Norwegian Mountains - Route Descriptions - Trollstolen, Blåstolen, Urhaugen

Norwegian Mountains, Møre og Romsdal

Urhaugen & Blåstolen from Måndalen, May 19 2007

For Information, maps, trailhead and route descriptions, click HERE.

It was good to be back home after some busy days in northen Norway. Not to mention the drive back and forth. It was Saturday, and the weather seemed unstable. Nevertheless, I chose to drive to Måndalen and finally "collect" Blåstolen. I should have visited this top on my Trollstolen hike back in December 2006, but something came in the way. Literally.

I had nice weather all the way to Måndalen. I was already determined to hike via Urhaugen, and I was curious about the snow depth. I had brought along snowshoes, just to be on the safe side. A little extra weight, in addition to my dog Troll, but I didn't want to stomp my way through rotten spring snow.

I left the trailhead at noon. It was a hot day, and Troll showed no signs of will to walk. Despite the "heat", the progress up the forest was OK. At 480m elevation, I took the path to the Sæbøhaugen cottage, and from here on, everything was new ground to me.

Above the cottage, I was off-trail and went back and forth up the hillside, avoiding patches of snow. High on Hellehaugen, it was quite clear that I would not run into deep snow on this hike. I considered leaving the snowshoes behind, but decided not to. An inner voice said never part from your equipment, and I decided to listen to it. Should the weather turn really nasty, it might be wise to descend via Tverråa. And there was a lot of snow along the river.

Urhaugen was reached 14:20PM. The weather was still OK (it was a bit windy, though) but I could see clouds about to hide the high mountains around. A couple of rainshowers had also passed, but no rain had fallen on us. Earlier on the hike, I had noticed ski tracks up and down Grøntinden. That hillside would still offer some fun skiing, considering the time of spring. For a moment, I wished I was on the other side of the valley.

I moved on to Blåstolen and reached the top 14:50PM. Troll was quite miserable after 2,5 hours in the backpack. He wanted out, and he wanted to get paid. I handed him a lunch-box. After a couple of minutes, he started whining. He had "lost" the box in-between some rocks. I spent a couple of minutes trying to get it back out in the open, and succeeded at last.

The weather was fairly OK, and I decided to head back down the same way. I passed Urhaugen to the west, avoiding the extra vertical meters. Then I let Troll out of the backpack, and he was able to walk all the way back to the trailhead. The descent was quite uneventful, except for when I tried to get into position for some good grouse pictures. I failed. We reached the trailhead 16:35PM, and scared a fox that was poking around my car.