Stornyken trail head at Gudbrandsjuvet.
| Stornyken from
Gudbrandsjuvet Stornyken |
| Estimated net time | 2½-3½ hours | ||
| Difficulty | No difficulties. | ||
| Drinking water | Running water from a stream along the path through the forest. | ||
| GSM coverage | Coverage throughout the route (January 2014). | ||
| Parking | Room for many cars at various car parks around Gudbrandsjuvet. | ||
| Start height | 230 metres | ||
| Vertical metres | 940 metres for the roundtrip. | ||
| Trip distance | 8.5 km | ||
| GPS-file | X | ||
| Map |
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| Route photo |
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From the village Valldal on road 63, north of Storfjorden, drive 15.1 km north on road 63 to Gudbrandsjuvet. Park on the large car park after you have passed the gorge.
Walk back across the gorge and turn left towards the camp site. Follow this road 700 metres and turn right onto a path signed for "Myreheia". Follow this path up to lake Myrheivatnet at 850 metres, and continue north-west across a number of small humps to the summit, which is marked by a small cairn.
Descend by reversing your ascent route.
My intention for this week-end was to do some skiing, but with very little snow I agreed with Kjetil to hike Stornyken instead. He picked me up at our cabin at Fjellsetra and we drove up to Gudbrandsjuvet. None of the car parks were ploughed so we ended up parking in front of a "No parking" poster on the camp site's washing room building.
There was much more snow than anticipated through the forest, and it was mostly very hard, so I put on the snow shoes a little after we had started on the path. The main reason for the snow shoes was the small crampons they're equipped with.
When we got above the forest we started to feel the forecasted strong wind, and as we made our way towards the summit the wind got stronger and stronger. Some of the gusts almost blew us to the ground, and I assume I would have fallen if it wasn't for the additional balance offered by my skiing poles. And at the summit it was very difficult to get a couple of photos without loosing balance.
After a very short summit stop we turned around and forced our way through the wind and back down to more comfortable conditions down in the forest. And then drive back to Fjellsetra.