REPORT: Skagastøls Traverse

Here are some words and photos from Gaute who headed up to ‘Hurrungane’, Central Norway with Erling and Sigurd a few weeks back…

‘We were up in “Hurrungane” located on the west side of Jotunheimen, in central Norway. The aim of the trip was to climb in winter conditions, and since spring has come even to Norway we chose to go to this part of Norway where the highest peaks are located.  

Our main objective was to climb the Skagastøls traverse, which is one of the highest ridge traverses in Norway. It is about 1 km long and goes from approximately 2 200 up to Store Skagastølstind (Norway’s third highest mountain at 2405m).  

As you might guess from the pictures Elvis did not join this trip. He claimed the weather forecast was too good and therefore decided that it was too little potential for a proper epic. He stayed home in Oslo climbing with his girlfriend. Probably because he thought it was not cold and miserable enough to join in! “ Gaute

Sigurd and Erling are walking up to where the climbing begins in the beautiful morning sun around 6am.

Ems set up a rather brisk pace to make up for the fact we were 20 minutes late, but in doing so managed to vomit up his breakfast.

Gaute climbs the first crux while Ems and Sigurd move the belay to get more sun.

Sigurd following up the crux from the “V-skar”.

Ems and Gaute are walking snow slopes up to the Store Skagastølstind

Gaute are climbing up on Lille Skagastølstind with Store Skagastølstind in the background.

Sigurd starts to get out of sunscreen and as a good “leading from behind” he demands better buoyancy.

Beautiful plastered snow and mushroom formations the last 50 meters to the top.

Happy at the top!

Panorama of several classic Hurrungane peaks in the background, where several of them have faces which have never been climbed before.