Friday Photo #307 – Horseid Summer

Photo: Summer evening over Horseid beach, Moskenesøy, Lofoten Islands, Norway. July 17, 2018. 22:55

I don’t like November. The only redemption to this month is northern lights, but so far we’ve just had near constant cloudy skies – even while the forecast says it should be sunny! And today my house is once again shaking in the wind from another storm while icy snow sings a chorus on my windows. The days are now short and the sun is perilously low on the southern horizon. Have I already seen my last sunlight of the year without even know it?

I’m generally trying to keep these Friday photo posts as current as possible with recent conditions or events on the islands. But other than 3 nights of northern lights, I haven’t taken a single photo for a month. Though much of the blame for that is me starting to surf again – so rather than go out and hike in crappy grey weather, I might as well be in the water catching some waves. I did just order myself a GoPro, so perhaps some water photos will start showing up here soon.

So, with nothing immediately relevant to post this week (nor the following weeks either), I thought a nice memory from summer would work. I think I’ve already written (I forget when) that this was a relatively boring summer in terms of light. June mostly sucked and rained, July got hot and hazy for 3 weeks, then it began to rain again in August, and more or less hasn’t stopped since then.

This day was one of the hotter days of summer and we sweated our way up the trail-less peak under a scorching sun. Normally I try and avoid the hot days for summit camping as I have to carry too much water – and it’s not like there’s much shade to be found either!

Eventually as the sun sank low on the horizon a bit of nice warm light fell over the landscape, but still a cloudless sky.

It seemed like too much effort to set up a tent, and it would have been way too hot inside anyhow! So I opted just to bivy outside – finding a rock to at least shade my face. But it was so hot that I couldn’t really be inside my sleeping bag! Soon however, a strong wind began to blow across the summit, so it wasn’t nice to be outside the sleeping bag either! I had originally planned for a second night down on the beach, but when thinking of sitting in the sun for the next 36 or so hours, I decided against it. So after a sleepless night I headed down to catch the 07:00 ferry. A good decision, as that afternoon it hit 29.9˚C on Lofoten – way too hot!

Camera Info:
Nikon D850
Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8
14mm
ISO 100
f 8
1/60 second
WB Daylight