Most of the route to Kongelberget from Lysbakken.| Kongelberget from
Lysbakken (ski) Kongelberget |
| Estimated net time | 2-2½ hours |
| Difficulty | A little cumbersome due to some steep sections, but no difficulties. |
| Drinking water | No access to drinking water during winter. |
| GSM coverage | Coverage throughout the route (December 2008). |
| Parking | Room for a couple of cars at trail head. |
| Start height | 740 metres |
| Vertical metres | 440 metres for the roundtrip |
| Trip distance | 4.9 km (total of 7.8 km if skiing back down the eastern most ski-slopes) |
| GPS-file | X |
| Map |
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| Route photo |
Most of the route to Kongelberget from Lysbakken. |
Drive road E136 to Bjorli. From E136 drive north towards the ski-slopes for 250 metres, then turn right. Follow this road, and when it forks follow signs for "Kongelberget". Drive uphill through the soft zigzags until you are close as possible below the area of forest which is free of trees. Start skiing by aiming for this patch of open in the western slopes of Kongelberget. Make sure you stay right (south-east) of the rock at the bottom of the patch. Find your best route up through this narrow open area, all the way up to a small flat area. You now have Kongelberget above you. Continue a little more uphill before you start turning north/north-east along the steep slopes of Kongelberget. When you get around to the north slopes of Kongelberget turn right (east and then south) and follow the north slopes to the summit. The summit is marked by a cairn.
For the descent you can either follow the ascent route, or you can ski north/north-west to the top of the ski-slopes. From here you follow whichever piste you feel for back down to the ski-centre. You will then either have to walk back up to the car or liaise with someone who can give you a lift back up to your car.
We were spending the week-end at one of the Rolls-Royce cabins at Bjorli, and I was eager to bag a new mountain this Saturday. The weather wasn't very good so I decided to take on something I regarded as "easy"; Kongelberget. I left the kids by the ski-centre and then drove up towards what I though was a suitable trail head. I could have skied from the bottom of the ski-slopes but I had tried this a few weeks back without success (mainly because of the weather), so this time I was going to drive as far up as possible.
I parked the car at a suitable place along the road and started skiing uphill, immediately realising that this was going to be a relatively tough hike because the crust gave way on every "step". But I was determined to bag this mountain, and did my best to put thoughts about the poor snow conditions to the side, in particular the thoughts of what a miserable descent it was going to be. As I moved uphill the visibility gradually got worse and worse, but I had studied the terrain pretty well from below, so I was relatively comfortable about where I was going.
A fair bit into the hill I decided to have a look at my GPS to see what altitude I had reached; it reported ~980 metres, which made me feel better since it was only 200 vertical metres to go. What didn't make me feel chuffed was the fact that my GPS reported that it was low on power. I decided to keep it on as long as it had power, and assuming that I would be able to have it running for a couple of minutes at the summit if I just warmed the battery a little in my hands (had to do the same with the battery for my camera at Middagsfjellet back in April).
When I got around to the north slopes of Kongelberget I decided to turn right and aim for the summit. By now the visibility was very poor so I had little sense of where the summit was, but decided to get onto the plateau and ski around to look for the summit. As I later found out when descending I had turned right a little too early and got into a steep section of hard snow. I therefore decided to take off the skies and kick into the hard snow with my boots; this worked fine. After something like 20 vertical metres without skies I was able to put them back on and soon found myself at the plateau. I now decided to criss-cross around the plateau to try to find the summit. Ideally I would spot a cairn, which would make me relatively certain of having found the highest point. After a few minutes of skiing back and forth I caught the glimpse of something through the fog; possibly a cairn. As I headed towards it it became apparent that this was indeed a cairn. I wasn't yet 100% convinced this was the highest point because to cairn was located very close to the west edge of the mountain, and hence possibly viewable from the cabins below; I have seen many examples of cairns being located so that they can be seen from below as opposed to being located at the summit. After having taken a couple of photos and squeezed the last drops of power out of my GPS batteries I did a little bit more searching for a possible higher point than where the cairn was located, but I was soon convinced I had actually found the summit (later confirmed by my GPS tracks).
I didn't fancy descending down the steep west slopes in the terrible snow so instead headed north towards the ski-slopes. When I thought I was above the ski-slopes I headed left, but after having descended some 50 metres I realised I wasn't there yet so had to ski back up. When I got back up again the fog lifted for a few minutes and I could now see I had another few hundred metres to go before I was above the slopes. I increased the speed of my skiing a little, eager to enjoy the easy skiing down the prepared slopes.
Back down at the ski-centre I wasn't sure how to attack the problem of the car parked up in the hill, but eventually decided to call my fried Øyvind, who was also spending the week-end at Bjorli, and ask if he would be so kind to give me a lift up to my car. As usual he was positive, and I could relax and enjoy the feeling of having achieved at least a little today.