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After a few cloudy and cool days, the weather turned much warmer and sunnier! Unfortunately this brought out the local insect life with a vengeance: we were plagued by flies and clegs for much of the way. Apart from that, this was a great day in the hills: varied and interesting, but not difficult, walking with terrific views.
The route starts from the shore of Grovfjorden - there is enough space for a couple of cars on the side of the road and a wooden sign marks the start of the path. This is initially a bit overgrown, but is well marked and improves as the the vegetation gets shorter, higher up in the trees. Skorvetinden look impressively steep and jagged from this side. Eventually, after a steady climb the path comes out of the woods and fades out: the paint marks continue towards a small knoll at 589m, but just before this you need to turn right and make your way up some grassy shelves to another knoll at 694m. From here a very bouldery ridge rises ahead: the first part of this is best avoided by following a stream to its left, before climbing out right to meet the ridge higher up. The ridge leads up to a cairn on the edge of a gravelly plateau. From here we turned right to follow the edge of the cliffs up onto the top of Skorvetinden: the rear side os thankfully a lot less steep than the front, but the summit cairn is in a spectacular location right on the edge.
After our lunch we headed back down more directly to the col, making use of a big snow patch to avoid the worst bouldery bits. Finally there was enough breeze to keep the flies away! On the far side of the col, the way up Keipen turned out to be easier and less steep than it looked, soon landing us on its broad summit, with superb views north-west to the islands off the coast.
The west ridge gave a simple descent to another col, and then some slightly steeper but still pleasant terrain took us down to and across a stream. On the far side, sheep tracks led us back round the side of the 694m knoll and connected us to the upward route, where the insect onslaught duly resumed as we regained the trees.
Online mapEmerging form the trees: Skorvetinden on the left
Oldertinden and Revtinden
Across the fjord to Novafjellet
Skorvetinden from the 694m knoll
On the ridge
Novafjellet again
Looking back down the ridge
Skorvetinden from the plateau
Tinden
Sula
Keipen
Sula again
North-west to the islands
Back to Skorvetinden
Tinden and Skorvetinden
...and again from higher up on Keipen
Tretinden, Dudalstinden (at the back), Tinden
Nearing the top of Keipen
Andørja
Oldertinden, Tinden, Revtinden
Grytøya
Drangen, on Rolla
Senja (in the distance)
Skorvetinden from the west ridge of Keipen
Skorvetinden, Point 1103m, Oldertinden, Revtinden