| Nihusen from Niusvegen Nihusen |
| Estimated net time | 1½-2 hours |
| Difficulty | No difficulties. |
| Drinking water | Unknown. |
| GSM coverage | Unknown. |
| Parking | Room for a couple of cars along the road at trail head. |
| Start height | 95 metres |
| Vertical metres | 350 metres for the roundtrip |
| Trip distance | 4.1 km |
| GPS-file | X |
| Map |
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| Route photo |
From Ålesund, drive road E136/E39 towards Skodje. Turn left on to road 661 (signed "Vatne" ++) at the Digerneset junction.. Pay toll at the unmanned booth, and cross the bridge. Just after the bridge turn left, taking the road 661 to Skodje. Drive 3.7km to Skodje centre and turn left up "Niusvegen". Continue 600 metres up this road, where a path can be found going north. There is an old sign here, but a lot of imagination must be applied in order to understand that it says "Nihusen". Park along the road.
Follow the path in a northern direction. The path is not marked through the thick spruce forest, but is quite easy to follow. The first couple of hundred metres is quite steep. After approximately 300 metres the path turns towards north-west, and continues until it reaches a forest road. This part of the path is marked with objects of different colours. Follow the forest road until it is not longer a proper forest road, and then head straight north off-path to get on to the east-west ridge of Nihusen. This ascent to the ridge can be a bit cumbersome, but will allow you to follow the ridge towards west to the Nihusen summit.
From the Nihusen summit continue towards west for approximately 200 metres, and the turn south and east towards a nice cabin. Continuing east from the cabin will take you back to the forest road. From here the descent route is identical to the ascent route.
Elisabeth had promised to join me for an easy hike this Thursday. We decided to do Nihusen, the daily exercise target of many Skodje citizens. Sigurd (11) also came along. There was light rain when we started at 12:30, but the rain gradually reduced as we moved closer to the summit. The condition of the snow, sometimes giving way to our weight and sometimes supporting our weight, was a more annoying factor.
As we got to the flatter parts of the path, after having come out of the spruce forest, someone had put some Christmas decorations under a fallen tree. Further up someone had decorated a spruce with more Christmas decorations.
Just before we got to the summit of Nihusen it started to rain quite heavily, disturbing chances for taking good photos. We therefore only did the compulsory summit photos, a bit of chocolate and a drink of water before heading back down.
We met two other hikers during our hike.