Sulafjellet, Aug 3 2016

An incredible vista point…

Peaks visited:

Peak Height PF Municipality Location
Vardane (Sulafjellet) 776m 776m Sula GPX
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Sula island in center, 2009

It was a gorgeous day, and I was working in the Ålesund office – which I do once a week. It was tempting to use the afternoon to visit one of the higher peaks in the Haram, Vestnes or Ørskog region, but I ended up with revisiting an old and familiar route from Langevågen to Vardane on Sulafjellet.

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Karma on Sulafjellet high point – Vardane

The trailhead parking was almost full and I expected there to be LOTS of people on the mountain. That assumption turned out to be far from true and I still wonder where all those people were.

Karma and I left the parking 4:15pm and followed the path along the pipeline. I kept a really good pace and Karma had no strong desire to be up front. When we reached the mountain road to Vonhytta, we crossed it and continued on the path up to the dam and the Vonhytta cabin.

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The route

From Vonhytta, we followed the normal path up to Vardane – the highest point on the island. When we got on the summit ridge, I switched over to jogging the final 300 meters. My stopwatch said 44:30:99 at the cairn (after 700 vertical meters and 4,3km). I had definitely set a new personal record on this route and I hadn’t even been running up the mountain.

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At Vonhytta with Vardane in the background. Karma is not scared of the Troll…

The views from the summit are stunning. Normally, I’m too impatient to sit around and linger on mountain tops, but today I spent A WHOLE 5 minutes on top before we headed back down.

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Sunnmørsalpane mountain range seen from Vardane
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View towards Sunnmørsalpane and Hareidlandet island
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Ålesund view from Vardane

Back at Vonhytta, I decided to follow the mountain road back to the lower part of the pipeline trail. The whole trip took 1h:37m.

Pictures from the trip:

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