Stormheimfjellet surprises (31.12.2012)
| Start point | Parking bay south of Lauvli (150m) |
|---|---|
| Characteristic | Ski trip |
| Duration | 5h 00min |
| Distance | 13.0km |
| Vertical meters | 1,030m |
| Map |
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| Ascents | Stormheimfjellet Nordtoppen (1,181m) | 31.12.2012 |
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Last day of the year. And Tromsø was blessed with super weather; it was dry, with almost clear skies and even tropically warm – 4 degrees in Tromsdalen! So how should it be used? Well, we (my friend Aline and I) decided that it was really about time we actually climbed a proper mountain, after having been on so many short trips on Kvaløya. Stormheimfjellet was one of those mountains I had not bothered to take a second glance at until now, the main reason for dismissing it being that it looked like a bit of a boring mountain to hike up, with its long and broad back. But that was before I got myself a pair of skis. With its long and gently-rising ridge of 6,5km from road to the north top, this mountain suddenly jumped out on the map as a peak which demanded our time for a visit. The only hardship we would have to suffer was leaving Tromsø again quite early, since it was nearly 1 hour to drive to the parkeringsplass for the start of the route. But maybe it was going to be worth that little bit of extra effort to dust off 2012?
So once again I found myself lethargically getting out of bed at 6am, leaving me plenty of time to wake up properly and pack my rucksack before driving to Stakkevollan to pick up Aline and Christian from their house. The roads were pretty quiet at this time of the morning, so it was quite an easy drive to the starting point a few kilometers south of Breivikeidet. Fortunately again for us, there was already a car parked up in an obvious large bay in the road, and we spotted some ski tracks leading away toward the forest and up the side of Stormheimfjellet. We took this as good indication that we had more or less found the right place for starting the trip. It was nearly 10am before we’d started skiing, so we expected it to be dark before we finished the trip.
Following the ski tracks through the forest on nice soft snow was quite good fun and easy-going. But once we’d left the trees behind and reached around 300 moh, the soft element disappeared and we were left with mostly hard snow which was in places, icy on the surface. Unlucky for us today. But we went on skinning up towards a varden placed at around 500 moh and while we took a short break here to have a drink we were entertained by 3 skiers coming down the mountain. It looked like ultra hard work though, trying to telemark-ski on hard icy snow!
Seemed a little early in the day for a descent though, even if they had whizzed up the mountain at a usual hard-core Norwegian pace. We asked one of them who passed if they’d been to the top, but apparently they had not bothered because the snow was hard. So as might be expected of three wannabe-(tøff)-Norwegians, we continued onwards with solid determination to get to the top. It seemed a shame not to! I guess these guys had been up this mountain enough times not to bother seeing the same views again.
Admittedly it was not the most enjoyable skiing conditions, but at least it wasn’t so bad that we were sliding down in the wrong direction…. And anyway the gradient was almost unchanged for several hundred meters, and that helped us to make some pretty good progress at a steady comfortable pace. For once I was not too hot or too cold, even though I was wearing only a vest top with a soft shell jacket on top. The views continued to get better as we gained height, and gradually we got a ‘sneak peak’ of the Lyngen Alps behind Nakkefjellet. Finally though, when we had done around 4km – just less than 2/3 of the route, it seemed like we’d at last got onto a little softer snow again. No hint of powder, but definitely an improvement. I even started to get excited about the possibility of trying to ski down on this 2km section. But, I changed my mind later when I realized how many wavy ridges and bumps were sitting on the snow surface. Looked like this side of the mountain had had its fair share of wind recently! From around 1km away from the top, at just over 900m, we got a good view of the last section. It looked quite easy – and much like what we’d already done; gently ascending and smooth snow slopes. And it didn’t seem that far away either, but it was hard to judge because the light was so dim.
But wow, when we actually reached the rocks that marked the top we were almost lost for words for the views we were suddenly bombarded with as we glanced over the edge of the ridge! Aline looked like she was about to well up with tears in her eyes – it was really that fantastic, especially with ribbons of pink and purple-coloured clouds in the sky too! I’m not all that familiar with the mountains around here, but it was easy to pick out Hamperokken from the collection of peaks which popped up in our view towards the south-west. What I hadn’t expected was the impressively steep drop and narrow ridge between us and the highest top on Stormheimfjellet. So this rather boring mountain had actually turned out to be a real corker! I think it would be fair to say that the maps we had on us don’t give any surprises away. Christian did us the honour of signing the trip book, at which point we discovered the last entry had been on November 17th – quite a while ago! What made the experience even more enjoyable was that there was not even a breath of wind – we had the luxury of really spending some time at the top to have a good cup of coffee, something to munch on and of course taking far more photos than necessary! An experience to appreciate though, and an absolutely grand way to end the year. Everyone was happy and very satisfied, and ‘I love Tromsø!!’ was said many times between us! We were pretty chuffed with our pace too, having reached the top in 2h 45m, despite having stopped numerous times on the way up.
Some panoramas.....
The trip back down demanded a little more effort on the hard snow – not just for a daft girl on fjellski, but also for Aline and Christian on their randonee skis. It was getting dark rapidly too, and after getting about 1/3 the way down I decided to give up and walk with the skis fastened onto my rucksack. It was no disappointment in my opinion, the walking was (unsurprisingly) a faster and a lot less scary! Some people are just born with ski ability. Others like me really aren’t meant to ski, but I did get them back on again when we hit soft snow in the forest. By the time we’d all arrived back at the car it was about 3pm and properly dark. We were all still in high spirits though, after what had been a super trip up a fine mountain. We had already decided before reaching the top that we would have to come back again when there is more snow!
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