Earlier this fall, Dmac and I took a scouting trip to Norway. WOW—what a SPECTACULAR place! When planning or debuting a new trip, it’s important that we visit these new locations to meet with our in-country guides and check out all aspects of the itinerary ourselves.
Check out our scouting trip gallery below! It was quite rainy in the national park while we were there, but weather is typically much warmer, drier, and blue sky-er in summer months!
What do we do on a scouting trip?
Meet with our in-country partners and guides
When working with any new partners, meeting them in person is crucial to making sure it’s a mutually good fit and that we’re on the same page for working to create the best experience possible for our students. These in-person visits follow many hours of vetting over multiple Zoom, phone, and email conversations. We choose in-country partners who have experience working with teenagers in the outdoors and have excellent reputations for safety and fun.
This also gives us the chance to meet some of their guides—we can often hand-pick specific people we’d like to work with our students (these folks not only guide us through the trip itself, but become just as central to our community as our instructors). In Norway, for example, we spent our via ferrata day with Iain, an experienced guide from Ireland who’s also a whitewater kayaking coach and rock climber with a long history of working with teens outdoors.
Lastly, spending face time with our partners gives us the opportunity to talk about Adventure Treks’ program goals, gush about our students, and get our guides as excited to meet them as we always are.
Walk through the itinerary
We don’t visit a new location just to say we’ve been there! We walk (quite literally) through as much of the itinerary as we can. That way, we’re well-versed in the actual trails and rivers, possible challenges, where to find the most scenic spots, local knowledge and history, and much, much more. We visit campsites, drive the route, hike the trails, check out drive times, create a menu that features local cuisine, and make any tweaks necessary.
It’s crucial to make sure that physical challenges are age-appropriate for our students, which is why we hop on trail and hike the actual routes we’ve planned. We cannot wait for our students to experience Jotunheimen National Park and the fjords—the landscape is simply magical!
Make any necessary changes
After running through the itinerary, we’ll discuss possible changes to the planned itinerary and create backup plans just in case. There’s so much to experience in only 16 days that we want to to make sure our students get the absolute most of of their trips!
What our students will love about Norway
We cannot overstate how beautiful the Nordic landscape is. Once you drive out of the cities and head north, you become surrounded by towering mountain ranges. Tumbling waterfalls cascade hundreds, maybe thousands, of feet down the cliffsides EVERYWHERE you look. Mountain spring water is so clean that locals drink it right out of the stream.
The sea kayak route in Nordfjord is gorgeous; students will love gliding through the dark blue waters, surrounded by grazing sheep on surrounding bluffs. One of our campsites is nestled in a remote valley right next to a pristine river—beautiful!
I’m excited for our students to hop on the Hornelen via ferrata. Fun fact: Our in-country partner was the driving force between getting the Norwegian government to build this into the cliff. There are multiple routes of varying difficulty, so similar to rock climbing, students will be able to choose their challenge as they traverse, downclimb, and ascend Hornelen. No matter which route they complete, they’ll feel a great sense of accomplishment—and the views are nonstop!
Jotunheimen was perhaps our favorite part of the trip. Our backpacking route will take students next to many alpine lakes, whose deep, alluring teal waters eclipse even the emerald waters of the North Cascades in Washington (one of our favorite places to paddle in the US). Well-marked paths have been carefully carved through the hillsides, and Norway’s “right to roam” laws (aka allemannsretten) means we’ll have our choice of magnificent campsites. Trails are challenging but accessible—perfect for AT students.
This is going to be an utterly unforgettable experience for our students. We cannot wait for them to experience the wonder that is Norway!
