Introduction

Welcome to www.westcoastpeaks.com, formerly known as hordafjell.com.

 



 
The purpose of this site is to present mountains on the western coastline of Norway, more precisely; mountains in the counties Hordaland, Sogn og Fjordane and Møre og Romsdal. Rogaland county also belongs to the western coastline, and perhaps over time, Rogaland mountain lists will be presented on this site.

The site also features a few mountains from other parts of Norway, the United States and some European countries. The mountain pages present maps, pictures, trailheads, route descriptions and personal trip reports. Overall, this site is meant to inspire.

The site hordafjell.com reflected my seven years in the city of Bergen (Hordaland) Now that my base is in Ålesund (Møre og Romsdal), a change of the site name was inevitable. Bergen and Ålesund are the two largest cities along the western coastline, and a good base for day-trips to the hundreds and hundreds of peaks and mountains available in the nearby regions. Or; trekking, bicycling, kayaking, glacier travel, climbing, paragliding, whitewater rafting or whatever type of activity you prefer.

The city of Bergen

The city of Ålesund

First time visitors

This is a content-rich web-site, covering hundreds of mountain pages and thousands (and thousands) of pictures. Efforts have been made to structure the contents in a comprehensive way, but nevertheless, interesting information can be easily be overlooked along the way. In this section, you will get a few pointers to information and pictures that are not linked to a specific mountain or mountain region.

  • Moments
    These are my favorite pages. One or two pictures from trips (certainly not every trip) that just MADE the trip. It's all about the moments. The moments that INSPIRE.
     

  • Top 10..
    A list of my top 10 trips per year and overall.
     

  • Aerial photos
    These are pictures taken from regular airplanes, from the passenger seat. The picture database span a LARGE portion of southern Norway, and, if you put the quality issue aside, contains a lot of interesting views.

 

 

Mountain lists

While I certainly have no ambition to hike all of the mountains in these 3 counties, I will, over time, complete a list of mountains, sorted per kommune. The criteria for being on the list is that a) the mountain exceeds 300m elevation, and b) has a primary factor of 100 meters or more.

The mountain lists (per kommune) are currently under construction, and will be published over the next year. You can see a complete example for Haram kommune. Click the link that is found below the tables. The link points to a page which describes the mountain tables in greater detail.

Work in progress

Over the coming year, ALL kommune pages will have the same form and layout. This is a time-consuming effort, and the changes will come gradually. Another upcoming change is that I will move the trip reports and pictures to separate pages.

The objective is to make the mountain pages more objective as a whole.

 

This web-site..

Someone said about this web-site: "bad design, good contents". The first part is true, and I hope the second is, too. Web design and graphics art have not been priorities. The important thing is that people find what they are looking for.

The site language is English, in order to reach a broader audience. English is not my native language, and thus, there are a number of errors and spelling mistakes. Please forgive.

 

 

Trip reports

The trip reports hold personal reflections about the trips, there and then. It is quite natural that the reflections (and experience) change over time, after a number of  years and hundreds of mountains. Mt. Blanc, Greenland, etc. was never on the agenda when Mt. Ulriken in Bergen was hiked for the first time in 1998. Please take this into consideration if you dive into this part of the mountain pages.

 

Pictures on this web-site

Although this website contains thousands of pictures, please do not mistake me for being a photographer. Claiming to be so would be a great injustice to those who master this fine profession. That said, many pictures are informative and useful. A number of pictures have been "stitched", which means that a number of sequential pictures (with overlap) have been merged into one. More and more, I am "annotating" the pictures, which means I put names on peaks that are shown on the pictures. In the period 2003-2006, I have been using ArcSoft's PanoramaMaker for the pictures and Panavue's ImageAssembler for the maps. As of Oct. 2006, I have switched to the AutoStitch panorama tool.


360 deg. panorama stitched by ArcSoft PanoramaMaker

Cameras

I started out with a Nikon Coolpix 990 and moved on to a Coolpix 4500 which I used until June 2005. I then moved to Canon EOS 300D with 18-55mm, 50mm and 75-300mm objectives. In addition, a few of the early pictures have been scanned. Late November 2005, I got myself a Sigma 18-200mm objective to replace the 18-55mm objective. Also note that on pictures with the text "300mm" zoom, the actual zoom is 480mm, as I have forgotten to take the 1,6 factor between analog and digital objectives into consideration.

Resolution

Before July 2005, most of the pictures are downsized to 600 vertical pixels and with '6' as the Adobe Photoshop JPEG compression factor. As broadband becomes more and more common, I increased the vertical pixels to 750 as of July 2005. Some pictures where details are essential are published in its original size.

Copyright/Reuse

All pictures taken by myself can be used free of charge for non-commercial purposes. This website is based on trust and good will and I would like to avoid getting into law and fine-print. If you would like to use pictures for commercial purposes (press, books, calendars, marketing, etc.), please contact me for high-resolution versions of the pictures, provided I have them. Note that originals from before 2003, are scarce. My email address is found on the front page of this site.

 

Credits

I would like to thank Statens Kartverk, for allowing me to use snapshots of their internet maps. I feel that without the maps, there would have been little point in making this site. I would also like to thank Topozone who has granted me permission to take snapshots of their internet maps for the US mountains I've hiked. In addition, Hordaland Fylkeskommune and Asplan Viak Internet AS have granted me permission to use selected maps from their websites. Finally, Google for their great internet maps.

I would also like to thank Torbjørn Frøystein, Anna Louwerse, David C. Pugh, Petter Bjørstad, Liv Nygård and Svein Myhre + all of those you who send me information/corrections for important contribution to this website.

 

 

Disclaimer

While effort is made to provide accurate information, I take no personal responsibility for the information provided on this site. Mountains offer various levels of risks, ranging from weather, wild animals, the terrain and human judgement. You should always prepare for the unexpected when visiting mountains. Use this site as guidelines for your trips, but plan for the trip as you would have done without this information.

 

  westcoastpeaks.com