Grytøya, Harstad – Day 1
Index
| Date | Peak/Place | Height | PF | Location |
| 02.09.22 | Lundenesgalten | 787m | 137m | Harstad, Norway |
Friday: I was attending a company workshop at “The Hub” in Oslo. I arrived on Thursday morning and was dismissed early on Friday so that I could catch the 1:20pm flight from Oslo to Harstad. This year, the annual “beer and wiener blind test” event with my old mates from Oslo was to be held at Grytøya island, north of Harstad.
At Gardermoen airport, I met Lars and Bent. Lars and I go way back, but I had not met Bent before. Unfortunately, I am not able to attend this event every year, so Bent was a new face to me. Normally, there’s around 6-7 of us, but probably due to the long distance, we were only 4 this year.
Morten picked us up at the Evenes airport and drove us to his summer house on Grytøya, only stopping for necessities in Harstad. Necessities – as in beer and wiener and “other stuff”.
After settling in, and enjoying a shot of “welcome Whisky”, Morten and Lars asked if Bent and I shouldn’t hike Lundenesgalten (786m)? The guys knows that I am crazy for mountains and Bent being an ultra-runner, surely we could fly up and down there in no time?
After looking at each other for a few seconds, Bent and I accepted the “challenge” and left the house 6:12pm. Once on the trail above Morten’s house, we had 0,6km to jog and warm up before starting the climb up the mountain.
It was 5,1km and 800 vertical meters to the top and we kept a pretty good pace upwards.
This was totally crazy, but I loved it. I could feel the taste of Whisky while going up the mountain as fast as I could. It was fun to hike/jog with an ultra-runner. Never done that before. We were a good match. He would of course kill me on any jog exceeding one hour, but my force is hiking fast up steep mountains and running even faster down.
We reached the top 7:19pm and could enjoy a wonderful view.
And the new friendship with Bent was “sealed”
We headed over to “Storgalten” (782m) to enjoy additional views before returning to the others.
We returned to the house exactly 2 hours after leaving. The others were now eager to get “on with the show”, and like often before, I was the one serving.
It was a mighty fine evening with good old friends, but fortunately we had the wisdom to go to bed around 3am. We had a big mountain to hike the next day!
And we even got to witness some mighty fine Aurora Borealis before calling it a day…
Continued on day 2…
Pictures (Iphone 13 Pro Max) from the flight:
Trip statistics: 11,2km, 800 vertical meters, 2 hours
Pictures (Iphone 13 Pro Max) from the hike:
