Last Sunday was a stunning day, and we decided to climb Nordtinden (640 m – half a “beast” ). We drove to Kvaløyvågen, to the north of Tromsø and started following a dirt road (leading to Skulsfjorden) from there. Halfway we turned right and up the mountain. There wasn’t really a path, though we kept finding bits of a path every now and then. This is the first part – me trying to read the map and Paul walking up…

The higher we got, the better the views got (do I get bonus points for the logic?), and we also found this nice seat to enjoy the view from!

After a few hours we reached the top! The second photo shows Paul with the logbook that can be found in the cairn. To me this is so Norwegian… they like signing logbooks everywhere! Not only at the top of a mountain, sometimes in the middle of nowhere you find one full of long stories written by hikers/skiers. This one was started in 1987!!

It lives in a beautifully decorated metal box, which fits into a slot in the cairn…

The views from the top were stunning, as you can see the open ocean and a lot of islands and fjords. We were so lucky with the weather too!

We decided it was boring to go back the same way we came… but the route we chose instead does not deserve the name “unmarked path” (as was indicated on our map) at all!! It was quite a steep slope full of mossy (slippery!) rocks where you often needed your hands to safely climb down. Quite hard work! We kept looking longingly at the flat bit at the bottom… only to find it was a swamp…

I did find out that swamps are actually quite comfy to walk through, as long as you don’t sink in too deep (and you don’t care about muddy boots). It was getting dark and the sunset was pretty:

The last part of our route took us through a forest, but the floor was covered with big rocks overgrown with moss. You never knew when you would step into another hole between the rocks. It was pretty but tough going so we were very relieved when we finally hit the tractor road which led us back to the car.

The weather is still very nice, but unfortunately we are busy packing boxes, finding furniture and moving house. Almost everything is in boxes at the moment, and tonight we’re going to move everything to our new flat. I don’t think we’ll have internet there for a while, so I thought I’d upload this blog while I still can! I’m back in England from Saturday, but it might take a while before this blog is updated again. Paul will be at sea for 3 weeks and does not have an internet connection, so there’ll be no news from him either. Hopefully he’ll be able to share some pictures when he gets back 🙂