Yesterday was a grey and rainy day, but I knew the edge of the weather front was approaching Tromsø – and that there were clear skies on the other side! So all day I kept an eye on the radar images, but the front was moving incredibly slow. In the late afternoon it finally stopped raining, and I decided to go up Åsfjellet. When I got to the top, I could clearly see the edge of the front lying over Tromsø, with clear skies to the west (over Kvaløya). Still it took ages before the sun came out – and it came out because the sun sank below the clouds, not because the front moved away 😀

(Click to enlarge, these panoramas really deserve to be viewed full size!)

Åsfjellet is a short walk (it takes just over an hour to get up, 45 minutes to get down), I still had energy left, and I suspected the frontal clouds would colour nicely in the sunset. So I quickly decided to climb another mountain: Movikhammaren, similar in height and length to Åsfjellet. The sun was setting while I ran up the steep path next to the river…

I quickly made it above the treeline and indeed, after the sun disappeared the clouds started to get a deep orange colour – so pretty!

The views were truly breathtaking all the way to the top, with the colours changing constantly until they became pink…

Then purple…

And finally the clouds started to lose their colours, while the horizon remained orange, and the lights on Tromsø island were slowly turned on.

What an incredible evening 🙂