A forgettable hike…
Peaks visited:
| Peak | Height | PF | Municipality | Location |
| Syskarnipa | 1282m | 132m | Jølster / Førde | GPX |
Another Monday drive from Sogndal back home to Sunnmøre, and still enough daylight for a hike along the way. I drove down to Ålhus and took the Øvrebø exit. I drove to the point where the road turns back on the other side of the river, and followed the forest road (toll road) as far as I could drive.
Then I followed the tractor road up to Kleppa, where I could see the Ålhusdalen valley ahead of me (top picture). A deep sigh rushed through my body, as the valley seemed longer and more cumbersome than I had pictured it to be, from the maps.
But it was just a matter of getting on with it. Here and there, I was able to follow a vague path, but overall, it was an off-trail hike. After 2km, I could start ascending – without a plan, as I didn’t know exactly where the summit was.
I could see a lot of snow higher up, which wasn’t good news, as the snow would surely be hard and I hadn’t brought crampons or an ice-axe. On my hike up, I found two sharp rocks that would serve as ice-axe replacement.
I took the leftmost ridge up, and at 1000m, I knew where the summit was and adjusted my course. When I reached the snow, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, and didn’t need the sharp rocks. Still, I kept them, in case I would descend along a different route.
But when we (Karma and I ) reached the top (6pm – 1h:45m after heading out), I could see rain and fog moving in, and any idea about a different descent route was effectively cancelled.
We took, more or less, the same route down. I really wanted to descend across Sølvet and Trollet (cool names!) and take a steep descent route down to Brekka. But there wasn’t enough daylight left to deal with any sort of problems. And even if I *might* have taken the chance, the fog and the rain made me quickly abandon the idea.
The hike back was just as long as the hike in. I know – that’s not sensational news, but by that I mean that it wasn’t exactly a sensational hike. I know I will quickly forget this hike, and if I ever need to recall, well.. then I have this trip report.
We returned to the car 7:25pm, and I was glad I didn’t go on an exploration mission along the southeast ridge. The upside was that the rain and fog didn’t amount to much, and I returned to car fairly dry. But the drive back to Sunnmøre – in the dark – was long!
Pictures from the trip:
