Norwegian Mountains, Møre og Romsdal
Fun traverse, Mar 2 2008
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A fun gully
(Click for larger image)
Man..
This Sunday's weather was awful. I had plans to go to Molde, but cancelled the trip when I couldn't even see Rødlandstua across Ellingsøyfjorden. I noticed some blue sky above the Ålesund region a bit later in the day, and decided to take the dog for a walk.
My ambition is always to find some fun for the both of us; perhaps a good scramble for me, and a dry path for the dog. So I decided to drive to Valderøya and have a closer look at a gully that had caught my attention. Not knowing if I could get up was enough reason to try. If I did get up, Troll could then walk the rest of the trip; across the mountain and back on the pedestrian walk along side the road to/from Vigra.
Arriving Valdervoll..
the gully looked steeper than I remembered it to be. The grass in the gully would certainly be slippery after the rain, but the only thing worse than failing is not trying. After ascending the lower boulderfield (which was insanely slippery), we reached the grassy part. The gully was at this point not as steep as I had thought it would be.
I took a picture of the gully. Then the zoom on my camera refused to co-operate. A mild touch didn't do anything good, so I applied brute force. I heard a snap and I know a bad sound when I hear one. The zoom was now officially broken, and the objective was stuck on 106mm, more or less out of focus. As I hadn't brought any other objective, I had to get by with what I had. The upside is of course that I now was forced to order a slightly better one...
The intriguing attribute of this gully is that it curves, making it impossible to see the top when I approached it. The higher I got, the steeper the gully became. Close to the top, I had to leave the dog on a ledge, while familiarizing myself how to scramble the final yards. I wouldn't have attempted this without the ice-axe. And with the dog in the backpack, I felt slightly uncomfortable. But most likely because it was my first time up here. The gully wasn't very difficult, and I rated it to a YDS class 2+ (careful scrambling) in the upper part.
I topped out on a small point which is marked as point 148m on Økonomisk Kartverk. There had been a certain nerve about whether I could proceed from here or not. Once on top, the nerve vanished. It would be easy going from here.
Go, dog, go!
We soon stumbled on a path, and I let the dog out of the backpack. We had a slow start, because everytime there was a tiny pond on the trail, the dog turned to me and wondered "and how exactly do you expect me to get across?"
A small shove in the butt does wonders, and the dog finally started walking. 15:00PM, 1 hour and 5 minutes after leaving Valdervoll, we passed the Signalen high point. It had begun to snow, and then it begun to snow a lot. My blue jacket had no more blue left, and it was difficult to keep the eyes open, due to huge, wet snowflakes. The dog walked with his eyes closed, and the small bush along the path helped him to stay on the path.
Sunshine!
After snow comes .. well, in Norway: more snow, but today, we were blessed with sunshine! The veil between a fading snowshower and the blue sky is simply a brilliant sight. We had walked the route to/from Sætredalen before, and soon we were down on the gravel road that runs on the west side of the island. I had never walked this road before, so that was fun too. I finally had the time to look at the magnificent Valderøya walls, and they are certainly impressive. 16:01PM, we were back at Valdervoll and a fine walk on Valderøya island had come to its end.
