Dollsteinen, May 1 2017

The coolest peak below 250m?

Peaks visited:

Peak Height PF Municipality WCP
Dollsteinen 227m 109m Sande WCP
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Dollsteinen

In April 2010, Anne and I did 7-fjellsturen on Sandsøya island. For some reason, Dollsteinen is not part of this popular 7-top challenge, and I had been waiting for an occasion to take Anne to this top. IMHO (In my humble opinion), Dollsteinen is the coolest peak below 250m that I know of.

We drove to Larsnes, parked the car, grabbed our bicycles and took the ferry to Voksa island.

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On our way to Sandsøya

From Voksa, we biked 6,3km to Skare on Sandsøya island.

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Biking from Voksa to Skare

We missed the start of the marked path and parked our bikes down by the westernmost house at Skare. After a short off-trail hike, we found the marked route and headed towards Dollsteinen.

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Dollsteinen to the left

The first stop was at Storegjøtten – a cool cave inside the cliff.

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Inside Storegjøtten

The next stop was Sandgjøtten – another cave, but not so deep as Storegjøtten.

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Inside Sandgjøtten

Afterwards, we continued towards Dollsteinen – a mighty impressive coastal peak!

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Towards Dollsteinen

First, we had to ascend up to the Rinden – Dollsteinen ridge. From here, the peak doesn’t look so steep anymore.

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On the Rinden – Dollsteinen ridge

We followed the ridge up to Dollsteinen and now Anne had been to *every* top on Sandsøya island.

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Anne and Karma on top of Dollsteinen

Soon, we were joined by two ladies who had ascended along a different route. One of them recognized me (and even my name) from my website (!) and thus she also knew Anne’s name. She was also well familiar with Anne’s books.

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A nice chat on Dollsteinen

We descended the same way, but turned right down by the shore and headed for tourist attraction #1 on Sandsøya island – Dollsteinhola. See my page on westcoastpeaks.com for a route description.

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Inside Dollsteinhola

Those who are not familiar with this cave should NOT attempt to get to the innermost part. This is a guided trip, for a reason. And as we were nowhere familiar, we stopped when the scrambling begun. Karma found it very, very, very awkward to descend into this cave, but accepted that I led her down.

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Karma – waiting for us

At least, Anne had been inside the cave (I had been here before, albeit not in the innermost part), so it was time to head back to civilization.

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We turned around here. No motivation and way too slippery…

On the way back, we stopped by the Lisjegjøtten cave.

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Lisjegjøtten

Interestingly enough, the bike trip back to Voksa measured 6,0km on my GPS. Where did the additional 0,3km from earlier in the day go?

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Yellow route: hiking, blue route: biking

I hope these pictures will inspire those who still haven’t been to Sandsøya, to take the trip. So much to see!

Pictures from the trip:

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