| Stokkehøgda from
Sandgrovbotnen Stokkehøgda |
| Estimated net time | 3-4 hours | ||
| Difficulty | No difficulties. Most of the hike is off-path, but in easy terrain. | ||
| Drinking water | Several sources of running water in the lower half of the route. | ||
| GSM coverage | Coverage in the upper half of the route (August 2012). | ||
| Parking | Room for several cars on either side of the road around trail head. | ||
| Start height | 1155 metres | ||
| Vertical metres | 595 metres for the roundtrip. | ||
| Trip distance | 11.2 km | ||
| GPS-file | X | ||
| Map |
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| Route photo |
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Assume your starting point is the ski-resort Bjorli, along road E136. Drive approximately 4.6 km north, in the direction of Åndalsnes, and turn right where signed for "Brude". If arriving from Åndalsnes this exit is approximately 44.5 km from the E136/64 junction just south of Åndalsnes centre.
Turn left immediately after leaving E136, drive 1.8 km, and make sure you fork right onto the service road. From here drive another 9.2 km uphill on the service road, and find parking on either side of the road on top of a small hill. This is 2.7 km past the small stone cabin Johanhytta.
Start your hike by continuing a few metres along the service road and then turn left onto a path signed "Luka". Follow this path approximately 700 metres and turn right. From here continue north/north-west more or less directly towards the summit. There are no paths, but the terrain provides easy hiking. If you pass close to two stones of diameter ~1m sitting on top of each other, you're doing fine in terms of directions. Note that you get to a false summit at 1468m, approximately 1.2 km south of the summit. The true summit is marked by a small cairn.
Descend by reversing your ascent route.
I had been in a workshop at Bjorli (in order to get away and focus on a couple of specific topics) since last night, and was due home this Thursday afternoon. But with daylight still well into the evening I decided to go for a hike before heading home. I had several candidate tops to choose between, but because of nasty fog I was reluctant to take on anything above 1000 metres, until I realised I could be sensible for once and load some way-points to my GPS. This made a change, and I decided to drive the service road up to Sandgrovbotnen and hike Stokkehøgda and Fossafjellet. I had been up here twice before, hiking Fugleleikhøa and the long hike including Kleneggen, and knew this would be fine terrain in a nice area.
The road along lake Storvatnet was closed because of maintenance work on the dam, but I was just able to drive as far as I intended and soon set off down towards the small lakes at Sandgrovbotnen. There are a number of streams and lakes that need to be crossed and passed, and all was fine until I got to Kaldåtjønna. I reached this lake close to its north end so headed a little north in order to cross the stream draining from its north end, and I soon realised I was in trouble; there was a damaged bridge here, which couldn't be used, and the fact that there was a bridge told me that there wouldn't be any other places I could easily cross this stream. I continued along the stream to see if there where any places suitable for fording, but the stream was both too deep and too wild. Hence I walked back up to the lake and continued south in order to walk around it on the south side. But this would be a fairly long de-tour, which I would then have to do also when coming back down, so decided to walk back to my car and fine a new trail head.
From my original trail head I drove 650 metres south and hoped the small bumps between me and Stokkehøgda's south slopes didn't hide any streams I wouldn't be able to cross. And when I found a marked path close to trail head my confidence level increased considerably. I followed this path 700 metres and then turned north towards Stokkehøgda, and didn't meet any problems, neither in the flat section nor when it got slightly steeper on the south slopes. Unfortunately the fog came creeping across the mountain, so my views were very limited, but I had my way-points to guide me and made it to the summit without any more de-tours.
I crossed a few snow fields from above point 1468m, and found fresh tracks from what I assume is reindeer. Apart from this and a small summit cairn there wasn't much to be seen and I descended after a couple of minutes at the summit. When I got back to my car I was surprised to see that the two cars parked on the other side of the road, with people inside the cars, were still there, 2½ hours after I had last seen them, and I was close to walking across to them and ask what they were doing there. To me it seemed they were just enjoying an evening out in the mountains, but sitting inside the cars for hours certainly puzzled me ...