Estimated net time	3-3½ hours
Difficulty	No difficulties. The whole route is done on gravel road and marked path.
Drinking water	Several sources of running water below 900 metres.
GSM coverage	Coverage throughout the route (July 2011).
Parking	Room for 2-3 cars at trail head.
Start height	447 metres
Vertical metres	730 metres for the roundtrip.
Trip distance	7.8 km
GPS-file	X
Map		Google Interactive Map
Route photo	Sandfjellet trail head by Hjortedalssætra.   Start of path towards Sandfjellet.

From Ålesund drive road E39 south towards Bergen, and then exit onto road 60 just south of Ålesund. This road is signed for Stranda. Follow road 60 to the Magerholm ferry port and get the ferry across to Aursneset. From Aursneset ferry port follow road 60 for approximately 35 km, across Strandafjellet, to where you get to a T-junction. There is an Esso petrol station on the right hand side of the road (per 2011). Turn right here and continue 48.7 km along road 60 in the direction of Stryn, and turn right where signed for "Engebø". Drive this road uphill 1.0 km and pay toll at the unmanned booth (NOK 20 per 2011). Continue another 1.9 km to a road fork. Park on the left hand side of the road. Note that it is possible to drive further up.

Start walking by following the right leg of the road fork, up past the cabins. 1.7 km from trail head, approximately 100 metres before a wooden bridge, you will find a vague path going off right. There is an old sign for "Sandfjellet" lying on the ground, and there is red paint on some stones. This path soon gets more visible, and is marked with red paint almost to the summit. Across the final flat section towards the summit there are a few small cairns. The summit is marked by a cairn and a trigonometric point marker. You're like to find a summit registration book inside the cairn.

Descend by reversing your ascent route.

21. July 2011

The weather forecast for this Thursday wasn't very promising in terms of views, but since the probability of rain was low I decided to go for a hike. And in search for better visibility I drove south from our cabin at Fjellsetra to Hornindal. Unfortunately the visibility was just as poor here as at Fjellsetra. Hence I had to find a route which would be safe in terms of navigation, and here my hiking map bought in Grodås a couple of weeks earlier came in handy. I found a route to Sandfjellet which seemed to be just the right thing, and drove up to Hjortedalssætra. I knew I could drive further, but wanted to hike the gravel road in order to properly have a look at this area.

When I got to where the path starts I was a bit disappointed to find a very vague path with only some old red paint on the stones, and thought maybe this route wasn't such a good idea after all given the poor visibility, but after a few tens of metres my concerns vanished as I found the path to be both well defined and relatively dry.

The whole hike above 700 metres was done with only a few tens of metres visibility, so I was relying heavily on the marked path. This worked well and after a little more than an hour I was at the summit. I was now considering changing into dry clothes and hang around for a while to see if the visibility would improve, but concluded that this could be a long wait. So instead I took a couple of photos and headed back down.
Photos 21.07.2011