Summer vacation: July 22 2017

Trysilfjellet

Peaks visited:

Peak Height PF Location
Trysilfjellet (Vardhøa) 1132m 590m Trysil

Continued from July 21

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Biking day!

Our stay at Femundtunet by lake Femunden had come to an end, and our next target was hotel Dalen in Telemark. But today was Friday and our reservation on Dalen was on Sunday. This meant we would have to find a place to spend Saturday night. But no need to worry about that in the morning.

Anne’s knee was still bad so I proposed that we could bike Trysilfjellet. Fortunately, biking is OK  for her. It’s walking down mountains that has been the problem lately. The plan was applauded, but first we would stop in Trysil for lunch.

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Trysil, here we come!

None of us knew this mountain, opposed to the majority of people living in eastern Norway (…) So we just drove upwards and figure out a place to start along the way.

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Trysilfjellet

We ended up at Idrettshytta (approx. 800m), which was a bit too high for my taste. But it didn’t seem like big fun to bike up the asphalt road either.

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Getting ready for the bike trip

The problem was that there was no bike path directly to the top. There was a biking route (colored black) between the summit and Idrettshytta, but it would be too steep to bike up. The alternative was a longer bike trip around the mountain – along “Fjellrunden“. In the end, we decided to bike as far as we could, and push the bikes up the black route.

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On our way up the mountain

1,8km later, we reached the top of the lift and were at the foothills of the summit – only 260 meters away from where we parked our bikes.

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From here, it’s hiking to the top…

A Swedish couple arrived at the same time, and asked us if they were still on “Fjellrunden“. It didn’t take us long to figure out that they were not, and that they must have taken a wrong turn at Fageråsen. The couple was … quite disappointed … with this detour, but I talked the guy into walking to the top with us. At the time, I didn’t notice that he had proper bike shoes. Good on a bike, not so good on rock. But he was sporty, walked up and took a picture of us.

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Anne, Karma and I on Trysilfjellet

Neither Anne nor I wanted to bike down the black route, so we decided to follow “Fjellrunden” eastbound and then around the mountain, back to the starting point.

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On “Fjellrunden”. Karma had a busy day…

After a few boring km on gravel road, we entered the forest, and had big fun…

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The route got a bit more interesting…

Then we got to the start of the “Magic Moose” – a biking route that I didn’t know anything about. But Anne had learned that this was quite something, and proposed that she would take Karma back to the car and drive down to the bottom of the ski-lifts and pick me up.

We had biked down Västerleden on Gränjåsvålen (Idre Fjäll, Sweden) earlier in the week, and I thought that was a pretty awesome bike route. So I was a bit reluctant in the beginning, but decided to give it a go.

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About to enter the “Magic Moose”

H o l y  c o w!! Magic Moose – WHAT a fun route! 7km of unforgettable biking down hundreds of hairpin curves. High concentration is required! If you want to know what I am talking about, google “Trysilfjellet Magic Moose”. And book a flight to Norway…

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Trip tracks. You can see where “Magic Moose” runs…

As promised, Anne was at the ski-centre to pick me up. We continued southbound, passed Oslo while discussing what to do on Sunday morning. I asked if Anne was up for walking Store Ble (Blefjell) – northwest of Kongsberg. She found that project interesting, so we drove to Kongsberg and looked for a place to spend the night.

Quality Hotel Grand offered us and the dog very welcome at a very affordable rate. We didn’t want to leave the car out in the open with a kayak on top and bikes on the back, so we decided to park in a garage. The garage entry wasn’t high enough for the car + kayak, so we had to offload the kayak in the street and carry it down the garage. The logistics was a bit cumbersome, but an hour later, we could finally settle in.

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Our “base camp” this Saturday night…

We went over to a local restaurant for something to eat, and got into a conversation with a Belgian girl who was on a biking expedition in Norway that had no definitive end to it. We gave her all the advice she could take, in terms of places to go. Happy about serving the country well, we went back to the hotel and called it a day…

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Good night, Kongsberg!

Pictures from the day: 

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