Norwegian Mountains, Sogn og Fjordane |
Såtefjellet (Steinbotnegga) on skis from Helgheim, |
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Anne and me drove from Sogndal and met up with Janne Eikås and Joar Eide a few kilometers east of Helgheim. Here, we jumped into Janne's 4WD car and drove up a steep (and snowy) forest road above Helgheim. After a car accident in my younger days (I was a passenger...) I have grown to strongly dislike steep and snowy roads. And as soon as I realized that this was a really steep road, I wanted to jump out. But I bit my teeth together and stayed put until we parked at 330 meters. But one thing was sure - there was no way I would be sitting in that car on the way down!
We headed out 11:10am and realized we would not have a sunny day in the Jøster mountain region after all. But - the weather wasn't bad at all and we headed up the forest with a good spirit! After 500 meters, we left the forest road and headed northwest up the forest in Helgheimsdalen.
I had never met Janne or Joar before, and they proved to be very good company. The day before, they skied to Skjorta - a significantly longer trip! In other words - fit and sporty people! We aimed for the east ridge and switch-backed out way upwards, taking turns in breaking trail. It was a shame that we were cheated out of the beautiful view, but on the other hand - we didn't have to deal with thunder and lightning. At least, that has to count for something!
We reached the summit of Såtefjellet / Steinbotnegga 12:52pm - 1h:42m after heading out. For a minute, I thought that the weather was changing towards the better, but it soon got apparent that it was changing towards the worse. We found shelter behind a huge rock west of the summit cairn and enjoyed out lunch.
The descent would have been just superb, hadn't it been for a) the fact that there was not a whole lot of snow and b) incoming snow showers. But there was no absolutely no reason to complain, and we enjoyed ourselves to the fullest - retracing our tracks on the east ridge...
Our skis took some beating on the east ridge, but that was nothing compared to what was about to come... After returning to the parking (1:46pm), I made it perfectly clear to everyone that I would be skiing all the way down to highway E39. Whether it was the love for skiing or fear of the forest road - I don't know - but Anne and Joar was all of a sudden following me and Janne was left alone with her car. After skiing down the forest road for a little while, I was so close to fall flat on my face. I was now skiing on gravel with just a tiny, tiny fraction of snow on top! The skis looked just awful underneath! As I started waving to the others to stop skiing, I noticed that Janne was shouting to us. Her car had lost the grip and was sliding down the forest road. How she managed to stop, I don't know, but the car stopped and it was decided to leave it there until she got hold of chains. Surely a wise decision! Back on E39 (2:08pm), we had to walk 500 meters back to my car and minutes later, I was on my way back to Sunnmøre. That was one of my worst car trips ever! There is so much talk about traffic safety. Well for starters - how about ploughing the roads! Commuting between Sunnmøre and Sogndal every other weekend, I am still to be convinced that the road authorities takes ploughing seriously. To be honest, I've lost all faith in them...
At Anda - halfway to Sunnmøre...
Later, I learned that Janne had safely rescued her car. Good news! |
The pictures were taken with a Canon EOS 550D + Canon EF-S 17-85mm IS USM F 4-5.6
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Bremuseet, Fjærland
To Såtefjellet (Steinbotnegga)
Wide-angle view from Såtefjellet
Descent
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