Sogndal week
| Date | Peak | Height | PF | Location | WCP/FP | MAP |
| 22.12.25 | Andhovden | 512m | 9m | Sogndal, Norway | FP | MAP |
| 23.12.25 | Amlaholten | 508m | 265m | Sogndal, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 24.12.25 | Stedjeåsen | 625m | 123m | Sogndal, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 25.12.25 | Stedjeåsen | 625m | 123m | Sogndal, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 26.12.25 | Anestølsvatnet | 439m | – | Sogndal, Norway | PB | MAP |
| 27.12.25 | Blåfjellet | 1398m | 144m | Sogndal, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 28.12.25 | Nuken | 919m | 126m | Sogndal, Norway | WCP | MAP |
Andhovden (512m), Dec 22 2025
Monday: Since 2019, I’ve made it an annual tradition to hike Andhovden from Njøs. I like this route a lot. And since I hadn’t been there so far this year, this was where I chose to go this evening.
You can hike from Njøs or from Sanden. The two routes join into one not far from Bjørgahaug.
I considered doing a round-trip hike from Sanden, but in the end, I found that it would be boring to hike along the main road, in the dark.
This would my 7th hike to Andhovden, and the first one without Karma. It was great fun to see her “climb” up the steep forest.
When I got to Bjørgahaug, it was still not as dark as I wanted to be…
… so I decided to continue up to Andhovden and come back to Bjørgahaug.
Once across Andhovden, I followed another path that took me right back to Bjørgahaug. It was getting dark enough by now.
Bjørghaug is a fine viewpoint, but there is so much grass in the foreground, and I have to have my camera on the ground (or on my rucksack) for exposure over several seconds.
Now it was just the right mix of daylight and darkness.
I decided to take the same route back down. Good hike!
Trip statistics: 4,1km, 470 vertical meters, 1h:31m
Amlaholten (508m), Dec 23 2025
Tuesday: The day before Christmas Eve started with almost a full working day. In case any of my 5 regular readers happens to be a programmer, I’m rewriting integrations from SOAP-based APIs to REST. Sounds fun, right?
Then Anne and I went to Amlabukti to hike Amlaholten – from sea level. It’s a hike we both love.
Today, we brought one of the many animal toys we brought for Karma. They look so lonesome without her.
We headed up my favorite forest…
As we passed Ramnereiret, I looked very carefully towards Kaupangsholtane – wondering if it is possible to get up on the south (left) side. I guess there’s only one way to find out.
Then it got steeper.
I love this mountain, but it’s lacking the perfect viewpoint.
There are a couple of viewpoints, but pine trees are in the way.
When we got up, we rehearsed on a “Christmas card”.
The card got got simple this year. I don’t want to pay the Adobe Photoshop license fee. LRC is expensive enough.
When we returned to Amlabukti, I spent a few minutes taking pictures while Anne was waiting and freezing.
Late evening, the Christmas tree was decorated…
Trip statistics: 5,1km, 510 vertical meters, 2h:12m
Stedjeåsen (624m), Dec 24 2025
Wednesday: The day began with a cold bath in Sogndalsfjøra. I had actually prepared mentally for a freezing experience, but then I stepped on a nail coming out of a doorstep and had to stop the bleeding. After that, I was no longer so keen on going into the fjord and settled with documenting Anne’s morning bath.
Besides that, it was a nice morning.
I was not feeling well either. I wasn’t sure if it was some kind of virus or my stomach, but I felt like rock bottom. Once back at Anne’s place, I enjoyed finishing the advent calendar (a gift from Anne) where Karma and I were the motives. What an incredible nice gift!
After an hour of rest, I didn’t feel any better, but I knew that I just had to go for a hike in the Stedjeåsen forest. It would certainly not improve my physical condition, but it would be better for my mental well-being.
I had completely forgotten about the havoc the storm “Amy” left in October. They would probably have cleared the main trail, but I wasn’t following the main trail.
The hike soon turned into a very strenuous ordeal…
I passed an old barn that had been standing on borrowed time for long. It didn’t stand a chance against “Amy”…
The hike was really strenuous. I have never been more tired on a hike in this forest.
Eventually, I joined the main trail, and everything got much easier.
But the main trail didn’t go where the main trail used to go. Fortunately, I was able to find and follow the new route.
When I got to the top of Stedjeåsen, I saw a girl ice-skating on Åsavatnet. I went down and talked to her. Her name was Ingrid, from Tverrlandet near Bodø. We had a nice chat about her region, which I know well.
The ice looked perfect. And since I got new skates for my birthday, I hoped that I was feeling well enough the next day to come up here and test the skates – with Anne.
I followed the main trail all the way down. Enough climbing across fallen trees!
Kudos to the ones clearing the trail. It must have been substantial work.
Back at Anne’s place, I rested for another hour and was in good enough shape to enjoy Christmas Eve.
