Summer vacation, day 8
Index
| Peak | Height | PF | Municipality |
| Høgmana | 153m | 136m | Rødøy, Norway |
| Gjerdøyfjellet | 171m | 171m | Rødøy, Norway |
Continued from day 7
Finally – kayak time!
Bjørn Eirik and I had agreed the day before that we would kayak to Gjerdøya – just south of Rødøy and combine this trip with hikes up to the 2 pf100 tops on the island – Høgmana (153m) and Gjerdøyfjellet (171m)
Anne would stay at the campsite with Karma. Her injury in her hand was getting better, and hopefully she could watch our BASE jumping friends fly out from Rødøyløva.
Bjørn Eirik and I headed out after breakfast, approx. 9:30am.
The sea was close to perfect and I enjoyed myself big time. I had decided (against Bjørn Eiriks advice) to wear the dry suit. The suit didn’t breathe but the sweating didn’t bother me.
As it had been a long time since I was kayaking in open waters, I had to get accustomed to waves from boats but it didn’t take long before I didn’t care about them at all. We crossed Breidsundet – the sound between Flatøya and Gjerdøya without any issues and followed the west side of Gjerdøya island.
We decided to start our hike to Høgmana in the Eiterhola bay, after passing through Pisshammarsund (!)
I was NOT convinced that this would be a good place to hike from, just by looking at the terrain and knowing how unforgiving the Helgeland coastal tops can be. But as Bjørn Eirik was keen on a direct approach, it was fine by me.
Above the bay, we headed straight up to the nearest ridge and passed a wooden plank. We just couldn’t understand why it was here. My first suggestion was that someone had put it up there so the sheep could pass safely. But that didn’t explain the wire (for holding on to). Surely – no one would be hiking from *here* ?
Instead of following the ridge we were on – AND getting onto the higher one, we followed a gully in-between. This gully led us to another gully, steep and not very friendly at first sight.
But the gully was easy enough and soon we stood on top of Høgmana.
This was big fun. We could see Hestmannen 14,7km to the southwest. During our island-hopping tour in 2014, Bjørn Eirik kayaked from Hestmona to Rødøy – at least 20km if he took he shortest route.
We headed down the same way and continued our kayak trip to Sørgjerdøyvågen where we picked the easiest place (it was low tide) to get on shore – and that was close to a road. The family owning the property came down and talked with us. It was OK that we left the kayaks there for a little while.
We also got directions on how to get to Gjerdøyfjellet – follow Gjerøyveien until we saw the trailhead (west of Botnan) and follow the marked path up the mountain. So, off we went…
We found the trailhead and followed the well worn path into the forest.
The path led us up to the mountain ridge and we now had an approx. 2,3km hike to the high point.
1:40pm, we stood/sat on top of Gjerdøyfjellet.
And for the first time, we could see Træna mountains properly. I still clearly remember the climb up Trænstaven back in 2014, with Bjørn Eirik as the point man!
Bjørn Eirik wanted to hang around up here, while I am as impatient as it gets so we had to find some sort of compromise. After ~10 minutes, we headed back down.
We now had a 7,5km kayak trip back to the campsite on Rødøy. In my local waters, that’s just afternoon exercise, but up here it felt like a mini-expedition. We were in northern Norway and there wasn’t really anything much separating us from Iceland – some 1200km to the west…
It was a notch more windy and the sea was no longer still, but absolutely good kayaking consitions. I was just now focused on getting back to Anne and didn’t stop for pictures.
Back on Rødøy, Anne reported having seen our BASE jumping friends fly down and decided to take her kayak for a spin.
Afterwards, she went over to the neighbour islet (low tide) to get dessert (cloudberries)
The dessert was just delicious!
It should also be mentioned that after our neighbours left, we moved our tents to get (at least) 30 more minutes of evening sun.
Later in the evening, we took a walk over to the Storsanden beach and had a chat with our BASE jumping friends. They reported amazing flights. I really wished that I could see it…
And then we headed back to camp with a glorious sunset in the background…
Continued on day 9
Trip statistics: 16,4km (kayak), 7,5km (hike), 390 vertical meters, 7h:20m
Pictures (Canon EOS RP/ Iphone8) from the trip:
Beautiful!