Gråtinden (17.11.2012)

Written by hmsv1 (Hannah Vickers) GSM

Duration 4h 30min
Map
Ascents Gråtinden (871m) 17.11.2012 not summited

I had my sister with me on this trip, since she had decided it would be nice to spend some time with me for my birthday and also wanted to experience some winter hiking in the mountains here. I had only a pair of fjellski which I wanted to try and use again, but I managed to get hold of a pair of snowshoes, which I thought would probably work just as well for a mountain trip. Since I am no expert skier yet, I suggested that we visit Gråtinden, since I could see from my map that it was not a steep mountain (not until the last part to the top anyway which we could take off skis for). As things turned out, we found out soon after leaving the car that snow conditions were not exactly ideal for skiing anyway, and snow shoes probably were the best option! The problem was that the warm and wet week in Tromsø seemed to have created a quite solid snow crust which overlay slightly softer snow, so it wasn't nice for skiing and not so easy to walk in only boots either because you still ended up sinking through!

Nevertheless, we continued on our way up to Kvitbergfjellet since the views were pretty nice and my sister seemed to be very happy to be out in snow-covered mountains. It wasn't at all windy until we passed Kvitbergfjellet and continued along the ridge toward Gråtinden, but after that it was a bit breezier. I wouldn't go as far as to say we actually got any sunshine on our faces, but we could at least see the orange glow on the clouds to the south - and that was good enough! By 1pm though we still had only got up to about 700m (we had taken off skis and snowshoes by this point) and my sister wasn't all that happy on the steeper slopes, especially this being her first time on snow. We both agreed we'd had a good enough trip to have enjoyed ourselves sufficiently at this point and since it was starting to get dark quite swiftly we decided just to head back and return to the car. I just about managed to get down without falling, which I can say is undoubtedly quite tricky on icy snow and while wearing fjellski!

User comments

Comment title:
Characters left: 1000
Comment text:
You need to be logged in to write comments.