"The holes will mostly flush you out, but it’s common to get flushed from the Main straight into the Rinser without much of a breath and your eyelids inside out."
Nestled between the two national parks of Jotunheimen and Rondane lies Heidal. This side valley of Gudbransdalen, and town of the same name, boasts some of the oldest and most beautiful farms and historical buildings in Norway. The old wooden houses assembled into the traditional tunnets of old Norwegian aristocracy are some of the biggest and best-preserved anywhere in Norway. Heidal might be famous in Norway for its culture, nature, history, and beauty, but what attracts paddlers is the river threading through the valley: The Sjoa, arguably the most famous river in Norway. It’s not the hardest, the steepest, or the biggest, but every year it attracts as many European and overseas kayakers as few other rivers in Europe.
The Sjoa starts its journey from Lake Gjende, nestled below the peaks of the Jotunheimen mountain range. This 18 km lake is fed by the snow of the highest peaks in Norway and acts as a buffer reservoir for the water for most of the season. The Sjoa starts as a shallow stream from Gjende Lake and gradually picks up more water from tributaries on its 100 km journey before it spills into Gudbransdalslägen, Norway’s second-longest river system. The most commonly run sections all link one to the other and, at favorable river levels, can be run all in one very long day. There are numerous rapids and waterfalls above that get run more often than not, but the section from Ridderspranget to the Sjoa’s confluence with Lägen is
