Stor-Kjølen

Dato:

23.07.2012

Turtype:

Fjelltur

Turlengde:

3:30t

© Hannah Vickers A bit of a spontaneous trip, this one. I was woken up by bright sunshine shining through my bedroom window at about 2am on the monday morning, after having had a good day with mixed weather on Bakaromntinden the previous evening.....the blue skies were not expected after yr's forecast had been quite remarkably inaccurate for the whole of the week before! So I decided at that point (still a little half asleep) that in a few short hours I would get myself back out on a hike again and enjoy the apparently nice interval of sunshine. Fortunately when I actually got out of bed properly at 6am it was still sunny, so I got by rucksack ready for a quick trip before work. Stor-Kjølen seemed like a good option. It's really easy ground, almost flat for most of the way up because the height gain is spread >>>

Litje Blåmannen

Dato:

13.07.2012

Turtype:

Fjelltur

Turlengde:

5:30t

© Hannah Vickers Litje Blåmannen is something of a local monument to Tromsø, in my opinion. Every day I walk to work it is there, plonked straight in front of me and sitting quietly behind the Kvaløya bridge. This mountain has been on my to-do list for a while, simply because I see it all the time and have become a little fixated climbing the mountains I see on a regular basis. Well, today, despite being Friday 13th, seemed like the ideal day to have a go at it. With yr.no forecasting a week of continuous rain from the weekend onwards, I had decided to prioritise the topptur-ing and spend as much time in the remainder of the sunshine as possible. It was a quick drive from Hamna to Håkoybotn, about 20 minutes, and when I arrived into the car park by the ungdomshuset I was the first car there. The great thing >>>

Tverrfjellet

Dato:

10.07.2012

Turtype:

Fjelltur

Turlengde:

4:00t

© Hannah Vickers This trip was initiated rather spontaneously during the lunch time at Nordlysobservatoriet with my friend Stine. Since it was such a nice sunny day, I was feeling extremely compelled to be outdoors and in the mountains again - but not on my own. I thought I would try my luck to interest some people to join me for an after-work trip and make a suggestion while people were in the foyer eating lunch. I wasn't all that hopeful, but to my amazement, my friend Stine actually agreed to come with me, which was extremely pleasing! So all of a sudden we had a plan to do another of the Ti på Topp trips, and I made the suggestion to go to Tverrfjellet since it was nestled right amongst the impressive string of peaks on the northern side of Kattfjord - Blåskredtinden, Middagstind, Skitntind and Storsteinnestind. >>>

Nordtinden

Dato:

13.06.2012

© Hannah Vickers This evening my friends Lene Østvand and Mona Kaupang were joining me on a fellestur to Nordtinden, organised by Ti på Topp. It wasn't such promising weather when we started to leave Tromsø, and the mountains on Kvaløya were looking decidedly damp! But in honesty, I think I was the more pessimistic one of the three, and both Lene and Mona seemed quite upbeat about a good trip being on the cards. As we drove up on the Rv58 along the east side of Storkjølen though, a slightly brief but heavy shower of rain dispersed the hopes a little. But it got better, after passing through the tunnel and driving toward Skulsfjord, where we were meeting the rest of the group, we could actually see some patches of broken cloud and some mountains again. So hope was still there! We were supposed to be meeting >>>

Skamtinden

Dato:

08.06.2012

Turtype:

Fjelltur

Turlengde:

4:00t

Distanse:

5,0km

© Hannah Vickers This was a really great evening trip after work, one that nearly didn't happen because it had been a bit of a rainy day and I was thinking to postpone the hike. Fortunately, neither Ane or myself decided to call each other in the end and we met up as planned, at the K1 car park. We took my car out onto Kvaloya and took the road around the northern side of the island towards Tromvik. Up until then the road surface had some bumps but then between Tromvik and Rekvik it turned to gravel instead, so it took a long time just to drive those few kiometres further to Rekvik, where we were starting the hike from. So, straight out of the car it was cool but not cold, and it was straight up the mountain from there. It was a well-marked trail through the forest on the lower part of Skamtinden, which helped >>>

Fløya

Dato:

14.04.2012

Buren

Dato:

03.04.2012

Turtype:

Fottur

Turlengde:

3:30t

Distanse:

7,0km

© Hannah Vickers This was what I'd generally regard as a semi-spontaneous trip, because it was planned only the day before we went. There was a cloudless sky, lots of sunshine and plenty of fresh air - just what we needed after a day in the office! With only -3 or -4 at the bottom of the mountain by Kaldfjord, conditions seemed perfect for a hike. My friend Lene had not been out on a mountain since our last hike together to Stor Kjølen, and that was in the previous autumn so she was equally thrilled to be getting out once more in a different part of Tromsø. Neither of us had much of a plan for route-finding, but we figured that since this was quite a popular choice of skiing destination, there should be some pretty obvious tracks we could follow all the way up. And that's what we did. It was almost too easy, >>>

Tromsdalstinden

Dato:

22.09.2011

My sister was visiting me from the UK during this week, so I thought Tromsdalstinden would be a nice mountain hike to introduce her to the wonderful landscape around Tromsø. We parked up in Tromsdalen and walked the few kilometers along the track until reaching the point where the path crossed over the river and onto the northern shoulder of the mountain. From here it was a lovely hike through some sparse woodland and then out onto the scrub above. Colours were immense - very autumnal and lots of mixtures of green, brown, gold and a bright blue sky above us! Couldn't have picked a more perfect day to go sightseeing outdoors! Caught a bit of cold wind while ascending the steeper part of the ridge, but this dropped away soon, and we had at most a small breeze for the rest of the ridge to the >>>

Store Blåmannen

Dato:

11.09.2011

I had seen Store Blåmannen from Storkjølen the week before our trip, and could not help but notice how striking this mountain was. It was therefore on my 'to-do' list next time! My friend Pernilla joined me for the tour, and we drove over to Kvaløya in the late morning because the weather had been very cloudy and a bit damp, but the forecast suggested drier and sunny weather towards the late afternoon. So we parked at the bottom of the mountain by Kaldfjord and set off shortly after midday, although it was not possible yet to see the summit! After getting above the treeline and onto the slabby rock above, the clouds began to break up and soon we got some views of the highest peaks popping out over the cloud base. The scramble was quite pleasant, and there were lots of interesting things to >>>

Storkjølen

Dato:

03.09.2011

Turlengde:

5:00t