Summer vacation, day 14
Index
| Peak | Height | PF | Municipality | Links |
| Skutfjellet | 96m | 78m | Brønnøy, Norway | WCP |
| Gjerddalshalsen | ~122m | – | Brønnøy, Norway | Peakbook |
Continued from day 13
My mom is 76 years old and go hiking in the local mountains every day of the year. When it comes to routes that she deem a little intimidating, she saves them until Anne and I come visiting. She has full faith in that we can guide her safely. First on the “guiding list” was Skutfjellet…
Skutfjellet (96m)
Skutfjellet is a small hump near the ferry harbor at Horn outside Brønnøysund. The north side of the top is as easy as it gets but now she wanted to hike the south ridge and for some reason, she felt that it looked a little scary. So today, we went there.
We parked at Horn and followed the Sletten road until it was natural to get on the south (southwest) ridge.
Along with Anne and me, mom was totally OK with this ridge.
And then mom and I could stand on together on top again. The last time was in 2009 while waiting for the ferry to Vega. This was Anne’s and Karma’s first time up here.
The view is quite nice up here, especially towards the Vega islands.
Across the fjord is another of mom’s annual hikes – Hornstinden (885m)
After a short stay on top, we headed down the north side and returned to our cars.
Trip statistics: 2,3km, 115 vertical meters, 50 minutes
Gjerddalshalsen
For mom, the best was yet to come. Below Mosaksla is Gjerddalshalsen – a pass between Gjerddalstind and Mosaksla. Mom had previously been to the top of the pass but didn’t feel like proceeding to find out if it was possible to get down on the other side. So, Anne and I had to join her in finding out if that was possible.
This is a very cool and interesting area. Quite popular too. Most visitors go to “Dragereiret” – a very cool pothole that Anne and I helped mom to climb into last summer. Some continue along the marked path to a grotto I don’t really know anything about.
But very few (if any) continue up to Gjerddalshalsen, and this is where we were heading now. I enjoyed looking at Gjerddalstind, which I *proudly* scrambled back in 2015. I really want to revisit this top, but Anne wasn’t too keen after hearing my description of the route.
The best route up to the pass was to stay left on the Gjerddalstind side.
The route to the top of the pass wasn’t very challenging, but in order to proceed one had to scramble down a little bit and walk under a big rock. For humans, this isn’t very challenging either, but it was a bit tricky to get Karma down.
Once I start lifting her, she starts “helping out” and that’s the last thing I need when I’m in a tricky spot. Like here, when I had to get her down two ledges, one at a time. I took the time to tell her that she had to stay perfectly still in my arms and she understood. And soon, we were all safely down.
Kudos to mom, for being this sporty at her age. At some point, after having passed 80 – this type of terrain is probably not terrain she should seek alone. I trust her to exercise the judgement needed.
We were now on our way through the pass and I understood that in this terrain, route finding was essential. I noticed that there was a ridge that would get us down to the main road (Gongfjellhalsen) but that meant we had to get across a nasty looking crack.
While mom and Anne were busy with picking berries, I went as far up to Gjerddalstind as I could come without climbing, but concluded that it would be pure climbing to reach the top from this side. So I returned to the others and I found a good route across the crack by following a deer track.
And then we could follow the ridge safely back to the main road. It was indeed a fun hike and mom was super-happy about having finally done this route!
Continued on day 15
Trip statistics: 2,7km, 165 vertical meters, 1h:21m
Pictures (Canon EOS RP/ Iphone8) from the hike:
