A spectacular top!
Summer vacation, day 6
Index
| Date | Peak | Height | PF | Location | WCP/FP | MAP |
| 10.07.24 | Solvågtinden | 1559m | 833m | Saltdal, Norway | – | MAP |
| 10.07.24 | Solvågfjellet | 1402m | 106m | Saltdal, Norway | – | MAP |
Wednesday: Ever since I started hiking, I’ve been dreaming about Solvågtinden. It’s just such a majesty. And today was (hopefully) the day!
We spent the night in a rented cabin at Storjord, and I was up in the middle of the night and could see red sky (a good sign) and white clouds hitting on Solvågtinden. On the other side of the road, Ølfjellet (1751m) was wrapped in the fog.
After breakfast, the weather was just great, and we left our cabin 9am.
We could have saved some distance by driving to the general trailhead and public parking, but we didn’t mind the extra bit.
After a while we were on the forest trail to Storjordfjellkoia.
We took it nice and easy and enjoyed the local “wildlife”
At 400m, we passed Storjordfjellkoia, which Anne had marked as “milestone” 1 of 4.
Her next milestone was to make it above the forest. The path was a bit overgrown and if the grass had been wet, we would have been soaking wet too.
But the grass wasn’t wet, and everything was honky dory nice.
At around 750m (I’m guessing), we got above the forest and had the top in plain sight.
The mountain didn’t look so pointy as it does from the road to Sweden, but it was mighty in a different way.
According to the map, we would find water up there and there was indeed water…
When we got to Traktelva river, the path (now marked with cyan paint and easy to follow) turned north. We could see a visible path going towards the mountain, but that was clearly no longer the recommended way.
We had 4 hikers ahead of us and 4 hikers behind us. Given our early start, we thought we would be among the first ones to the top today, but we had no idea how many there would be in total.
We continued northbound along a marked and visible path, aiming for the pass (milestone #3) between Solvågfjellet and Solvågtinden.
We passed the group of 4 women near the pass and thought that we would be the first ones to the top.
The route up to the pass was easy, something that wasn’t obvious when seen from a distance.
Once in the pass, the route went through the entire pass (past lake 1289m) before it climbed towards the high ridge on Solvågtinden.
On the ridge, the scenery was spectacular in all directions. The lovely colors in lake Solvågvatnet, the steep drop to our right, the rugged ridge and the fun path towards the top.
This is the place you stop for pictures!
There were no places that were directly exposed, so the ones with a low tolerance for heights should be able to get to the top just fine.
Then we met a fit couple, jogging down from the top. OK, so we would not be first ones up today. All the same!
It was SO nice to reach the top. It was a long uphill, but as we took our time, it was only moderately strenuous.
It took us 3h:26m to reach the top, including some back and forth near the cabin. From the public parking, it took us 3h:09m to the top.
The views were just superb. Saltfjellet, Ølfjellet, the Glomfjord mountains, Børvasstindan, Tellingen, Bodø peaks, Blåmannsisen, Suliskongen, Saulo – to name a few.
For the first time, I could see Nord-Saulo. This is the highest mountain along the Swedish border and I can’t wait to get there…
And when we go to Sulitjelma for Saulo, we’ll make sure we’ll visit Suliskongen as well…
We had the summit all to ourselves until we decided to leave.
The two other 4 by 4 parties were not far away from the top when we passed them.
I really wanted to include Solvågfjellet on this hike and Anne wanted to come along.
It was easy 106 vertical meters up from the pass. This top has no name on the map, but peakbook.org has called it Solvågfjellet.
We didn’t get any new views, but we got another top!
Back on the Solvågtinden path, we took it nice and easy during our descent. First, we met two hikers who didn’t catch that the path turned north by the river. They had messed around A LOT!
Then we reached a cool rock that we just had to scramble.
We like this kind of stuff. Not too easy and not too hard.
Then we met 4 other persons, coming up. From Finland, we think. And then we met 2 more hikers so the total number of people on top (assumiming they all reached the top) was 20 – including ourselves.
Of course, Anne had to take a bath in the creek…
The rest of the descent was uneventful. Anne looked forward to getting back to the cabin. I looked forward to getting in the car and drive the road to Sweden for additional pictures of Solvågtinden.
We now had been to Oksskolten and Solvågtinden. The question was – should we plan for another high mountain?
Time would tell..
Trip statistics: 21,6km, 1770 vertical meters, 7h:02m
Pictures (Canon EOS RP/Iphone 13 Pro Max/Samsung Galaxy) from the hike:
