Second Corporate Group

Our Camp at Remen

We had another corporate group trip to run the next weekend after the last; this one was for a local oil rig engineering company called Axess. It would be a family trip for their employees. They are quite a cool company, everyone who works for them are hard core into outdoor sports, primarily climbing, they work on testing standards of rigs and doing maintenance and repairs, via industrial abseiling. Most of them are engineers. The company gives the employees many corporate events with DID adventure every year and the employees are also free to take of as much time as they like to pursue outdoor adventures and expeditions. For this trip we were heading to Remen Valley; or Raumsdalen.
This valley is stunning, it is carved deep into the mountains by the Glaciers of ice ages gone, and the vertical rocks faces and peaks loom up on either side. On the way to our camp site for the weekend we passed under the Troll Veggen or Troll Wall, the highest vertical cliff in Northern Europe. It is a Mecca for Base jumping, though also the only illegal natural feature to Jump in Norway! Some have climbed the wall, but to stand directly below it is to be in awe!

The Troll Wall

The weekend was fun, we (DID Instructors) were mostly camp wardens, setting up the site, organising food and drinks, and then cleaning up at the end, while the group went out hiking with out- sourced guides into the mountains. I however got to take a small group on the last day kayaking down the slow lower part of the Rauma River to Åndalsnes. It was nice to paddle the Trak Kayak on some fresh water, though there weren’t the rapids I would like to one day try it on.

Trak on the Rauma River

This trip overall was another fun one, but my culture shock really hit me on this outing with every one speaking lots of Norwegian and I hardly being involved. I felt alone and awkward and instead of trying to be more social my mind wanted to hide and hear logical words coming from people’s mouths that wasn’t just sounding like, iafdhaofiaika i aifaifjapj iafaij fpaj fpeojr!
Also all the waste and lack of recycling practices really affected me and I had a discussion with Didrick and the other guides, which lead to a slightly heated argument, that had to be finished later in the week. It Appears Norway with its new Found wealth in oil is also taking on the ignorant idea of convenience in its consumption, paper plates, plastic glasses, all used and tossed in with every other piece of garbage and then tossed into a land fill.  hmmm I thought it would be greener here, i guess we have things to learn all over the world.

The Kids in the Space Station