Trip statistics: 6,2km, 580 vertical meters, 2h:03m
Stedjeåsen (624m) & ice-skating, Dec 25 2025
Thursday: Inspired from the meeting with Ingrid the day before, Anne and I went up Stedjeåsen today, to go skating.
We took the route directly from Anne’s place, but avoided the disaster zone I went through the day before.
Then we got Åsavatnet at 609m elev.
It wasn’t a big lake (by any means) but it was big enough for us today.
I skated a few times when I was a kid, in the 70’s. And once across lake Folkestadvatnet in 2010. That’s not a mighty strong skating CV, but I didn’t have any problems here.
Turning, breaking and skating all fell quite natural.
Our skating ground was approx. 60 x 50m. But the ice was just perfect.
We even managed to pull off a selfie.
The high point had to be visited, and I left Anne for a few minutes.
After returning to her, we skated some more and talked to a couple of hikers who thought this looked really fun. And fun it was!
We had brought ice picks in the unlikely event that we would go through the ice (it’s a shallow lake) but none of us had thought about bringing helmets…
Trip statistics: 6,4km on foot, 3,4km on skates, 580 vertical meters, 2h:45m
Ice-skating on Anestølsvatnet, Dec 26 2025
Friday: This trip is featured on a separate post…
Blåfjellet (1398m) on skis, Dec 27 2025
Saturday: I really wanted to go on a ski-trip this Christmas, even if the snow conditions in Sogndal (and western Norway in general) were bad. Unfortunately, I could not get Anne to come along, when she saw that the forecasts suggested gusts in the 25 m/s range on Blåfjellet.
I decided to take my chances and drove to Hodlekve to ski Blåfjellet. There was only activity in the very lower slopes.
There was a visible track which I assumed was made by skiers going to Høgehaug – a popular ski-trip for those who don’t have to go to a mountain top.
I decided to follow the track all the way to Stilledalen and make my way up the mountain from there. Assuming there was avalanche danger, I was determined to stay in the safe slopes.
I was very curious about the forecasted wind. There was no wind at all when I reached 900m.
The safest route also turned out to be the most cumbersome route. The rocky terrain didn’t look so bad from a distance.
But it wasn’t all bad. I’ve seen worse.
When I reached the south ridge, the snow was partly wind-packed snow and icy crust.
I made sure to set the best track possible, for the decent. I wanted to avoid the icy crust at all costs.
Passing 1300m, the wind was still not bad at all, the sun was shining and I was enjoying myself.
Soon, I had to the two tops in view. I decided to visit both, starting with the western top, most likely the highest of the two.
1h:45m after I headed out, I was on top of Blåfjellet. I was quite happy!
200m to the southeast, I could see two persons on the east top.
They were still there when I got there. They were two Swedes, traveling a long way for some skiing.
And the wind? Quite tolerable. It was a little bit cold, so I put on a dune jacket while I was up there. Talk about discrepancy between forecast and reality!
I descended the way I came up. Daylight was fading and I didn’t want to waste time finding a new route down.
The descent was uneventful, except for the parts with icy crust. I’m not a good enough skier to handle these conditions gracefully.
The rocky section went fine, and I returned to the Høgehaug track without any falls. It was an icy ride back to Hodlekve across hard snow and crossing icy creeks.
Trip statistics: 11,9km on skis, 810 vertical meters, 2h:52m
Nuken (919m), Dec 28 2025
Sunday: This Sunday morning started like every Sunday morning where Anne is in Sogndal – the morning bath. But not for me. I was … good.
It was a nice morning, and it was maybe in the cards that we would go skiing today. Perhaps to Helleberget and Høgehaug.
After the bath, we gathered in Gry’s backyard for coffee and chatting.
After breakfast, the weather was not so nice anymore and we decided to head for lake Halsavatnet to see if it was skateable. It would be a long hike, but we agreed to visit Nuken as well.
We started out from Røvhaugane.
We passed Åberge and when reaching Kjørrdalen, we discussed which route we should take towards Nuken.
We ended up going off-trail, aiming for the shortest route possible to Nuken. The ground was mostly frozen and hiking was relatively easy.
The snow only partly carried our weight, which was semi-annoying.
Then we encountered a marked route that we didn’t know about. Where did it start?
It was clearly leading us towards Nuken.
But where on Nuken would we end up?
After a while, we realized that we would join the Åsen path just west of Nuken.
We were already losing interest in skating. There would probably be snow on the lake anyway.
We settled for Nuken and only had to figure out how to return to Sogndal.
The weather was unpleasant, and so we only stayed for a couple of minutes.
We followed the Åsen route down, then we took a vague path that was a short-cut towards Bjellastølen.
Approaching Bjellastølen, we decided to hike down to Bjelda and return to Røvhaugane via Gurvin.
It turned out to be a long hike – 5 hours. Anne was so pleased with herself that she decided to celebrate with a proper bath (in the bathtub), lights dimmed and a glass of Champagne…
Trip statistics: 16,4km, 980 vertical meters, 4h:56m
