Gråtinden on Ringvassøya (587m)

Gråtinden on Ringvassøya (587m)

The first of May is a bank holiday in Norway. We decided to climb a mountain around sunset, as the weather was supposed to improve in the evening. I used Turboka for the first time 🙂 and chose Gråtinden on Ringvassøya. We weren’t sure about the snow conditions this far out on the coast, so we took snow shoes as they can be used in any kind of conditions. We parked at the highest point of the road to Skarsfjord, and hiked straight up from there. The start is really steep! After that it flattens out a bit, before getting steeper near the top. The weather didn’t seem to improve – we even got a hail shower on our way to the top, and it was VERY windy. We were really happy when we found that it was possible to shelter from the wind behind the cairn on top 🙂

On the way up to Gråtinden On the top, sheltering behind the cairn, away from the strong wind

When we reached the top (after about 1.5 hrs), we had a bit of a “halleluja” moment – as this was our view….

Fantastic sunbeams on the horizon! On the right the islands Sandøya and Sørfugløya

There is a large plateau around the top, with views towards Kvaløya, all the islands on the outer coast (Sandøya, Sørfugløya) and Rebbenesøya. Fantastic views!

Paul on his way to the edge of the plateau, with Kvaløya in the background So beautiful...

I’ll have to come back here in summer, and walk all the way to the westernmost tip of the plateau to have an even better view over the sea and all the islands. Would be great during the midnight sun season 🙂

Another panorama of the view

We were hoping the sun would eventually come below the cloud layer and give us a nice sunset. It looked like it was just going to disappear behind the next cloud layer however. But just when we gave up hope and decided to turn round, the sun briefly appeared – how nice! Luckily it was also finally clearing up, and the wind calmed down.

Just when we gave up hope and turned back, the sun appeared briefly between two cloud layers On the way down - good to see the snow is disappearing from the mountains!

It had gotten quite late (sunset is after 22:00 now), so we made our way back to the car. The snow conditions were variable, there were areas with very icy snow, lots of bare rock, crusty snow and some soft snow. I actually managed to fall over THREE times – I didn’t think that was a risk on snow shoes 😀

Map of our trip Height profile. We walked around the plateau on top for quite a while. The start (and end) is pretty steep!

It was a great little trip, and a mountain to remember for the summer season 🙂

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