The 1st week back home, without Karma
Index
| Date | Peak | Height | PF | Location | WCP/FP | MAP |
| 04.08.25 | Rjåhornet | 600m | 107m | Herøy, M&R, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 05.08.25 | Laupsnipa | 562m | 380m | Herøy/Sande, M&R, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 06.08.25 | Øyrahornet | 417m | 42m | Herøy, M&R, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 07.08.25 | Garnestua | 654m | 417m | Ulstein, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 08.08.25 | Stedjeåsen | 625m | 123m | Sogndal, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 09.08.25 | Lingesetfjellet | 1002m | 184m | Sogndal, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 10.08.25 | Horgi | 1120m | 290m | Årdal, Norway | – | MAP |
Rjåhornet (600m), Aug 4 2025
Monday: The first day back at work (home office) was hard. No dog around. Fortunately, Anne was still here, which helped a lot. This will take some time to get used to. I just felt sad.
The last hike Karma and I did before we went on vacation, was Rjåhornet from Djupvika. I felt a need to do the same hike today, together with Anne.
The weather wasn’t great, and it had been raining most of the day. But just as we started walking, the rain stopped.
The fog was thick on top, but that didn’t matter much. At least the air felt fresh. We were a little bit tired of the constant sunshine and warm weather. This was quite OK, except for the fog.
We took the same route back down and had a good talk about Karma. I still found it very hard to talk about her without my voice cracking up. It will get better with time…
Trip statistics: 6,1km, 580 vertical meters, 1h:54m
Laupsnipa (562m), Aug 5 2025
Tuesday: Anne left in the morning, and I was all by myself again. It was nice of her to stay an extra day to keep me company. This day was hard too. I just felt totally empty and just wanted to sleep. I managed to pull off some kind of working day before I got some sleep.
In the afternoon, I decided to hike Laupsnipa. The weather wasn’t nice. We were in the outskirts of the storm “Floris”, but it wasn’t all that bad out here. The weather in Ålesund was much worse, according to the news.
I met a porcupine on my way up. It tried to outrun me and when it realized it couldn’t, it went into its way of “hiding“. I had no intention to bother the little guy and kept on walking.
It was raining, but the wind wasn’t so strong. Yet.
The wind got gradually stronger as I got higher on the mountain, but luckily, the rain stopped. The combination of that wind and rain would have been terribe.
I was quite happy when I reached the top and could head back down.
This was pure discipline. If I didn’t have this goal of 500 vertical meters per day (average per week) I could have done quite well without this hike.
I felt like crap in the evening. Something was clearly “lurking”.
Trip statistics: 5,2km, 570 vertical meters, 1h:17m
Øyrahornet (417m), Aug 6 2025
Wednesday: Today was a super-crappy day. I felt like total garbage. I would try to get an appointment at the Doctor’s office for the next day. Meanwhile, I just had to “survive”.
My working day was brutal, and I wondered if I should just call in sick. But I finished it and went to bed afterwards. In the afternoon, I drove a bit around to find a place to hike, but it was raining so much.
After dinner, it had stopped raining, and I decided to go up Øyrahornet.
The rain returned 5 minutes later, and I was soaking wet by the time the rain shower moved on, some 15 minutes later.
I just focused on a warm shower and going to bed super-early.
It started to rain “hard” on my way down, but then I didn’t care much about it. I couldn’t get wetter anyway.
After a warm shower, I went to bed 9:30pm.
Trip statistics: 3,6km, 405 vertical meters, 1h:01m
Garnestua (654m), Aug 7 2025
Thursday: Oh, what a night, and what a day. I was really out of it. I felt like I was in coma most of the night. I spent it sitting in a chair, because the headache prevented me from lying in bed.
In the morning, it was clear what I was not in shape to do any work. I had to call in sick. Fortunately, I was able to get an early appointment at the Doctor’s office. A few minutes later, I was on my way to the pharmacy in Ulsteinvik to get a 10-day cure of antibiotics.
5 minutes after taking the first dose, the headache went away. Placebo? Maybe, but I never expected that to happen.
Back home, I went to bed and spent most of my time there until 4pm. It was quite nice to be lying instead of sitting in a chair.
I felt like a trainwreck but decided to at least try to see if I could my daily dose of 500 vertical meters. It hadn’t rained all day, but now it was raining. But only lightly.
The way I decided to look at this, was that there were 4 ways this could go: 1) it would stop raining – OK, 2) it would only rain lightly – OK, 3) it would rain a lot but not all the time – NOT OK, 4) it would rain all the time – NOT OK. In other words, there was a 50% chance that the hike could be OK.
I decided to hike Garnestua from Haddal. It was raining lightly on my way up the forest. I had a feeling this could get mighty unpleasant.
