A nice walk in the Sogndal backcountry
| Peak/Place | Height | PF | Location |
| Helleberget | 988m | 108m | Sogndal, Norway |
| Dyrhovden | 943m | 85m | Sogndal, Norway |
Sunday: I arrived in Sogndal the day before. I was going to take my 4th week of vacation the next week, with no particular plans other than to drive Anne to eastern Norway on Thursday.
For our Sunday walk, Anne proposed Høgehaug as the destination. None of us had hiked from Rindabotn (Hodlekve skiing centre) in summer/autumn before and Anne wanted to check out the new wooden walkways she had read about in the newspaper.
I didn’t feel this quite matched what I had hoped to be the Sunday walk, so I proposed that we should hike from Rindabotn to Øvstedalen. Which would make the hike all the more interesting, despite the extra logistics. We had to leave one car in Øvstedalen before heading up to Rindabotn.
At 11:16, we were ready to go!
I am not sure what type of path I had expected from Rindabotn, but it was clearly one better than what we found. The wooden walkways were MOST welcome!
The path was as wet and boggy as it gets…
Eventually, we left the normal route to Høgehaug and sat course for Helleberget.
Karma and I had been to Helleberget earlier this year, on one of the most awful ski-trips ever. The fresh snow on Blåfjellet reminded me all about it…
Then we sat course for Fjærlandsete. The plan was to take the normal route to Øvstedalen via Furesete.
Then I proposed that we should go to Dyrhovden instead of starting our descent. Anne, somewhat reluctant said OK, and we could once again visit the top that gave us a good laugh back in 2013, when Karma and Fryd were young puppies. The cover of a water bottle started to roll down the snow, without us being aware of it, and we were quite surprised when one of the dogs (we can’t remember which one) appeared in front of us with it. Good retriever quality!
It didn’t take long before Anne appreciated my proposal to extend the hike.
Eventually, we reached the top of Dyrhovden where we grabbed something to eat, in shelter of the wind.
From Dyrhovden, we went off-trail with a general direction towards the route from Fjærlandsete and picked up a marked route near Veslavatnet. This route took us down to Gautastølen.
From Gautastølen, we followed the main route down to Øvstedalen where my car was parked.
Afterwards, we had to drive back to Rindabotn to pick up Anne’s car, but the extra logistics was well worth the struggle. We had a very nice hike, which we celebrated at the Vågal restaurant in Sogndal in the evening…
Trip statistics: 11,8km, 550 vertical meters, 3h:50m
Pictures from the trip (Canon EOS RP):
