Norwegian Mountains - Route Descriptions - Blåskjerdingen, Skjerdingen, Tindfjellet, Byrkjevollhornet, Litleskjerdingen

Norwegian Mountains, Møre og Romsdal

Blåskjerdingen from Eikesetra, Jan 8 2006

Click here for the main Blåskjerdingen page.

This was the second day of my friend Petter's two-day stay in Ålesund. Yesterday's trip to Urfjellet was now recorded in the book of good memories. It was time to create a few more, and today we were heading for Blåskjerdingen. This is a special mountain to me, as it is the first thing I see from where I live, when daylight comes along. Fortunately, Blåskjerdingen was also on Petter's list of FINE Møre og Romsdal mountains. Petter had done his homework and discovered that an approach from the south would get us into nasty terrain in order to reach the northern top. We studied the map and chose a route from the north. We knew little or nothing about this approach, which made it all the more fun.

We arrived the trailhead as day was dawning and were on our way 09:00AM. There was no snow in the lowlands, quite opposite to the trip the day before. We attached the skis to our backpacks and headed up the forest road. My little dachshund "Troll" had put up an effort out of the ordinary the day before, and I was wondering if he would be willing to walk. It took some convincing to get him out of the backseat, but once he touched ground, he walked willingly. So far, so good. At the first forest road fork, we stuck to the main forest road, which was a mistake. At the end of this road, we had to go off-trail into the birch forest for a while, until we were back on the blue route. The terrain was however quite easy, and Troll had no problems keeping up.

The weather was still outstanding and for me, it was a comfort that this mountain was 200m lower than Urfjellet from the day before. Urfjellet was hard work. We put the skis on as we headed into Eikedalen. There was hardly any snow, but we were able to make progress over the remaining white ground. The hard snow made it easy for Troll to keep up. The steep hill from Eikedalen towards Blåskjerdingen looked steep from distance, but was reduced to grade "trivial" when I got closer. Still, it was too awkward to ski up here, so we ascended the hill on foot. Troll walked all the way to 700m elevation, where he started to sink into the snow. I put him in the backpack and we skied up to the base of the north ridge.

It was impossible to tell what kind of ridge this was, from our angle. It was indeed a fine ridge with some details along the way. What these details offered, was yet to be discovered. We agreed to walk this ridge on foot. We mounted our crampons and headed up the ridge. A very cold wind swept across this ridge, but we found some kind of shelter while we had our lunch 100m below the summit. The break for lunch was very important to me. I had ran into fatigue the day before by not following "the procedures". Not so today. Troll and I shared the lunch (made for humans) and afterwards, at least I, felt like a new person.

On close contact, the ridge was quite trivial. Ice/hard snow made crampons very helpful, and we passed just one step where attention was needed. We assumed that a better route could have been found, had we bothered to look for it. It was a typical YDS class 2+ step. We reached the summit 12:25PM and I made sure Troll was properly wrapped in his new fleeze blanket. He seemed to handle the situation well, but I've seen happier faces. Sunshine, AT LAST! The wind was no longer a big issue. We took a look at the ridge towards the lower south top, but only to conclude that this route is more enjoyable in summer. It was difficult to see the nitty gritty details without getting into exposed terrain.

We left the summit 12:45PM. Although there wasn't much snow, the skis got us down the mountain much faster than if we had been on foot. We were back at the trailhead 14:30PM, which was quite early, given the fact that we had ascended a mountain exceeding 1000m elevation in January.