The smart thing would have been to stay in bed, but often, I feel better – if only for a little while – going hiking when I’m feeling crap.
Anne called. She was going out on fishing patrol. We wished each other a good trip.
Then the rain stopped! It was very, very windy on the summit ridge but I didn’t care about the wind.
And then I was up! Somewhat dry and happy.
I decided to return along the same route and increase my chances of returning to the car before it started raining again.
And sure enough, just as I reached the car, it started to rain again.
Trip statistics: 5,6km, 610 vertical meters, 1h:31m
Stedjeåsen (624m), Aug 8 2025
Friday: I didn’t get any sleep until 3am. Mostly because of the headache, but also because I had been sleeping so many hours earlier in the (previous) day. My alarm sounded at 7:30, and it took me half an hour to get on my feet.
Luckily, the headache wasn’t so bad. I had a positive feeling about the antibiotics working already, albeit some would argue it takes 3-4 days for any positive effect. As I felt it – I got headache from the fight my body was putting up against the infection. Less infection, less stress, less headache. At least, that was my theory.
I had a productive, but short working day. I left work at 2pm and sat course for Sogndal. The plan was to do a hike somewhere along the way, but it was raining constantly, and I drove directly to Sogndal.
When I got to Anne’s place, it was hardly raining at all, so I decided to go for a hike up the Stedjeåsen forest, just behind Anne’s house. I took the most direct (hence, steep) route I could think of.
I mostly stuck to the less travelled paths and didn’t see others until I joined the main path.
There is no path to the highest point, and I was perfectly dry when I went off-trail, and soaking wet when I returned to the trail.
I followed the normal route down and caught up with 3 foreign hikers. I couldn’t pass them (narrow trail), but the woman in the back saw me coming and so I though they would adhere to what I perceived to be common hiking ethics and let me pass. Nope.
Eventually, I had to ask if I could pass – please. The woman said “Yes” and they stepped aside. I found it weird. It is unthinkable that I or any of the people I know would not automatically step aside when someone is coming up from behind. That said, I see the same behaviour when I’m driving and have foreign cars ahead of me, driving much slower than the speed limit.
I just find it fascinating from a psychological perspective. I think the difference lies in social norms. While it is obvious to me to let others – going faster – pass, it may not be obvious to them – for several cultural reasons. Like – “noticing a queue building up. No action required“.
Back at Anne’s place, Anne had prepared a delightful meal. It was good to be back in Sogndal, but very strange to get there without our dear Karma…
Trip statistics: 5,4km, 580 vertical meters, 1h:23m
Lingesetfjellet (1002m), Aug 9 2025
Saturday: The forecast for the weekend was mostly about rain and was a blocker to anything fun we could think of, outside the Sogndal region.
But we had to do something, and I proposed a bike trip from the Sogndal airport, across Lingesetfjellet, down to Fimreite and then to Eide. It would be a quite decent workout. Anne liked the idea. Particularly, because she got to ride her E-bike. I was going old-school…
Biking from the airport to Lingesete was fairly easy. The climb is gentle.
The hardest part was from Lingesete and up to the top of the service road.
It was brutal. I was determined to bike all the way up, but in the steepest hill, there was new gravel, and I couldn’t find the right combination of gears and force applied, and my wheels were just spinning. I had to push the bike for a few meters before getting back on it.
Anne was a darling and pretended she couldn’t bike any faster than me.
On top of the road, we left our bikes and sat course for the high point.
It was nice to be back. I hadn’t been up here since Oct 2023.
We returned to the bikes, and I tried to ignore the power infrastructure. It was not an easy thing to do.
Helicopters were flying here and there. It wasn’t easy to ignore them either.
We passed the place where the new cables across the Sognefjord are coming in. The existing 300kV powerlines are being replaced with 420kV.
We now had a 900 vertical meter descent ahead of us. That’s quite a lot, for “just a bike trip”. To get a descent like that, you would typically have to climb a mountain pass.
When we got to Fimreite, we checked if some friends of us were at their cabin. It would have been nice with a cup of coffee by now. But they weren’t and so we got started on the 13,7km leg back to Anne’s car at Eide.
The Fimreite – Eide fjord has a couple of notable climbs. The first one is 150 vertical meters, the second one is 100.
Eventually, we arrived at Anne’s car at Eide. If it hadn’t been for the rain and the fact that I was on antibiotics, recovering from an infection, I would have gone “full circle” – up to the airport (additional 550-600 vertical meters). But next time, we’ll do the the round trip from Sogndal, without any cars involved. Looking forward to that!
Trip statistics: 31,5km on bike, 1,8km on foot, 870 vertical meters, 2h:46m
Horgi (1120m), Aug 10 2025
Sunday: This hike is featured on a separate post…
