Store Blåmann (13.09.2012)  

© Hannah Vickers

The big Blåmann, Urdalen and Orvasstinden, seen from Stor-Kjølen

Another opportunity for hiking with my friend Terese (TerFlo (Terese Flo)) came up when she had two days off work. Simultaneously the weather for both these days was forecasted to be fine and dry, so we met up on the Thursday with a plan to ascend Store Blåmann, yet another of (in my opinion) Tromsø's 'classic' hikes. It is actually quite a short trip, with less than 3km from the parkeringplass to the top of the mountain, so there was no hurry to start early and we left Tromsø at around kl.10 in rather tett tåke. Fortunately, by the time we had reached Kaldfjord the fog had been left behind us and we could see the Blåmann across the fjord under blue skies. It seemed like my dream to go back up the mountain with sunshine and good visibility might about to become true. So both of us were excited and feeling in good spirits to get out and onto the mountain.
Once out of the car, the first 20 minutes of hiking felt a bit heavy, because my legs were feeling a little stiff - but after the muscles were a bit warmer and stretched a bit it was much easier. The lower part of the mountain was showing some real signs of autumn, lots of trees with a mixture of both golden and dark orange coloured leaves, and it was sooo nice to walk among them. As we got further up though there was still a lot of green trees remaining too, but overall I think the amount of forest on Blåmann is relatively thin compared with some of the forests I've experienced on the mainland. It wasn't so long until we'd left the trees behind and were already walking up amongst the rocks, and it felt so warm with the sun beaming down. The path was quite straightforward to follow, several vardens appeared here and there, and some red and white flags popped up on a few rocks quite often too. It was quite helpful.
Just over halfway up (in terms of the height gain) we reached a cliff edge which had an impressive view over Blåmannsvikdalen and across to Buren on the other side of the valley. Seemed like a perfect place for a short lunch stop, and it was also not too windy. By this time as well, most of the regular hiking had been done which meant the more interesting part of the ascent was to come.

We pretty much stayed to the route marked out by the red paint and piles of stones which we saw, which was surprisingly easy compared to the last time I'd come up. It also meant that our ascent of the mountain on this occasion was not quite as 'exciting' as I'd remembered, but nevertheless there were some pleasant bits of scrambling to be done - but not a huge amount. It was great to be scrambling on good quality, dry rock though. My only complaint is that it was over all too soon, and the summit appeared very quickly after we'd just got fully into the mood of scrambling. The views were incredible though, and what I had been eager to see ever since my foggy first ascent of the mountain - and it got even better once we'd topped out. On the summit, pretty much the whole of Kvaløya's superb peaks jumped out into our view, and it was a fine time to sit/stand/wander around to soak up the views and the autumn sunshine. The famous north face of the Blåmann dropped fast below the summit varden, and to be quite honest you can't actually see any of the north wall because it drops away *that* quickly - but you can see some rock on the lower slopes of face, which is pretty much in the bottom of Urdalen.....basically you can't see about 700m of what lies between you standing at the top and what you see below! Directly across Urdalen was Orvasstinden, another mountain I have yet to climb; west of us was both Hollendaren 1016 and further behind, the Store Hollendaren which is in fact only a single metre higher than the one nearest to the Blåmann. It appeared like it could be a really cool ridge to traverse between Blåmann and Hollendaren 1016 though, and perhaps one to attempt with a rope. Further south on the mainland, it was decidedly less sunny with some very tall and fluffy clouds obscuring some of the summits, but out here on the west we were sitting under cloud-free skies, which was very satisfying. Probably we spent about a half hour or 45 minutes sitting at the summit to have some more lunch and take pictures. Most of the time I think was used for taking pictures though and we finally (and rather reluctantly) decided to start the descent around kl.14 when some of the clouds had edged further across towards us and blocked out our sunshine.

© Hannah Vickers

Me on the summit, view westwards

© Hannah Vickers

Hmmm, where can we go for the next trip...... studying maps while surrounded by great mountain top views can inspire a lot of ideas all at once!

© Hannah Vickers

Views with a wow factor. Huge effort was needed to drag ourselves away from this and go back down afterwards.

© Hannah Vickers

And the utsikt to the north wasn't too bad either :-) Nearest peak across the valley is Orvasstinden, and Skulsfjord near the upper right hand side of the picture

The descent was a little hard work on the knees, but no more scary to scramble back down than it was to scramble up. After reaching the same point at which we'd stopped for our first lunch, we somehow missed the path we had taken on the ascent and wandered onto something else, which was a little wetter underfoot. It also meant we had some trouble to re-locate the trail going back through the forest - this we thought should have been the easiest part of the way down but it turned out to be a little more time-consuming than we'd expected! Fortunately for us, Terese was long-sighted and spotted the path a little further ahead of the boulder field we'd ended up in and we were once again on the right way back down to the car. It had been a great trip out again with superb scrambling, superb views and great weather. Definitely not a day to have been spent in an office.