Estimated net time	7-8 hours
Difficulty	The hike up to the small lake at 1600 metres is on first class path, but can be a little wet in places. From the lake you have to scramble up the first 100+ vertical metres, but there is only one point that might be a little difficult. Here you will need to make a couple of climbing moves, but there are good hand holds and little exposure. If there's still snow in this small gully you might find an ice axe useful. After the scrambling there is easy hiking across rock and boulder.
Drinking water	Many sources for drinking water up to the lake by Lordehytta. Running water almost to the summit while still snow.
GSM coverage	Coverage throughout the route (August 2011).
Parking	Room for a few cars around trail head, next to the road.
Start height	1000 metres
Vertical metres	1135 metres for the roundtrip.
Trip distance	20.0 km
GPS-file	X
Map		Google Interactive Map
Route photo	Folarskardnuten trail head in Raggsteindalen.   Route from Folarskardtjørnan to Lordehytta.   Route from lake 1603m to Folarskardnuten.

From the intersection of roads 7 and 50, at Hagafoss, drive approximately 27 km west on road 50. Turn left where signed for "Raggsteindalen", and follow this road 11.1 km on the south side of lake Strandavatnet. Park where you see a wooden sign for "Haugastøl". There are several places along the road suitable for parking.

Start your hike by following the path towards Haugastøl. This path is marked with red "T"s all the way up to the pass at 1620 metres, where you find the emergency shelter Lordehytta (the Lord's cabin, which is a stone cabin built in 1880 by Lord Garvagh and Lars Lein). From the pass continue south, on the left hand side of the small lake, still on marked path. At the south end of the lake turn right and walk across to the east slopes of Folarskardnuten. Locate some small cairns and red paint and follow this route to the summit, which is marked by a large cairn. Note that the route up from the lake has one slightly difficult point, approximately 70-80 vertical metres above the lake. You have to climb a small gully which is likely to have snow well into the summer. Depending on the amount of snow you should either have an ice axe or be prepared for a couple of easy climbing moves.

Descend by reversing your ascent route.

01. August 2011

From my friend Håvard's cabin above Nesbyen it took us almost two hours to drive to the Raggsteindalen trail head. Here we were happy to find a very fine path, which took us up to the pass by Lordehytta. Here we rested for a while, and had a sandwich each. We also took time for an inspection of the cabin.

From the pass we headed around the small lake, hoping we would find some cairns or some other kind of route marking for the steep east slopes of Folarskardnuten. And right enough, there was plenty of small cairns and red paint guiding us up the best route. But after a few tens of vertical metres we got into trouble. I was leading the way up a ledge towards a small gully and met snow. I decided to pass the snow on the outside, but soon got to a point where I had to pass steep snow. And without an ice axe this was definitely not on. This made me very uncertain on how to proceed, but then decided to see if it was possible to pass the snow on the inside. Fortunately this worked out well and we both managed to get into the gully without much difficulty. The next obstacle was to ascend the small gully, which was not too difficult thanks to good hand holds. But this small passage made me very uncomfortable about the descent, and was to some extent at the back of my mind for the rest of the ascent. Håvard had the same feeling, but we agreed that if the descent was difficult we would just have to tie some clothes together to form a kind of rope.

At the summit we enjoyed the views to a large area of land, including Hurrungane, Hardangerjøkulen and Jostedalsbreen. We also had some more to eat, and were soon joined by three other hikers who had come up from Haugastøl.

The descent past the slightly tricky area turned out to be no problem at all, and this made us both feel that we had now climbed this fine mountain, but realising we still had a long way back to the car. We also met a lot of other hikers, who were either climbing Folarskardnuten or just hiking across from Haugastøl to Raggsteindalen. In total we met or overtook 15 other hikers on this slightly grey Monday.
Photos 01.08.2011