Estimated net time	2½-3 hours
Difficulty	No difficulties.
Drinking water	No reliable access to drinking water during winter.
GSM coverage	Coverage at trail head, else unknown (February 2009).
Parking	Room for many cars around trail head.
Start height	300 metres
Vertical metres	470 metres for the roundtrip
Trip distance	10.2 km
GPS-file	X
Map
Route photo	Trail head for ski-hike to Blåfjellet.

From Ålesund drive road E136 towards Sjøholt. At Sjøholt turn right towards "Geiranger" and "Stordal" onto road 650. Follow this road for 7.4 km and turn left towards "Vaksvikfjellet". Drive 4.3 km along the Vaksvikfjellet mountain road to where the road ends during winter. Find parking here, but make sure you don't park in the turn-around place. In the spring you are likely to be able to drive further, and possibly all the way to Grytalisætra.

From the trail head continue along the road towards Kjersemsetra. There might well be machine made tracks here. 1.1 km from trail head a road forks right towards Grytalisætra; follow this road, which is also likely to have machine made tracks. It is another 1.5 km to Grytalisætra. From here you will have a good view of the route ahead of you; head east/south-east towards the south base of Blåfjellet, finding you best route amongst the light vegetation. When you get to the base of Blåfjellet head north and continue all the way to the summit. When you get to the first cairn you still have a few hundred metres to go, but there is no doubt where the highest point is.

The descent is best done via the ascent route. Alternatively you can ski south-east from the summit, and then return via a route around north of Blåfjellet.

28. February 2009

The weather forecast for this week-end wasn't very good, but when the sky cleared on Friday afternoon Elisabeth and me decided to go skiing on Saturday if the weather was as nice as Friday night. When we woke up on Saturday morning it was a fine morning, but the forecast said that this wouldn't last all day. We therefore left home immediately after breakfast, with Blåfjellet as the target for the day. The choice of Blåfjellet satisfied the requirements of the hikers; Elisabeth didn't want a lot of vertical metres, I wanted a new mountain, and neither of us wanted a very long drive.

When we arrived at trail head there were already a couple of cars there, probably eager skiers out training for Birkebeinerrennet three weeks from today. We settled for a modest pace, enjoying the sun and perfect snow. From Grytalisætra we had to make our own tracks, but with 5-10 cm of light powder on top of hard snow this was easy going.

We considered heading up the south-west slopes of Blåfjellet, but concluded that it looked steeper than comfortable, so instead we stayed with our initial plan to ski all the way to the south of Blåfjellet before starting the climb. The whole ascent is relatively long and flat, and is easy going, but can be a bit boring. But when the sun is shining and there is no wind you tend to ignore anything negative. At the summit we took photos and emptied one of the water bottles before starting the descent. As is too often the case the descent is too short and is over in a snap, and with the snow conditions today we probably could have skied downhill for hours without wishing to do anything else. I think Elisabeth would have been willing to pay a considerable amount of money if there had been a ski-lift around ...

Photos 28.02.2009