A memorable round trip hike around Fossfjellet
Peaks visited:
| Peak | Height | PF | Location |
| Kvannfjellet | 1269m | 119m | Vik i Sogn, Norway |
| P1327 | 1327m | 113m | Vik i Sogn, Norway |
The plan for this Sunday was a short hike on Vikafjellet – to Kvannfjellet by Store Muravatnet – a peak I hadn’t been to yet. Short – as Anne signaled that she were not up for a longer hike today. With her shifting energy level, it’s best to plan for a short hike and see if the condition improves along the way. Which it did today!
We took the Hella – Dragsvik – Vangsnes ferry and I enjoyed the wonderful Balestrand mountains, like I always do when taking the ferry here.
Then we drove up to Vikafjellet and got onto the gravel road towards Muravatnet. We parked at the highest point on the road – the saddle between Valanipa and Klantane.
We followed a path up to Klantane’s north ridge and had a good overview of lake Muravatnet.
We then descended into the nice Endredalen valley. Kvannfjellet looked like an ascent from the valley.
We had to keep the local sheep away from Karma (a struggle!) before we could focus on a place to cross the river. It looked a bit wide from a distance, but looked more and more manageable the closer we got.
Once across the river, it was just a matter of setting the course towards the summit.
There are two 1320m contours on the top. The north top has the cairn, but the southernmost has the high point.
We discuss what to do next. The options were to a) return the same way, b) visit point 1327m and return the same way and c) visit point 1327m and go for a hike around the Fossfjellet massif. The latter was on top of my wishlist, but only if Anne felt she was up to it. After giving it some thought, she agreed to give it a try. This meant that the total hike would be ~23km and almost 1000 vertical meters.
Point 1327m was only 2,3km southeast of Kvannfjellet and the hike over there was easy enough.
When we arrived on top, it struck me that I was close to Fyresnipa (only 1,4km to the east) on the Sogn og Fjordane and Hordaland county border. That made me quite emotional.
When I hiked Fyresnipa, Viksetnipa and Uraskarfjellet back in 2005, I was living in Bergen, busy trying to visit ALL of the Hordaland peaks. I had a different job, no girlfriend and had absolutely NO IDEA that 3 years later I would move to Møre og Romsdal and meet Anne in 2009. Looking at Fyresnipa, I was looking straight into my past. It was a strong feeling. I had some kind of a “full circle” moment. It felt really good!
From point 1327m, we continued westbound and crossed between lakes Svartatjørn and Ytredalsvatnet. Again, running into curious sheep…
Our next goal was Dueskardet, where we expected to follow a mountain road all the way back to the highway, but first we had to cross a rocky ridge.
The weather forecast had promised rain in the afternoon, and we just hoped we could get a bit further before it started raining.
Instead of descending to Dueskardet, we changed the plan and decided to stay at our present elevation (~1100m) and take a short-cut past Grungafjellet.
This was a good decision, because we passed fabulous landscape along the way…
Eventually it was time to find a way down from the mountain and we were lucky to find a good place to descend right away.
Looking back on it, lucky was the correct word…
We could now see the mountain road on the west side of lake Svartavatnet, but we decided to stick to the path we now were on.
Anne was quite tired, but had a good spirit. I was so grateful that she had come along, because it had been a fantastic hike. But it wasn’t quite over yet. The car was still far away.
When we got on the mountain road near Johanneskleivi, I suggested that she and Karma could proceed down to the main road and wait for me there. Anne liked the proposal! I would run the 4,2km back to the car and then pick her up.
After hiking almost 19km, running was not exactly what I wanted to do, but I also felt like calling it a day and return to Sogndal.
When I returned to the main road, I couldn’t see Anne. So I called her, only to learn that she was drinking tea with a group (tourists with rental car) from the middle east, who had picked a random cabin for their tea break. And Anne and Karma entered straight into this outdoors tea party…
We returned to Sogndal, and decided to celebrate the day on our favorite restaurant La Pergola…
Trip statistics: 22,8km, 990 vertical meters, 6h:35m
Pictures from the hike:
