A nice revisit to Kjerringøy, Bodø
Index
| Date | Peak | Height | PF | Location | MAP |
| 27.07.23 | Fjærkjerringa | 594m | 205m | Bodø, Norway | MAP |
| 27.07.23 | Fjærkjerringa east top | 582m | 54m | Bodø, Norway | MAP |
Thursday: Today, we were going to the beautiful Kjerringøy island to a) hike and b) visit Kjerringøy Handelssted. As I didn’t really know about any dog-friendly mountains (other than Eidetinden – which I had been to before) on this rugged island and so I posted a question to a Kjerringøy FB group.
I got a number of suggestions, some were not pf100 tops and some I had my doubt on. That left us with Fjærkjerringa. The person who answered had been up there with a dog.
I forgot to ask where the path begins, so when we took the ferry to Kjerringøy this morning, we had no idea where to start.
But before going hiking, we wanted to drive up north and get Store Strandåtind in view. This is a mountain I climbed back in 2009 and is still the most memorable pure climbing trip I’ve been on.
Next, we drove around in the area near Fjærkjerringa and asked several persons about the route. The best suggestion we got was to start by the cattleguard just north of Salvobergan. I forgot what the call this place. We were also told to “keep right” – whatever that meant.
We found the cattleguard and wondered if we had understood the “keep right” correctly…
We approached this by looking for tracks. We found a vague path but quickly lost sight of it on the slabs. But then we saw a track going up the forest along a ridge that looked promising.
The path was easy to follow, but I wasn’t quite at ease with respect to Karma. I thought the mountain looked steep higher up.
But I’d worry about that when we got there. Now, we just had to enjoy the scenery!
One thing was for certain – we would take a swim after the hike!
Above the forest, I STILL thought the mountain looked really steep. How on earth would we get Karma up there? We could only hope that there was a ledge that we didn’t see.
Eventually we got to the “crux”, and it was clearly possible to get the dog up there, but how? Should I let the dog figure out the moves by herself or should I guide her? If she fell off the cliff, bones would be broken for sure. I decided to guide her, which was not easy due to the minimal room this “ledge” had to offer.
In the end I was able to get her up, but I didn’t want to go through this again. I would go to lengths in order to find a different route upon our descent.
But after this hurdle, it was easy street to the summit!
The view from Fjærkjerringa is just awesome, and especially the view to the north…
Landegode was coming “closer and closer”, meaning that now it was only 1 day until we would go hiking there.
I would not mind spending an entire year here. Maybe I should start thinking about that while I’m still “young”…
I wanted to visit the east top – and look for an alternative route down at the same time. There was a distinct path to the east top, so I had a hope that maybe there was a route down from the pass.
I didn’t see a route down from the pass, but it didn’t seem hopeless to get down that way. After a few minutes I was on the east top and could look back on the main top.
Back in the pass I discovered a vague path that I hadn’t seen while going up. I went back up to the main top and said to Anne that I wanted to descend that way.
And so we did. We quickly lost the path, but it didn’t matter. We were just going to maintain this elevation until we were under the crux and then return along the ascent route.
All of a sudden, we came across parts of an airplane. A quick search on the internet revealed that there two F-5 Freedom Fighters had collided with this mountain, in 1972, just below the summit. A huge tragedy!
It was a delight to not have to deal with the crux again. While this is simple scrambling for humans, I would not recommend that route for dogs. Traverse over to the pass instead. Much easier terrain!
Then we headed down the way we came up and was back at the car 3 hours after leaving it.
It was time to hit the water. We just crossed the road and jumped into the sea. We could wish there was a sandy beach there, but a rocky shore with seaweed would do nicely right now. We took a swim all nude and hoped we would shock people in the RVs that had parked offroad and thus illegal…
Then it was time for the cultural part of the day, and we drove to Kjerringøy Handelssted.
But first – lunch! We were hungry…
I must admit I don’t have a huge interest in historic buildings and places, but Anne wanted to have a tour. I was happy with taking pictures, without really knowing what I was photographing. I did know that the Knut Hamsun wrote “Pan” and “Benoni og Rosa” based on this place and Kjerringøy. Or at least I remembered – when Anne mentioned it…
But, while the place was impressive – given the age – it was just “a bunch of good-looking old buildings” to me. I’m not afraid to unveil my ignorance, but I do have a strong interest in more recent history, like WW2.
We were a bit too late to catch the guided tour and so we just strolled around.
Eventually, we called it a day and drove to Misten pier, where we just missed the ferry. But there are definitely worse places to hang around, waiting for a ferry. Plus, I would absolutely celebrate our nice hike with a beer or two, once back at our tent at Geitvågen…
Trip statistics: 5,4km, 770 vertical meters, 2h:58m
Pictures (Canon EOS RP/Iphone 13 Pro Max) from the hike:
