A less known “horse” in Indre Sogn…
Peaks visited:
| Peak | Height | PF | Municipality | Location |
| Hest | 1062m | 339m | Balestrand | GPX |
Back in Sogndal, and on Friday night, Anne and me were looking for places to go this weekend. The weather forecast was good, which meant the weather could be great, but it could also go the other way. To play it safe, we were looking for a new top (for the both of us), which was not too high or not too exposed to bad weather suddenly moving in. Hest (horse) in Balestrand came up as an excellent choice. Neither of us knew about this mountain until we found it on the map.
We took the Hella – Dragsvik ferry and drove along highway 55 and took the Nessadalen exit. We followed this road for 5,3km until we saw the Breidstølen signpost. Just a few meters above the signpost, there was snow. How perfect!
We followed the toll road upwards, but due to the snow, I’m not really sure where it ended. In any case, we skied up to Breidstølen, crossed Breidstøla river on a snow bridge and continued up to Hesjadalsvatnet. We were thinking about ascending Hest via Monstjørni but dropped the idea due to a dense birch forest. The weather was just gorgeous and it seemed it would stay like that for a while…
At Hesjadalsvatnet, we had a good overview of the routes up the mountain. We took a pause here and enjoyed the beautiful day.
After the pause, we crossed the southwest part of the lake and headed up the mountain along one of the ridges. It was evident that the descent would be pure heaven. Even if the sun would decide to remain behind one of the clouds. The snow was just perfect!
After a nice ascent up the ridge, we reached a ridge stretching 1km to the summit cairn. I remember wondering WHY we hadn’t heard about this mountain before. It was such a beautiful peak and still the best was yet to come..
We got our laughs from fox tracks leading up the summit. And the fox didn’t take the easy route up to the cairn. No, it took the scrambling route! This was clearly a fox with a taste of a grand view!
The views from the top were just amazing. And the best view – above Sognefjorden is seen on the video clip further down on this page.
From the summit, we walked 200 meters down to a magnificent viewpoint above the Sognefjord. You can’t visit this peak without stopping by this point…
Afterwards, we walked back to the summit and enjoyed a nice lunch. Then it was time for the highlight of the day – the descent. I’ll leave it up to the below video clip to tell the story of our descent..
Trip statistics: 13,7km, 860 vertical meters, 4h:08m
Pictures from the trip:
