Not quite according to plan, but a nice hike
Peaks visited:
| Peak | Height | PF | Location |
| Søre Grøtdalstind | 1331m | 555m | Ørsta |
| Midtre Grøtdalstind | 1328m | 28m | Ørsta |
Grøtdalstindane is a mountain with 3 peaks (Nordre, Søre & Midtre), located above Bondalen, close to Sæbø in Ørsta municipality, Norway. The main summit (Søre) is a popular top in all seasons. It is natural to also visit Midtre Grøtdalstind, once up here. Nordre Grøtdalstind is said to not be easily accessible, and the main mission this evening was to find out exactly what this means.
My friend Terje and I decided to give this a try after work on a Wednesday afternoon in July. From Bondalen, we got onto the Frølandsdalen forest road – which is infamous for the number of cattle gates. We parked by the river just before Heimsætra, and followed the road the 0,2km up to the trail sign. After a short hike, we ran into the first obstacle of the day…
Our backpacks were filled with climbing gear, crampons, clothes and food and we had clearly underestimated our ascent time. And it certainly didn’t go faster when we reached the snow already at 900m. At this point in time, I think that both of us knew that Nordre Grøtdalstind would have to wait for some other day. In any case, the plan was to visit Søre and Midtre first.
It took us a good 2 hours to reach the top of Søre Grøtdalstind (1050m vertical ascent). Two women had reached the top just before us, and we had a quick chat with them. This is normally a great viewpoint, but the clouds obscured some of the views today.
We had a good view towards Nordre Grøtdalstind, but it wasn’t possible to say how easy or difficult the ascent would be. One option would be to climb the ridge. The other option was to descend several hundred meters, just to climb the same number of meters back up. But as it was getting a bit late, we simply lacked the motivation. We would just have to come back another day – with only this peak to focus on.
There are so many cool peaks in this region. A ridge traverse to Høgrestinden also looks spectactular, but is probably out of my leage…
The descent was much nicer than the ascent. We had a good slide from 1200m and almost down to 900m. We returned to the car 8:30pm, almost 3,5 hours after leaving it.
Pictures from the hike:
