How to get there:
A good starting point is Byrkjedal. This location is about 42 kilometer (straight line)
south-east of Stavanger. There is even a nice hotel there, Byrkjedalstunet.
The trail starts about 100 meter west of the upper (west) building belonging to the hotel.
There is an area suitable for parking on the left hand side of the road (Gloppendalsvegen, hwy. 503),
one may perhaps equally convenient leave the car at the hotel parking.
Route description:
From the upper entrance/exit of the hotel, walk about 100 meter uphill, then turn
right and pass (climb?) a gate in order to follow a good path to the middle of the
main ridge. Turn left (uphill) and follow a faint trail uphill. One may essentially follow the
power masts uphill, higher up, the route turns left, then right in order to bypass a cliff band.
You will pass a mobile antenna mast (on your left). From here, the trail is more well defined,
there are some small cairns, but one can easily loose the intended trail. Thus, a GPX track may be
helpful. You will soon enter the steepest section, a blue (fixed) rope may be of help at one of the steeper
sections. Higher up, the best route (that stays mainly on grass) continues uphill after you have shifted
(slight downhill) a bit right. On dry rock, there are also options here that runs directly uphill.
The last part of this route keeps a bit left and avoids climbing across a higher part of the ridge. There are a couple
of alternatives, see the posted GPX track. Finally, one may ascend a nice little gully
from a small pond or staying more right and head more directly towards the summit.
A track is posted on Peakbagger.
Comments:
I had been visiting my mountain place, then drove to Oslo. I stayed with my
sister Elisabeth. On Friday, I wanted to drive the coast highway to Stavanger.
The idea was to bag some P-500 meter peaks in that area, then drive home to Bergen.
However, a hurricane named Amy, decided to spend the weekend in Southern Norway.
This pretty much screwed everything. The worst weather was supposed to happen during
the Friday/Saturday night. Thus, stopping at Byrkjedal
made sense, I could do a weather
check Saturday morning.
The conditions looked sort of OK on Saturday morning. A late breakfast (I was the only guest),
then getting ready to hike around 0915. The route, directly from the hotel to the summit, turned out
to be both steep and slippery. We had heavy rain all night. Worse, the rain started again, not a few
drops, but by the buckets. Higher up, I also ran into more violent wind. Not so many gusts, really a
steady hard wind.
This climb made a spot on my (fairly short) list of really BAD weather climbs. I should (of course!) have tracked
also with my Garmin GPS. My Gaia on the phone started to misbehave. I kept the phone in an inner pocket,
but it got wet and cold pretty quickly. Next, the touch screen refuses to cooperate. This makes it
pretty useless. I needed to consult my up-track a few times in order to find a safe route down. This
failed, and this is pretty visible on my tracks.
The upper part of the climb had wind speeds above what one should have. Difficult to stand upright, and
actually a bit dangerous since being pushed over in this terrain would not be risk-free.
I was only about 30 meter short of the cairn
when things became very difficult. I tried twice to
walk across an open area, but failed. I next moved more right to get some shelter, not much, but
sufficient to succeed. I was quite happy when touching the cairn, then retreating slowly and with control.
My phone did not work on the return hike. Too cold and wet? My fingers were numb from the cold and
wet, the overall result was that the phone was useless for navigation. I deviated a little on
my return hike, but overall my route was ok.
I was back at my car after 4.5 hours.
I was soaking wet and actually colder than one should be.
Amy was still in the mountain and she had sent a pretty clear message that I should have
remained in the valley.
