An hour! If we went really fast we could still catch up with him. I thought of Lovaas's big girth. Then I remembered how quick he had been on his feet. An hour was quite a lot to make up. But we had one advantage. We knew he was ahead of us. He did not know that we were behind him. 'Who was with him?' I asked.

'His mate and another man,' was the reply.

The cliffs above us flattened back to pine-clad slopes. A long sheet of water filled the valley. 'Vassbygdi,' Sunde shouted. Houses huddled at the farther end, their reflections clearcut in the soft green water.

We skirted the lake and went on for another mile up the valley to the village of Vassbygden. There the drosje stopped. It was the end of the road. We piled out and got our rucksacks on to our shoulders. They were incredibly heavy. Apart from clothing, we carried food — cheese and chocolate mainly. The skis were tied across the top. Harald and the drosje disappeared down the track and we turned our faces to the mountains. The air was cold and damp. The rucksack dragged at my unaccustomed shoulders. My borrowed ski boots were too big. I cursed Farnell and began to sweat.

For all that he was a skinny little man about half my size, it was Sunde who set the pace. And when I asked him whether he thought to catch Lovaas up that afternoon, he said. 'We gotter get to Osterbo turisthytte by nightfall. That is unless yer want ter sleep in one of the old disused saeters.'

'There's a moon,' I panted in reply. 'We'll push on by moonlight.'

'Per'aps,' he said. 'But wait an' see 'ow yer feelin' by then. Osterbo's quite a way — over two Norwegian miles; an' there's seven English miles to each Norwegian.'

We climbed in silence after that. We were moving up into the mist, climbing along the side of a valley. Below us the river thundered by narrow gorges down to Vassbygdi. Every now and then the track flattened out and the river rose to meet us. We trudged through a narrow gorge where the water ran deep and swift. Damp-blackened rock rose sheer on either side, its summit lost in a cloud so that it seemed as though it might go up and up into infinity. Ahead of us was the thunder of water. It grew louder and louder until the white froth of a fall emerged like a broad grey ribbon out of the mist. Speech was impossible as we climbed beside the live, swirling water. The river was full of the early melting of the snows and the water curved over the rock ledges in thick green waves. The whole rock-walled valley seemed to shake to the weight of the water thrusting down it to the fjord.

At the top of the fall the rock fell back a little and slopes of lush spring grass ran up to black buttresses that had no summit. Lone rocks as big as houses lay scattered up this valley. In the shelter of an up-ended slab stood the broken remains of a wooden hut. 'Almen saeter,' Sunde shouted in my ear. 'It's over two hundred years old, this saeter. A long time ago an old fellow used ter live 'ere winter and summer. An 'e killed every soul wot come along this valley. Proper myffylogical, 'e was.'

The hut was old and broken. Its walls were made of great beams axe-cut to dove-tail into each other, the ends protruding at the corners like a pile of sticks. The roof was turf on a layer of birch bark. The huge, up-ended slab of rock protected the building from rock falling from the cliff buttresses high above us. I paused to get my breath and ease the suffocating beating of my heart. 'Come on nan, Mr Gansert,' Sunde called. 'You ain't started yet.' He turned and continued up the defile. His small body seemed dominated by the heavy pack. He was like a snail with his house on his back. And he didn't seem to hurry any more than a snail. Yet there was a rhythm about the steady movement of his legs. Unhurriedly, steadily he covered the ground. His bare legs above the white ankle socks were hard with muscle at each forward thrust. Those muscles were the legacy of a youth spent in the mountains on foot and on ski.