Koppefjellet, May 1 2016

A not-such-a-great ski-trip…

Peaks visited:

Peak Height PF Municipality Location Link
Koppefjellet 940m 602m Volda GPX WCP

This video clip pretty much sums up this trip…

After the nice ski-trip to Eidskyrkja with Matthias the day before, I had no “steam” when I woke up on Sunday morning. I didn’t feel like going out at all, which is quite unusual – to say the least. I was considering staying at home, attending to one of the hundreds of things I normally don’t get to do, because I’m skiing and hiking all the time. But eventually, I came to my senses and packed the bag. Because the weather wasn’t all that great, I decided to go for a short ski-trip, and Koppefjellet was a good candidate.

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My round trip across Koppefjellet

I drove up to Aldalen and parked by Lake Ullalandsvatnet (although Google earth thinks it’s called Aldalsvatnet…). I had hoped for snow from the very start, but it was evident that I would have to carry the skis for a while…

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OK, the skis go on the backpack…

Once we reached the snow, it was so wet that my dog (Karma) had serious problems making progress. Fortunately, there were some old tracks which we could follow and that – kind of – carried her weight – from time to time. It was a struggle for her. But once we reached the ridge, the snow was windpacked and hard. Good for her, bad for me skiing down again…

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The views from Koppefjellet are always nice, even in not-so-good weather. The prominence of this mountain is 602 meters, and if you don’t know what that means – and you’re interested, please leave a comment. I’d be happy to explain it. It means several things, and one of them being a good viewpoint.

Today, it was extremely windy. On days like these, I listen to music so I don’t have to hear the winds howling. The sound of the winds tend to be worse than the actual force.

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View towards the peaks above Ørsta

The normal thing to do would be to descend along my ascent route. But with the butter-soft snow, I would have no pleasure in seeing Karma struggle her way down the mountain. So I stayed on the ridge and then descended a ridge west of my ascent route. The snow was soft on this ridge, so I’m not really sure if I did her any favors. The descent got longer, at least.

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View towards Eidskyrkja (left of centre) – skied the day before

Back at the trailhead, I met 4 students from Volda that I saw ski down upon my ascent. They came early and had good snow on their way up! That’s the penalty for sitting at home, wasting time! We had a long and nice chat before it was time to head back home. So all in all, not-such-a-great ski-trip, but at least we got out of the house!

Trip statistics: 6,6km, 730 vertical meters, 2 hours.

Pictures from the trip:

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