Parking and trail head for Julaksla, by road 662.
Start of path to Julaksla, by road 662.
| Julaksla from
south-west Julaksla |
| Estimated net time | 3-3½ hours |
| Difficulty | No difficulties, but a short section does require the use of hands. There is a rope here for added comfort. No exposure. |
| Drinking water | Unknown, but probably no access to proper drinking water. |
| GSM coverage | Coverage throughout the route (December 2009). |
| Parking | Room for many cars at trail head. |
| Start height | 40 metres |
| Vertical metres | 640 metres for the roundtrip. |
| Trip distance | 7.3 km |
| GPS-file | X |
| Map |
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| Route photo |
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Assuming you arrive Molde from south, on the Vestnes-Molde ferry. From the ferry port area drive right, following signs for "Trondheim". After 500 metres turn left in the round-about, following signs for "Aukra" on road 662. Follow road 662 11.4 km (this is 2.1 km after the road 668 exit). You will see a car park on the right hand side of the road. Park here.
Walk 400 metres back along road 662, until you see a path into the forest on your left hand side. Follow this path through the forest, in places quite steep but never difficult, all the way up to Vardfjellet. At this point the path enters perpendicularly a small ridge. Out to your left you will see a post box, and this is also a good view point, and well worth the few metres de-tour. The path to Julaksla goes the opposite direction, and continues across a number of small hills all the way to the summit. Note that the path gets a bit less clearly defined when you get closer to the summit, but is easy enough to follow. The actual highest point isn't marked in any way, but there is a small pile of stones, with a wooden stick, at the small summit plateau.
The descent is best done by reversing the ascent route.
Since my parents-in-law were visiting again this Christmas, it was time for another trip to Molde to visit my father-in-law's cousin. I volunteered to come along, but requested that I, as two years ago, would be allowed to go for a Molde hike before joining the rest of the family for brunch. In order to improve timing a little I left home a couple of hours before the rest, assuming I would be able to start my hike just after there was sufficient day-light to hike comfortably.
The weather this Sunday was at best poor, and soon after I started my hike it started to snow. This reduced visibility down to a few tens of metres at the worst, but I had no problems navigating thanks to the well defined path. The only annoying thing was that I didn't have any view what so ever of the mountains I knew I would be able to see on a nice day. Also, at the summit, it was quite windy and adding to the miserable conditions caused by snow and poor visibility. When I got to the summit I wasn't 100% sure I had reached the summit, but a check at my GPS and the fact that there was some kind of cairn close to the highest point made me convinced enough not to continue. As it turned out I had reached the summit, but I had a few hours of anxiousness after having visited Kringstadnakken later in the day; based on my view from Kringstadnakken I assumed I had stopped one hill too early; I only got a final confirmation of having reached the summit after I have loaded my GPS-tracks onto my PC after having got home in the afternoon.