A great start to the week – before the rain…
| 17.08.26 | Grøthornet | 745m | 57m | Ørsta/Volda, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 17.08.26 | Melshornet | 809m | 567m | Ørsta, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 18.08.26 | Tverrfjellet | 850m | 178m | Ørsta, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 18.08.26 | Hestefjellet | 799m | 30m | Ørsta, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 18.08.26 | Levandehornet | 917m | 287m | Ørsta, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 19.08.26 | Kyrkjetinden | 1069m | 54m | Ørsta, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 19.08.26 | Nupatippen | 845m | 17m | Ørsta, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 20.08.26 | Garnestua | 654m | 417m | Ulstein, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 22.08.26 | Høgåsen | 240m | 240m | Ulstein, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 22.08.26 | Røyrafjellet | 123m | 100m | Ulstein, Norway | WCP | MAP |
| 23.08.26 | Dugnad @Hustadneset | – | – | Ørsta, Norway | – | MAP |
Melshornet (809m), Aug 17 2026
Monday: It wasn’t supposed to rain today and so the plan was to find myself a nice airy and narrow ridge somewhere in Ørsta. When I got in the car after work, I wasn’t quite sure which ridge that would be. I would let the inspiration “come to me”
But when I got out of the Eiksund tunnel, I could see the fog hanging thick on the mountains > 800m. As such, I decided to just do a normal round trip across Melshornet – starting from Bratteberg.
I took the forest path up to the crossing road to Reset, followed it eastbound and got on another forest road and eventually ended up in the slalom hill.
I didn’t bother to stop by the top of Sandhornet and proceeded directly towards Grøthornet (745m).
Melshornet was covered by fog, so I took a picture towards Åmdalen and lake Vatnevatnet instead.
It was altogether an uneventful hike up to the top.
Then I went over to the cairn and took a 24mm picture of Ørsta. There was a fog layer which made the picture a bit hazy, but I am still not able to produce good colors from the RAW format pictures.
Then I took two more pictures, one with my new 100mm lens and one with the old 24-105mm lens, set to 98mm (I tried to get as close to 100 as I could). Then I selected a square and compared them. I forgot to take the Black Mist filter off the 100m, so that picture had a touch of “black mist” that the 24-105mm lens didn’t have.
If it hadn’t been for the color difference, I would not have guessed which picture belonged to which lens. This tells me that that I don’t have to bring the 100mm lens for 100mm landscape pictures. That was useful learning.
But still, I liked the 100mm picture better. And if I could get some sunshine, I could try out the new polarization filter as well…
I headed down the ridge towards lake Dinglavatnet, while enjoying the 3rd episode of the podcast about the soccer (football) club Bodø Glimt. Their rise in the past decade is nothing short of a fairy tale…
Finally – an enjoyable walk down the forest and back to the car.
Trip statistics: 7,5km, 680 vertical meters, 2h:12m
“Hesteryggen” (Tverrfjellet 850m – Hestefjellet 799m) and Levandehornet (917m), Aug 18 2026
Tuesday: This hike is featured on a separate post…
Kyrkjetinden (1069m), Nupatippen (845m), Aug 19 2026
Wednesday: This hike is featured on a separate post…
Gardnestua (654m), Aug 20 2026
Thursday: No more sunny afternoons for a while now. I was happy about making the most out of the previous afternoons but now we were back to rain and fog.
I didn’t want to go hiking at all, so now it was down to discipline and not motivation. I drove up to Løset to hike Garnestua (Hareidlandet island). It was raining, but not hard. More like a constant drizzle.
I got more wet from passing through the grass than from the rain.
Yeah, these rainy hikes are mostly about discipline – winning the battle on the doorstep – but it also feels so darn nice afterwards. Everything feels better. The shower, the dinner, the mind.
And obviously – without the rainy days, I would not have fully appreciated the sunny days. And when I read about lakes and rivers drying up across the planet, I am so thankful we have rain. Just not all the time…
I took the same route down. I was not in a round trip mood today…
Trip statistics: 4,9km, 435 vertical meters, 1h:22m
Høgåsen (240m), Røyrafjellet (123m), Aug 22 2026
Saturday: No hiking on Friday. The weather was awful and I besides, I felt like resting after some hard afternoon walks earlier in the week. Anne came up from Sogndal in the evening, lucky to have made it on the 2pm flight from Oslo to Sogndal, despite the strike amongst air traffic controllers, starting at 11am.
On Saturday morning, Anne wanted to go for a swim in Tovågen. I was not tempted…
Anne is trying to shake an inflammation in one foot and doesn’t do hiking right now. I decided to go on a hike alone, across the Dimnøya tops, after leaving my bicycle by the Røyrafjellet trailhead at Ertesvåg.
I chose to start at the trailhead near the Kleven shipyard.
The path was basically a small creek, but I got a short break from the running water inside the thickest forest.
There was nothing to see from the island high point Høgåsen and so I just continued across Svarane and Stemnehornet.
After Stemnehornet, I sat course for Uglesætra. The forest was so soaked, and I was wet from top to bottom and inside and out…
Approaching Uglesætra, I wondered how the wooden “bridge” would look like…
The “bridge” would not be taking me across today.
I started looking for a way around the outlet from the small lake just south of Slokevatnet but got farther and farther away from Ugleseætra. Then I noticed a marked route I didn’t know about and chose to follow it, hoping it would take me directly down to Ertesvåg.
It did, and now I had Røyrafjellet in plain view – the last top on this hike.
Røyrafjellet is an easy top and was also Karma’s first “mountain” – back in December 2012.
Then I returned to my bike, awaiting at the Røyrafjellet parking and had an easy 3,5km bike trip back to the car.
Trip statistics: 8km on foot, 3,5km on bike, 560 vertical meters, 2h:22m
Dugnad @Hustadneset, Aug 23 2026
Sunday: Today, we drove to Hustadneset (Sæbø, Ørsta) to help our good friend Jannike with cabin maintenance. Last year, we were a larger group. This time, it was just Anne, Jannike, Sveinung (a friend of Jannike) and me.
Like always, I got assigned to “timber”, which meant clearing, chopping and cutting wood. We took down one large birch, giving a whole lot of wood which will come in handy for Jannike and her family, come winter.
Anne and Sveinung were cutting bush and Anne also stained the outhouse.
Jannike took good care of us!
This place is probably one of the most stunning places where you can attend a “Dugnad” – a voluntary “come together” event to get things fixed and in order.
As such, I brought my camera bag…
We put in a good 6-hour effort. My arms were toast, but a lot of good work had been done.
Afterwards, we drove to Sæbø to check if my panorama from Saksa in 2006 still was decorating the Joker store window. It was.
Then we sat down on a bench and enjoyed the nice views…
Eventually, it was time home and scrub off the ticks (I plucked 4, before getting into the car), wash the clothes and take a proper shower…
