The most southernpoint in Norway

Lindesness Lighthouse 

Ever since medieval times, theLindesnes headland has been one of the most important landmarks guiding ships sailing between the North Seaand the Baltic Sea. As they sailed between Skagerrak and the North Sea, ships were forced to keep close to the Norwegian coast, where pilots could guide them in bad weather. Sailors avoided the shallowJammerbukta on the Danish coast, as it offered no natural shelter from bad weather. At the end of the 16th century the Norwegian priest and historian Peder Claussøn Friisdescribed Lindesnes as "the headland known to all sailors". Once they caught sight of this distinctive landmark they could easily plan the rest of their voyage along the coast.

However, the waters aroundLindesnes were also feared - with good reason. The Skagerrak andNorth Sea meet here, throwing up strong currents and winds that make the waters treacherous, causing many ships to run aground. Indeed, the stretch between Lindesnes and Listahas been dubbed by historians as a ships´ graveyard.
On 18 July 1655 the Danish King Frederik III issued an order grantingPouell Hanssønn, a citizen ofCristiansand, the privilege to set up alighthouse operation at Lindesnes. The operation was to be financed by taxing all ships calling at the ports between Bergen and the county of Bohuslen.
But bad weather in the autumn of 1655 hampered building work. It took more than 7 weeks for three ships carrying materials and equipment to reachLindesnes from Kristiansand. And the ship bringing coal from Englandnever arrived at all. As a stop-gap, athree-storey timber tower was built with 30 candles behind lead glass windows used as a lantern. This hardly provided much light, much to the anger of sailors. Despite the coal fire lantern finally being built, the Kingstill closed down the lighthouse the following year.
But 69 years later, the lighthouse operation at Lindesnes was given another chance. Two coal fires, in open grates placed directly on the ground, were lit on Feb 1 1725. One was placed on the Lindesnes headland and one a little further west, at Markøy, in order to prevent confusion between Lindesnes and the lighthouse at Skagens Odde.
In 1822, the coal fires were housed more permanently in sheltered lightrooms at the top of a brick base. Vents ensured a steady fire and more economical fuel consumption. The smoke was released through a small chimney at the top of the lantern. The foundations for these lightrooms have been preserved at Lindesnes andMarkøy.
The lighthouse at Markøy was closed in 1844, while the Lindesnes lighthouse was refurbished in 1854. A first order lens was installed on top of the old coal fire, and the light was now generated by a modern paraffin burner.
In 1915, the lens was moved to a newsteel tower, with a new engine room and a fog signal. Within a year, theLindesnes lighthouse stood much as it does today. Lindesnes lighthouse had a permanent staff until 2003. In 1992, a foundation was set up to preserve the lighthouse and open it up to visitors. In 2000,Lindesnes lighthouse was chosen as the Millennium Site for the county ofVest-Agder. A new underground information centre is being built, underneath the lighthouse. Construction work began in autumn 2003.

Lindesnes has also been nominated as the site for a national lighthouse museum, and in 2003 the Fisheries Ministry started costing out the proposal, with a view to opening the museum in 2004.

There has been a lighthouse on this site for over 350 years. Indeed, in 1656 Norway´s first ever lighthouse lantern was lit here. The lighthouse you see today was completed in 1916. At the time it housed three families, who lived permanently within its walls. The old coal fire lantern from 1822 has been preserved and the lighthouse station is now a listed site.

There is a visitors´ car park at the lighthouse. At the entrance, you will find a service building with ticket office, museum shop, tourist information and public toilets. The foundationStiftelsen Lindesnes Fyrmuseum is responsible for managing thelighthouse as a national heritage site and making it accessible to visitors. The foundation is a not-for-profit organisation and the income from visitors is spent on maintaining and developing the lighthouse as a sightseeing attraction.

Information plaques tell you what life was like at the lighthouse over the years. The lighthouse tower is open to the public, and there are binoculars that let you enjoy the coastline in detail.

The "Landmarks" exhibition in the old lighthouse keeper´s residence features the operations of the coast guard, navigation history and the development of Lindesnes lighthouse and lighthouse technology in general.

How to Read a Topographic Map

Whenever you go hiking it’s important to bring a map with you.  Ideally, this will be a topographic map, which is the kind with the squiggly lines on it. Called contour lines, they can tell you whether you’ll be hiking uphill, downhill, or over flat land.

Learning how to read contour lines is an important skill to learn if you want to become a better day hiker or backpacker. For example, when planning a hike, you can trace the path you plan to take and see whether it has hills or cliffs which might be dangerous and too difficult for the people you’re hiking with climb.  You can do this before you even walk out the door and plan an alternative hike if you want to hike an easier trail.

Contour lines are also important for staying found, during your hike.  If you can match the landforms around you to their corresponding contours lines on a map, you can always keep track of where you are, even without a compass or GPS. While knowing how to use a compass and GPS are important skills, they build on knowing how to read the contour lines on a topographic map.

When reading a topographic map,there are a couple of things you should remember about the contour lines. (Watch the video – it’s quite good.)

1. Every point of the same contour line has the same elevation.
2. One side of a contour line is uphill and one is downhill.
3. Contour lines close to form a circle (or run off the side of the map). The area inside the circle is almost always higher than the contour line.
4. Contour lines are drawn close together on steep ground and farther apart on flat ground.
5. Contour lines form a V patterns when they cross a river or stream valley. The tip of the V always points uphill and the other direction that looks like a  “frown, points down.” I use that phrase to help me remember this.

Practice Makes Perfect

The next time you go for a hike, try to buy a topographic map for the region you’ll be hiking it. If you can’t find a map, try buying a Delorme Atlas and Gazetteer for the state you live in, if you’re in the United States. These books have topographic maps for every inch of a state, and are good for hiking as well as rural road navigation. I keep one for each state in New England in my car.

Locate the area that you’ll be hiking in on your map or Gazetteer and find the trail that you plan to follow. As you hike, take out the map every five or ten minutes and try to match the landforms around you to the contour intervals on the map (this will be easier to do if you hike in a hilly area or along a stream or river).

If you can get in the habit of checking your map every time the elevation or landforms around you change, it becomes very easy to keep track of your location on a hike, regardless of where you are.  Staying found like this and always knowing where you are can be done even if you don’t know how to use a compass yet, and it’s an important navigation skill to master for any hiker.

Topographic Map Reading

When I was learning how to read topographic maps, I developed a little memory heuristic to help remember the difference between contour lines that were going uphill versus those that were descending. I shared this with a hiker on one of my backpacking trips recently and it really helped them understand what the lines mean on a topographic map, so I thought I’d pass it along.

Let’s look at an example. This is a topographic representation of a hill. If you walk in the direction of the red arrow, you cross contour lines that are shaped like a frown, which frequently means you are going downhill.

Now, let’s look at a landscape and then a real map to demonstrate how to use this heuristic in practice.

This is Mount Lafayette in New Hampshire and here’s the topographic map for it from the National Geographic Topo DVD.

Descending Mt Lafayette

If you walk in the direction of the arrow, you will intersect contour lines that are shaped like a frown. While you’ll often be going downhill when this happens, you should still check the elevation markings (numbers) on the contour lines to see if they are descending or ascending, to be sure.

Ravines

This is a case where you can descend from higher ground and not encounter a frown shaped contour line on a map. If you are descending into the head of a ravine, the contour lines won’t look like a frown but will be v-shaped. Take a look at this example below. This area is called Eagle Ravine and it’s a very steep avalanche zone on the northwestern shoulder of Mount Lafayette.

Not a frown, but still going down

As you can see, the contour lines at the point of the V shape are very close together which indicates a steep elevation grade. If you trace the contour lines out from the point of the V you’ll see that they are frown shaped as they approach each other, although it’s a little harder to see their curve until you move father away from the point where they intersect.

This isn’t really a contradiction to the frown is down rule of thumb because there are downhill gradients (and frowns) on either side of the V, but it does highlight the care you need to take when interpreting contour lines that are flatter and less curved, when reading a topographic map.

Lakes and Valleys

If you’re standing at a low point in the landscape like a lake that is surrounded by hills, the frown is down heuristic doesn’t always work if you start walking uphill.  Let’s look at East Pond, which is located just west of Mt Osceola in the White Mountains, for an example of this.

East Pond

In this case, if you walk in the direction of the arrow, you will be crossing frowns but going uphill. You can determine this because the 3000 foot contour line is outside or beyond the 2800 foot contour, indicating an ascent if you walk in that direction.

East Pond

Here’s what East Pond looks like, to help you match the symbols on the map to the actual landscape. As you can see, the landscape forms a saddle between two high points. The best advice I have to give in situations like these is to be sure to check the contour elevations when reading your map, to double check your interpretation of the topographic map you’re using.

KISS Layering in Winter

Many winter hikers use a four layer clothing system:

1. A base layer, consisting of a synthetic wicking long sleeved shirt and long underwear.
2. A fleece sweater as an insulating midlayer.
3. A hard shell jacket and pants as a wind-proof/waterproof layer.
4. A puffy down or synthetic jacket and pants for even more warmth.

During the day when you are active, you’ll most likely be wearing layers 1-3, in addition to gloves and one or more hats, although during periods of high exertion you may take off layers 3 and 2 to vent as much extra heat as possible in order to avoid sweating. If you do sweat, the function of your base layer is to move the sweat away from your skin and into layers 2 and 3 where eventually evaporate without chilling you, because it’s in a higher layer.

Generally, you really only need the 4th insulation layer when you stop for a break, for hanging around camp, or for very cold summit conditions and high windchill.

KISS Layering

When you go to buy winter hiking layers, it’s tempting to buy a jacket that combines layers 2 and 3, the insulating layer with a wind proof shell in order to save money. There are also many coats available that are waterproof hard shells with a built-in fleece liner, snowsport jackets that have added down or synthetic insulation in them, or so-called 3-in-1 component jackets which only contain 2 components, an exterior waterproof/breathable shell and inner fleece/insulated jacket that can be zipped out. While these might be suitable for downhill skiing or riding the school bus, I wouldn’t recommend them for winter hiking, backpacking or mountaineering.

Instead, my advice is to implement each of your layers using a different best of breed garment. This gives you the most flexibility and let’s you select garments that are optimal for a specific function. It’s also far easier to control your heat level with individual garments versus garments that combine two layers into one, and the failure of a single piece of clothing (broken zipper, for instance) will only compromise one of your layers and not potentially two.

Keep it simple: a separate garment for each layer.