Rotterdam (or Anywhere)

Long time no blog! October just flew by, I’ll try to post some photos soon. The snow came early to Tromsø this year, and it wasn’t even destroyed by 2 days of rain. Last Saturday, we decided to take the cable car and make the most of a very nice day 🙂 The views were spectacular, as always – but the clouds were really special that day…

We walked up to Fløya, we could have skied but the snow was very hard and icy and I prefer to walk anyway. The views from Fløya were magical, the low sun was already colouring all the surrounding mountain tops.

On the way back we stopped at Steinbøhytte, which was still free of snow inside. The snow had built up on one side, but it can get much worse.

The sky was just so pretty, I had to stop all the time to take more photos. This one is taken at 14:15 (too early for sunset!), while we were racing to make the 14:30 cable car back down…

…because I had an evening shift at work waiting for me 🙁 Never mind, even at work I could keep taking photos. They asked me to take a photo of our new fancy sign (with our new fancy logo!). Of course I had to include Rudi, our resident polar bear…

We’re losing 10 minutes of daylight every day now, so it’s extra important to soak up as much sunshine as we can in the coming weeks 🙂

While climbing Skamtinden, we both commented how the peaks on Sessøya looked really fun to climb. Four days later, we both took a day off and we set off by boat from Ersfjordbotn to reach the beautiful beach on Sessøya. It took about 45 minutes by boat, and total door-to-beach time was only 2 hours!

We had a quick look around the small village. I don’t think anyone lives here permanently anymore, but there are some really nice houses. We started climbing the slope behind the village, with some great views towards Rekvik and Skamtinden…

The going was slow, my muscles had not fully recovered from Skamtinden and I almost wanted to give up. The terrain was quite gentle though – only a couple of rocky parts. So we persevered (or rather, Paul made me :P) and we soon reached the first peak at 616 m. From there, a ridge goes to the highest point (Sessøytinden) at 657 m. The last part looked nearly impossibly vertical, with huge drops on one side. We could see the cairn though, and we knew other people had come this way, so we decided to see how far we’d get. In the end, it was some steep scrambling, but nowhere near as impossible as it looked. Two hours and 45 minutes after we started, we reached the top – and the views were really spectacular!

While on the top, my phone rang – it was Hannah, who was on the top of Bremnestinden at that moment and was wondering if we could see each other. We should have brought binoculars 😀

We ate our lunch on top and took lots and lots of photos 🙂

For those interested, here is a height profile and map of our hike…

After our well deserved break we hurried back. I had a meeting that evening and our schedule was quite ambitious 😉 We took a shortcut on the way down, and we were back at the boat after about an hour and 15 minutes. We quickly got ready and started our way back to Ersfjordbotn. It had been sunny all day, but while in Ersfjorden, some rain showers appeared out of nowhere. Most of the rain didn’t reach the surface (a phenomenon called virgo), and as it was near sunset, the fall streaks were coloured a spectacular orange. So beautiful!

Back at Ersfjordbotn, I just had to take a couple more photos…

We made it back home just in time for me to change clothes and run to my meeting 😀 I am glad we went though, it was a fantastic trip!

We had planned to go for a 5 day hiking trip starting on Friday, but as we were both very tired, and the weather forecast looked very wet – we decided to stay at home. We couldn’t resist making the most of a sunny Friday though, and we decided to go up Skamtinden (884 m). This mountain has been on my “wish list” for a long time, but it’s a long drive and a very steep climb. You go up the 884 m within 2 kilometres! The advantage of such a steep climb is that you’re soon rewarded with very nice views…

We reached the top after about 2.5 hours. The very last bit to the top is quite crazy, and you need your hands to climb up to the cairn, with steep drops all around. We made the mistake of first looking at the top from a different angle, where you can see a sheer drop going almost 900 m straight down to sea level, just next to the cairn… gulp 😉

Fortunately you don’t see much of this as you approach the cairn from a different angle, and after some scrambling we soon enjoyed fantastic views 🙂

I was a bit worried about coming down that bit, but it turned out to be fine. We were in good spirits when we started the way down…

… but we soon found out that it was exhausting to come down on the loose rock/gravel path. Luckily the sunset views were very nice 🙂

It took the same amount of time to come down as it did to go up… and we got back to the car pretty knackered. My muscles have been sore for 3 days now, but it was totally worth it 😀