The beginning of 2022 has been a real winter wonderland here in Trøndelag. Now it was time to go back to Malvik, to Næverdalen (“Never” in Norwegian means birch bark, could be the name origin) this time. We had received a tip that the river Nævra has a nice waterfall and we wanted to check it out. The lumberjack we met by the bridge (he was OK…sleeps all night and works all day?) could inform us that we shouldn’t talk about _the_ waterfall, but the waterfalls. There are ten in a row, with the rather prosaic names “One” to “Ten”.
At winter time it’s better to take only one waterfall in one trip, so we made the simple decision of starting with the closest, assuming it was “One”. Or maybe they start numbering from the origin of the river, so this was “Ten”? We hadn’t thought of asking, it seemed so obvious at the time.
There wasn’t really any pathway to the waterfall, so we had to wade in deep snow down through the forest to reach it. Not very crowded here this beautiful winter day, strangely enough, but in summer time this is said to be a popular bathing spot.
Time to take the plunge?
Oh, no, first some research! Knut wanted to see if it was possible to bathe in the waterfall itself, in nature’s own jacuzzi. And it really did look tempting:
But the supervisor of Health and Security pointed out the risk of getting falling ice blocks in the head and raised the veto flag.
So finally a “go” for a swim:
… with the photographer right behind. A great bath! Nice, smooth rocks on the waterbed and no climbing over bigger, unsteady rocks. Not quite even water depth, though.
Only seconds after the picture above, we realized there was a rather strong current drawing us towards the main stream. Not that it would have been directly dangerous, but if we were dragged in we would have had to make a big circle going 10-15 m downstream first before we could swim back to our little backwater pool. A couple of strong swim strokes avoided that detour and brought us back the same way we came in.
The changing zone was already prepared when we got up:
We felt like professionals when we took out the hot black current juice and really enjoyed the view.
No trouble this time? Well… except that when we checked the map afterwards, we realized that this was just another dip in the river Homla. The river Nævra runs into Homla slightly higher up than the bridge. Next time…
We assume this wasn’t neither the Nævra “One” or “Ten”, but maybe “Homlafossen”? Who knows?