Back in the Hellesylt region
Saturday (week 22): Inspired by the nice hike to Nokkenibba (1380m) a few days earlier, I returned to the Hellesylt region – to continue where I left off. Lianibba (not to be confused with Lianibba 1500m 8.3 to the SW) and Hurklutefjellet are Nokkenibba’s neighbours, but the actual reason is that the maps have a path into Liadalen. And there are not many paths on the map, up from Holedalen. Thus, I followed the path of least resistance.
From the map, I could see that the path crossed the Liaelva river, and when I got to Hole, I felt that the river was pretty big. Would I be able to cross it? I drove to the nearest house, rang the doorbell and asked the man in the house for advice.
There was a bridge, but from what he had heard, the bridge was broken. “But”, he said. “There is another path – from Par“. I got instructions and drove all the way up to the start of the forest and parked.
From the parking, there is a path going east – above Holedalselva. But the grass was pretty high, so if it hadn’t been for recent activity, I would not have found it. We (Karma and I) went through the high grass for almost 0,3km and located the forest path, going north (later northwest). It was not the most used path in this region, but we had little problems following it.
The path soon took a northwest bearing and joined the path from Hole at approx. 640m. And then it continued up to Helsetsætra (approx. 740m).
My original plan was to head up Liadalen valley, continue up to the ridge between Hurklutefjellet and Liafjellet, and then hike both tops from the saddle. But now I saw the possibility for a round trip hike. The hillside up to Lianibba was steep, but not that steep, and I figured it was worth a try.
The short-cut paid off. There were no real difficulties and 1h:40m after heading out, we stood on top of Lianibba. The views were PRETTY cool! Terra incognita for me, even if I recognized the tops from previous pictures from far, far away.
We descended from Lianibba and hiked across Syltavikheia. Karma got a nice swim along the way. It’s the perfect way of cooling off for a dog. Well, humans too, I guess. But the water temperature wasn’t tempting.
From Syltavikheia, we descended to the saddle below Hurklutefjellet’s north top. A direct ascent was out of the question. Too steep rock and too steep and hard snow. But the detour wasn’t very long and we made it up to point 1307m without any difficulties.
Hurklutefjellet was now only 0,75km to the south and it didn’t take us long to get there. Another two tops in the bag! Yeah!
It was really, really tempting to continue south – towards Navarskaftet – and return to Liadalen from there. But, I could potentially run into some ugly slabs and I didn’t feel like taking any chances today. Instead, we descended on snow between the two tops and got into Liadalen without any difficulties.
We descended the valley back to Helsetsætra and the Hole/Par fork. I considered taking the Hole route, just to check out the bridge, but ended up going down to Par.
It was a really nice hike and I look forward to returning to this region. I’ll probably continue with Slettfjellet and Ljosuregga – IF I manage to find a route up from Holedalen.
Trip statistics: 12,9 km, 1360 vertical meters, 4h:15m.
Pictures from the hike:
Det er ei sporadisk raudmerka rute og heilt ok sti opp mellom dei to attelegene i Holedalen. Stigen er eit navn på kartet, men det står lengre vest enn der stien går. Den kjem opp nærare Ljosuregga. Eg gjekk der som starten på ei runde der eg var innom Gjerklandsegga, Ljosuregga, Holedalsegga, Steegga,og nedatt via Hestbreelvane og stien langs vatnet tilbake til Holesætra.
Takk for nyttig info, Ragnar! Hørtes ut som en fin runde du gikk der! Jeg måtte forøvrig slå opp “attelegene” 😉
Måtte legge inn ei utfordring i teksta 😉