On the Sunnmøre – Romsdal border
Peaks visited:
| Peak | Height | PF | Municipality | Location |
| Ytstetinden | 1162m | 152m | Vestnes | GPX |
| Remmemstinden | 1090m | 220m | Vestnes |
On this Wednesday, I left work a few hours earlier to meet my good friend Jørgen Moen at the Ytstetinden trailhead at Flate. I know Jørgen from my earlier days in Bergen (since the Meneseggi trip in 2004) and now that he was back home in Molde on summer vacation, we agreed that it was high time that we did a hike together again.
So the choice fell on Ytstetinden. I had been to this top some years ago, from the Skorgedalen side. This time, it was natural to follow the normal route from Flate. Jørgen had almost been to the top many years ago, but had to turn around because of difficult snow conditions. So he had a score to settle with this mountain.
We met where the toll road begins and learned that the toll was for the parking 250 meters up the road. I thought there was a road up to Flatesætra, but that’s an ATV road at best.
So now we had 2km on the forest road ahead of us before we could start on the moutain path to Ytstetinden. We noticed that there were short-cuts in the forest. Definitely something to remember upon descent! We had to a lot to catch up on so the hike up the forest road wasn’t as boring as it could have been.
When we got Ytstetinden in view, there was a small “fog hat” on top, but it soon disappeared and the weather was just gorgeous.
At the foot of Ytstetinden’s north ridge, the path seemed to continue towards Remmemstinden. So we decided to go off-trail from here and follow the north ridge upwards. We met two ladies on their way down and saw two other hikers heading towards the west ridge.
We arrived on top of Ytstetinden at 4:10pm – 2 hours heading out (approx. 1100m vertical meters). The two other hikers coming up the west ridge were two girls who had never been up here before. One of them took a picture of Jørgen and me – two happy guys who share the passion for mountains!
I had guessed that Jørgen wouldn’t mind visiting Remmemstinden also, so I proposed that we did a round trip hike. We discussed the route; should we descend the north ridge or the southeast ridge? We chose the latter. It was steep ascent, but neither difficult nor exposed.
I will remember for a long time how glad I was for finding water down in Ellingsgardsbotnen – between the two peaks. Having brought only 0,4K of water on a hike like this – and on a day like this, was not very clever.
Now we had 300 vertical meters of boulder ahead of us before we could stand on top of Remmemstinden. I do prefer boulder over grass and didn’t complain about the route up the mountain.
We reached Remmemstinden summit 5:43pm. I visited Remmemstinden after the hike up to Ytstetinden in 2006 (it was on the Norwegian National Day – the 17th of May) – and along the same route as we did today. But Jørgen could celebrate a new peak and his “YES!” shout on top seemed profound.
After a short break, we descended along a marked route down the west ridge and into the saddle between Ytstetinden and Remmemstinden -where we lost the path. Perhaps the snow covered it. Not sure. We traversed Ytstetinden’s north ridge (the lower part) to avoid losing our vertical gain and after a little while we found the path, which took us to the meadow below Ytstetinden. We decided to go off-trail and join our ascent route just above the forest.
Back on the forest road, we took every short-cut we could find and was back at the trailhead at 7:22pm – 5h:10m after leaving. It was a superb round trip hike! We said goodbye and agreed that we need to do a hike together again next summer before I got in the car to start my (relatively long) journey back to Gurskøy.
Pictures from the trip:
Great post and photos! I’ve started a blog on hikes around Hong Kong recently, would be great if you can take a look: http://www.hjkhiking.wordpress.com Thanks! 🙂
Thanks! Will check it out. Very useful if I ever make it to Hong Kong 😉