Just a perfect day
Index
| Date | Peak | Height | PF | Location | WCP/FP | MAP |
| 17.02.24 | Høgenipa | 1097m | 126m | Vanylven/ Volda, Norway | WCP | MAP |
Saturday: The entire Saturday was forecasted to be gorgeous. I was not on standby duty at work, Karma was healthy, and Anne was here. We just had to do something extra today. We decided to drive to Syvde to ski Høgenipa.
We skied Høgenipa Feb 6, 2010, only a couple of months after we got together. We still remembered many things from that trip – the route, the beautiful evening light, the cold, cold wind and the nice snow. We hoped for a similar good experience today, minus the cold, cold wind…
We followed the forest road upwards. The snow was hard in the beginning.
After a little while, the snow was softer and I already looked forward to ski down here. I like skiing down forest roads…
Above the forest, the mountain came into view.
We were fortunate that there were tracks from other skiers. If not, we couldn’t have proceeded. The snow was soft and would have given Karma a huge struggle we didn’t want to expose her to. But after a while, the main tracks went up to Tryggesteinen and only one, fresh track went towards Høgenipa. Karma was now trailing, not leading…
But what a day! There was no wind at all, and I skied to the top without my jacket on. That’s almost unheard of – at this altitude, at this part of the country, at this time of the year!
On our way up the mountain, the guy who had left the tracks came down, with his dog trailing. He stopped to talk with us, and just after I managed to thank him for the tracks, Karma and his dog immediately went at each other. “This mountain isn’t big enough for the both of us”. That kind of crap. With a really loud voice, I ended the fight. I’m pretty sure it Karma who picked the fight…
Next, we continued upwards. The guy told us that the snow was hard up on the mountain. Good news for Karma, but it could make the ascent a bit trickier.
While waiting for Anne, I decided to perform “sock maintenance” on Karma. She had snow in one sock. While it easy to remove the snow, it’s not easy to get the sock firmly strapped again, due to ice.
Eventually, Anne came along and we could now focus on getting up the top.
The final hillside had a mix of wind-packed snow and glaciated snow. I decided to leave the skis behind and so did Anne. It was difficult to ski down while having the dog on leash. She didn’t have a good grip with the socks on and I didn’t want to take her socks off.
And then we were up!
It was nice to be back again – although Karma and I were here in March 2018. But on top, I didn’t remember that trip and so I thought Karma got a new top today. That wasn’t the case, though. Oh well!
I went nuts with the camera…
First, the usual Iphone panoramas…
Then, a bunch of pictures with the Canon, which I stitched together afterwards. In case I get bored after I retire from work and feel like annotating old panoramas…
Now, I was really keen on getting started on the descent. This would just be awesome!
Long story short – it was awesome! Karma was running much faster than I had thought she would. Normally for her, going down a mountain in soft snow is normally harder than going up. But not so today.
The snow was beautiful. I just wanted to be teleported back to the top.
Eventually, we reached the forest road. That was supposed to be the dessert, but a snowmobile had left a track that we constantly had to cross as we were making turns.
After 4 hours, this memorable trip was over and we sat course for the ferry at Koparneset.
Trip statistics: 13,5km, 1040 vertical meters, 3h:59m
Pictures (Canon EOS RP, Iphone 13 Pro Max, Samsung Galaxy) from the trip:
