the first and hardest facts to absorb about a trek among the snub-nosed peaks of the Rondane, an area of protected wilderness covering over 200,000 acres, is how little time it takes to get here. At seven o'clock this morning, I was having breakfast at the Star Cafe off Soho Square, and my ears were filled with the sound of Cockney, the rustling of newspapers and the clink of teacups in saucers. Now, with the sun not even vanished from the sky, I am the only person for a mile in any direction and the sounds I hear are those of water running down off a glacier, the moaning of wind around my goggles and the crunchy rustle of my boots over the lichen-covered ground.
Arriving, after a two-hour flight from London, at Oslo's Gardermoen airport, a paring away of the man-made world had already begun. The terminal's Spartan frame of wood, bare metal and glass was shadow-like compared to the vast solidity of the mountains which soon came into view as I travelled up the Gudbrandsdal valley. The further I drove, the narrower the valley became, until the walls of cliff on either side stood almost sheer above me, blocking out the light of afternoon.
It was only a matter of hours, but I didn't realise just how far I'd come until, at the village of Otta (pronounced Ooter), I turned off the main road and began a series of insanely hairpinned turns towards a spot on the map called Mysuseter, which proved to be little more than a collection of huts, built among a grove of stunted birch at the edge of the tundra. The place was largely deserted except for an entourage of sheep that followed my car and one enormous moose, which wandered into the road, turned casually to glance in my direction, and then continued on its way. Beyond Mysuseter, the last trees gave way to the mottled terrain of the tundra, known here as the fjell. For people, like myself, whose lives are spent within the boundaries of a man-made world, the first glimpse of such a vast and open space as the Rondane fills them with an overwhelming sense of awe.
The Rondane exists as much within the world of myth as it does in reality. It was here that Ibsen's Peer Gynt roamed across the heather and on a nearby mountain ridge rode on the back of a wild and giant boar. This is the landscape of trolls, some knee-high and some as big as houses, clumsily and permanently at war with their more crafty human adversaries. Higher up, in the glacier's realm of ice, are the Jotuns, frost giants who make quilts of human scalps and flutes out of the shinbones of men. It is easy to laugh off these ghouls of the pagan world when you are safely tucked away at home, but not so easy when you get here. You begin to wonder if you might be a figment of their imagination, rather than the other way around.
Although it is a wilderness, and the Norwegians have gone to great lengths to keep it that way, the Norwegian Mountain Touring Association has incorporated within its boundaries a series of rustic lodges, most reachable only on foot but many within the strolling distance of even the most timid adventurer. The most impressive of the Rondane's lodges is called the Rondvassbu. Seen from the edge of the tundra, where hikers and mountaineers must leave behind all transport but their feet, the Rondvassbu looks like a fairytale castle in the distance. Long ensign flags bearing the Norwegian colours ripple in the breeze. The building seems so small against the backdrop of the mountains that it's tempting to believe the lodge was not even made for people, but rather for the race of elves known as Fossegrinnen, who are said to inhabit these hills.
Following the gravel road which snakes out to the Rondvassbu, I notice how altered everything seems from the world I left behind down in the valley. The air smells different, of rock and glacial streams. The light is different, sharper and the colours more vivid. My sense of scale has vanished, no longer measured in the increments of traffic lights and telegraph wires, because there are none of these things. And the lodge itself seems to be growing, or maybe I am shrinking down to its own size. So much is unfamiliar here, it's hard to tell.
Inside, the Rondvassbu is sparely furnished with blond pine furniture. The place smells of old fires and of fresh salmon seasoned with dill cooking in the kitchen. A family can stay here in a private room or a solitary traveller can bunk down in a sleeping bag on a simple wooden bench. There are bars of Freya, the same dark and crumbly Norwegian chocolate carried by Roald Amundsen to the South Pole, or hot coffee; of which the Norwegians drink more per person than almost anyone on earth.
The lodges, both those which are full service like the Rondvassbu and those further into the Rondane, which are unstaffed, are arranged in such a way that you can immerse yourself to whatever degree you choose in the wilderness around you. The Mountain Touring Association, known as the DNT to Norwegians, has lodges all over the country, making for a combination of the stark beauty of the northern landscape and safe, reliable accessibility that is unparalleled anywhere else. There aren't many spots on earth where you can change your life with a visit to such a rugged landscape without risking your life in the process, but the Rondane is one of those places. Here, you can do without the congestion of the Alps; the lines of people trudging up Mont Blanc like passengers plodding up the staircase at the Angel when the escalator isn't working. Neither do you run the risk of being mauled by a grizzly bear like in Alaska, another landscape the Rondane closely resembles.
The following morning, setting off to climb Storronden, the mountain which rises directly behind the Rondvassbu, I am kitted out in the finest that my father's generation had to offer. Dolomite boots, soled with a combination of Itshide rubber and Tricouni nails. A Stubai alpenstock, favoured by Italian Alpini mountain troops. Grenfell cloth anorak, the same type used by Hillary on his ascent of Everest. Climbing breeches made of ventile, the fabric used in flying suits issued to the RAF in the second world war. An Austrian Geiger boiled wool sweater stuffed into a Bergans canvas and leather rucksack, along with a spare pair of boots, in case the others don't hold up. Gone is the plastic bag rustle of Gore-Tex and the ripping sound of velcro. In its place, I feel the increased weight of wool and canvas, but not as much as I'd expected. The smell of the wool is pleasant in the misty morning air. The old boots grip the slippery rocks much better than expected.
To compare the old gear and the new is bound to be unfair, but I am not wearing it for comparison. Rather, I must learn from the experience of wearing it. In this kind of research, the challenge lies in being able to reverse engineer your knowledge of the present, to learn what was taken for granted but has since been set aside. It is not just clothing that requires study. It is also the climbing techniques of the day, set down in such venerable publications as the Swiss Alpine Club's Mountaineering Handbook, published in 1950, and Geoffrey Winthrop Young's 1920 classic Mountaincraft. Much of what is written in these books has since been superseded, but not as much as one might think. In the mountains, technology can only get you so far. For the rest it is the same effort, and the same rewards as well, that wait for climbers on the trail.
It comes as a surprise that nothing fails. No straps break. My boots don't fall apart, not that I could blame them if they did.
The most surprising revelation about my climb that day is that several of the people I pass on my way up and who later, when I have stopped to rest, pass me, are wearing gear that is as old or even older than my father's. Whether this points towards excessive frugality on the part of Norwegian hikers or, more likely perhaps, a leaning towards the traditional, I am too out of breath to ask.
At the top of Storronden, the mountain falls away sheer for over 2,000ft. From there, looking out over the Rondane, I see no trace of man. The shadows of clouds pass like ships over the russet, green and gold of the tundra far below. Then, out of a distant valley, I see a herd of reindeer gallop out on to the plain. They flow like an inverted river, fanning out, the huge males leading, their white antlers like branches of lightning.
To witness the grandeur of such a landscape, and to realise one's insignificance within it, fills a person with emotions that cannot be framed within the scaffolding of words.
This is the gift of a place like the Rondane. It is what you remember when you are stuck in rush-hour traffic, or standing on crowded train platforms. Of all the memories you've tried to keep, but which end up as dusty photographs lost in the corners of your brain, this one will never fade away.
· The Ice Soldier by Paul Watkins is published on January 19 by Faber and Faber at £12.99.
Way to go
Getting there
Norwegian Air Shuttle (norwegian.no) flies Stansted-Oslo from €94 return inc tax. Ottadalen bus service (fjord1.no/nordfjord -ottadalen) and Norwegian State Railways (nsb.no/internet/en/index.jhtml) run between Oslo and Otta.
Where to stay
For rustic lodges, contact the Norwegian Mountain Touring Association/Den Norske Furistforening (+2282 2800, turistforeningen.no) and rondvassbu.com. Rondane Spa (+6123 3933, Rondane.no).
Recommended reading
Walking In Norway by Connie Roos, Cicerone £11; Norway South by Bernhard Pollman & Tony Pearson, Rother £7.99 .
Further information
Norwegian Tourist Board (0906 3022003, visitnorway.com). rondane.info. visitrondane.com.
Country code: 00 47.
Flight time London-Oslo 2hrs. Rail journey time Oslo-Otta 3½hrs.
£1 = 11.42 Norwegian kroner.
