Two Lofoten Ascents

The man who runs the Moskenes camp-ground assured us after our day at Reine that summer had finally arrived in Lofoten, and sure enough we had two perfect days of bright sunshine to follow. On the first, we decided to climb Hermannsdalstinden, the second highest peak in the Lofotens. We headed up the first hill, but then followed a boggy trail that dropped down on the other side to meet the main trail from Sorvagen. We followed this up a series of steep climbs onto a lovely plateau filled with small lakes, and then climbed again toward a mountain hut at Munkebu. At this point we realised we weren’t going to have time to climb the peak and still catch the bus that evening, so we opted for the closed peak of Munken. This turned out to be a good choice as we had a fantastic view of the surrounding lakes and mountains, but also of Reinefjord, where we’d caught the ferry the previous day. Anyone who wonders what Yosemite valley would look like flooded needs only visit Reinefjord – it even has it’s own version of Half Dome.

Having admired the views in every direction, and punched our map with the orienteering control we found at the summit, we headed back towards Moskenes. On the way we ran into a local man who explained that the control at the summit was placed there by a local club – they place controls on ten peaks each summer and the members are challenged to visit them all.

On the descent we found a much better route back, avoiding the tedious and muddy down and up we’d done in the morning. One of the odd features of the Western Lofotens is that there are far more paths on the ground than are shown on the map. Often the unmapped ones are at least as good as the mapped ones.

Back in Moskenes, we caught the bus back to Svolvær that evening. We’d run out of walks in the West, so it was time to explore the mountains in the East again.

The next morning we headed up the valley behind Svolvær, intending to climb Rundfjellet, the highest of the local peaks. The path followed a series of lakes up the valley before climbing a steep ridge with fantastic views back to the town and across to Tuva and Blåtinden, the hills we had climbed at the start of our holiday.

We continued to climb to a high-altitude lake, and then circled around the end of the valley we’d been in, for the final climb up to the summit. One of the odd features of the Eastern Lofotens was that there were far fewer paths on the ground than are shown on the map. What looked like a perfectly reasonable path to the summit didn’t appear to exist at all, so we picked a likely looking ridge and scaled that. Fortunately, apart from a couple of awkward scrambles on wet loose rock, the ridge was a pretty good route and we made it to the top and its fantastic views.

The descent was equally untracked, at least for the first part, but after finding tracks for a while, then losing them in the vegetation, we reached the side of a fjord which we followed to the road. We’d planned to hitch back to Svolvær, but road works meant that all the traffic arrived in a rush every ten minutes or so, and nobody was willing to stop and end up at the back of the queue, so we ended up walking almost the whole way back to town.

This concluded Part 1 of our Scandinavian adventure and our high latitude training. Part 2 was taking part in the Björkliden Arctic Mountain Marathon in northern Sweden.