Another nice hike in Årdal
Index
| Date | Peak | Height | PF | Location | WCP/FP | MAP |
| 10.08.25 | Horgi | 1120m | 290m | Årdal, Norway | – | MAP |
Sunday: We interpreted today’s forecast as “continuous small amounts of rain”. We assumed that in practice, it would be rain showers. In other words, it might not rain all the time.
So, we looked for a hike that could give us a new top, elevation not too high and within reasonable driving distance. The choice fell on Horgi in Seimsdalen, near Årdalstangen.
Anne told me that she had done “Horgi rundt” back in her younger days but didn’t remember much from the hike. “Horgi rundt” refers to a path that encircles the mountain.
We did however remember a little bit from the last time we were here – in July 2015 – when we hiked Skorsfjellet/Byttejuvet. Today, we would be visiting the top opposite Skorsfjellet.
The gravel road was still OK to drive and we started out from the same place as back in 2015…
We followed a visible path up towards Sjursete.
There was fog on Horgi, but we had faith in that the fog would lift.
The path was quite wet after the recent rain.
After ~1,7km, we arrived at Sjursete (760m).
From Sjursete, we had to search a little bit for the path to Feninga (signposted), but it didn’t take us long to find it.
The main question was – how could we get on the mountain? Was there a path somewhere. The path we were on was just a part of the “Horgi rundt” route. After Sjursete, we could hike off-trail almost anywhere we wanted, but we weren’t too keen on going off-trail in high, wet grass.
We agreed to follow the “Horgi rundt” path until it started to go in the wrong direction (around the ridge) and go off-trail if we didn’t see any path going upwards.
We enjoyed ourselves. The absence of heavy rain was a main factor…
1,5km after Sjursete, we saw the “Hovden 935 moh” signpost. Here, we found a path going up the forest. Excellent!
This should now be a walk in the park. We had occasional rain showers so far, but our rain gear remained in our rucksacks.
All of a sudden, the path led us in a direction that didn’t make sense. Shouldn’t we be following the ridge?
We decided to go off-trail in order to get back to the ridge route. We decided to figure out what happened, upon our descent.
Back on the ridge, we found the very visible path and were curious as to what happened further down.
1,5 hours after we left the car, we reached the top.
There was a little fog left, and some light rain, but we were overall quite happy with the weather. It could have been much worse!
Then we headed down the ridge, eager to find out why we had taken the wrong route.
The path suddenly disappeared in front of us, which sort of explained it.
Eventually, we were back on the path we followed upwards. So just a word of caution to others, reading this. Just stick to the ridge.
Back at Hovden, we turned left and continued along the “Horgi rundt” route.
We met a couple with two dogs, coming up from the Torli trailhead – a little higher up than where we parked.
Just a note; If you want to do “Horgi rundt”, drive to the upper parking (Torli). Here you will see a signpost pointing towards Sjursete/”Horgi rundt”. This is a shortcut through the forest, which saves you from the first hill, if you park at the bottom of Strupane, like we did. That is, if you want to go in that direction. You can also do the hike counterclockwise and follow the path up to Feninga first.
We followed the path down to Feninga. The path didn’t take us to the cabins. There was a fork where we turned left.
We had high hopes for a better trail from Feninga, and the trail was indeed better. Wet, but better. Lots of wooden walkways, many of them “submerged”.
Later on, we passed the bridge where you can go to Kletta.
This bridge was closed, as the bridge pier/abutment on one side has collapsed, making the bridge unsafe.
Eventually, we got to Torli, from where we followed the car road 0,7km down to where we had parked.
We decided to celebrate this nice hike with a dinner at La Pergola in Sogndal…
Trip statistics: 12,8km, 550 vertical meters, 3h:31m
