Kviven trail head by Litlestølen.
| Kviven from Litlestølen Kviven |
| Estimated net time | 4-5 hours | ||
| Difficulty | No difficulties, but you might use your hands a couple of places. The whole route is marked by red and white paint. | ||
| Drinking water | There are several streams along the route. | ||
| GSM coverage | Coverage throughout the route, but a little patchy a couple of places (July 2012). | ||
| Parking | You might be allowed to park on the farm by trail head, and if not you need to find parking along the main road between road 60 and the Ytrehorn road. | ||
| Start height | 102 metres | ||
| Vertical metres | 995 metres for the roundtrip. | ||
| Trip distance | 11.1 km | ||
| GPS-file | X | ||
| Map |
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| Route photo |
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From road 60 between Hellesylt and Grodås exit west (left if coming from Grodås) where signed for "Ytrehorn". This is approximately 3.5 km from Grodås centre and 11.6 km from the Møre&Romsdal-Sogn&Fjordane county border. Drive 1.6 km (passing under the main road to Volda after 1.3 km) and turn right. There is an old wooden sign on the left side of the road, signed with "Kviven", but this text is not visible when coming from this direction. Drive 200 metres up to the first farm and ask for permission to park.
From the farm continue on the tarmac road and fork left on a forest road after a few tens of metres. Follow this forest road 1.5 km to its end, and turn left onto the path marked with red and white dots of paint. This path will take you through the forest and up to what's left of the buildings at Litlestølssætra. From here the path gradually gets less and less defined, but navigation is fairly easy thanks to the white, and partly red, paint. When you get towards the end of the valley the path crosses the river and heads north-east and east up to the saddle between Kviven and Høgenibba. When you get to the saddle turn left and continue to follow red and white paint, noting that this vague path runs on the left (south) side of the ridge. This marked route will take you to within a few tens of metres from the summit, which is marked by a small cairn.
Descend by reversing your ascent route.
The weather forecast for this Friday was slightly more promising than the last few day's, so I decided to hike something new. In order to have as many options as possible, having options to cover for both poor visibility and snow, I drove towards Grodås. My first priority would be to hike Tussa, but I expected it to have a lot of snow. Number two on the list was the lower Kviven, and the even lower Øyenibba was a third option. When I passed Tussa I got my suspicion about snow confirmed so I continued towards Kviven.
In locating the correct trail head for Kviven I misread the map slightly and ended up a little too far east. But a helpful local farmer pointed me in the right direction, and also explained the various options I had in order to get up to Kviven. Based on his advice I continued another few hundred metres and drove up to the farm from where the forest road into the valley starts. The farm owners were as helpful as the previous guy, and also suggested I park on the farm when I asked for advice on where to park.
From the farm I hit the obvious forest road, and then the path from where the forest road ended. When I got into the end of the valley I was a bit sloppy on paying attention to the white painted dots and missed the river crossing, but I soon realised my mistake and after a short de-tour I was back on track. When I realised the path was taking me up to the saddle east of Kviven I considered going the more direct route but the wet and steep hill sides made me tell myself that "there's a reason why the path runs where it runs", and stayed on the path up to the saddle. Here I was a bit puzzled that the path didn't stay on top of the rounded ridge towards Kviven, and at one point I was wondering if it was going back down where I had decided not to ascend, but soon everything was made clear and the location of the path was obvious.
By now there was some fog drifting in from north and I was pretty desperate to make it to the summit before the summit area had no visibility. This time luck was on my side and I was able to locate the summit from a distance. But with danger of fog, and general poor visibility, I didn't stay long at the summit.
Back down in the valley I could see that the upper 100 metres was now in thick
fog, so my timing had been quite good (for a change).
Photos 20.07.2012