From
the E39/650 junction east of Sjøholt centre, approximately 40 km east of Ålesund
centre, drive south on road 650, in the direction of Stordal.
- At 17.8 km continue on road 650 through Stordal centre.
- At 45.0 km continue straight ahead when you get to Valldal centre (don't turn
left to continue on road 63).
- At 48.2 km turn left towards "Selboskar".
- At 52.1 km turn right and drive down to a signed car park.
Start your hike by walking back up to the road and then turn right. Follow the
road 350 metres and turn left onto a gravel road. Walk this road 2.4 km to
Nysætra, to where it does a sharp left up amongst the cabins. Continue straight
ahead onto a path and follow this path 1.7 km up to the large cairn at the west
end of Hegguraksla, at 1020m. From here leave the path and head left
(north-east), and then gradually turn east towards top 1575m. You can skirt
around this top, and then aim for Blåfjellet, who's summit is marked by a single
stone.
From Blåfjellet turn right and walk directly south down to the saddle north of
top 1599m. Ascend this top out on its right (west) side and turn left and head
east and then south-east as you follow the edge up Muldalsegga's north-west
ridge. The summit is marked by a proper cairn and a trigonometric point marker.
Continue along Muldalsegga's summit ridge, and show care when passing a very
short and narrow section of the ridge. This one metre long section is definitely
exposed, and most people will probably use their hands for safety. There are no
technical difficulties involved. Shortly after this section turn left and head
down Muldalsegga's east slopes, down to the saddle towards Trollkyrkja. Cross
the Nakkebreen glacier on the right (south) side of Trollkyrkja's south-west
ridge and locate a good place to ascent the south-east ridge. There are many
suitable places to get up onto the ridge, and one place, requiring only easy
scrambling, is located approximately 250 metres from the summit. Once on the
ridge stay on top of it where that seems natural, but as you get closer to the
summit and the ridge seems to get more challenging you will find easier terrain
down on the right (east) side of the ridge. This will take you a few metres past
the summit, and from here you can easily come up and back to the summit cairn.
From Trollkyrkja reverse your ascent route back down along the ridge and then
continue all the way to the saddle and a little bit up along Trollkyrkja-1711's
north-west ridge. Aim for just below a small ridge coming down from the
north-west ridge, in the west slopes. Once past this ridge head uphill to where
the terrain gets much steeper, and then traverse towards right. After a little
less than 100 metres you will find easy terrain to walk up to the summit ridge,
from where you turn left and continue to the summit.
From Trollkyrkja-1711 follow the edge down the east slopes and then continue up
to Korga where you find it most suitable. Korga's summit is marked by a small
cairn. Descend back down the west slopes after having traversed south along the
summit plateau, and gradually turn right down towards the small glacier west of
Korga. Traverse across the upper part of this glacier, where it's flat, and head
north towards a small lake close to the edge above Fremste Heivatnet. Continue
past the lake and across to the couloir at the far end of the flat section. Find
your best route down this steep section, and continue down to lake Fremste
Heivatnet, where you'll find a path. Follow this path all the way down to
Alstadsætra at 360m, turn left, and follow the gravel road down to
Gudbrandsjuvet.
20. July 2014
Colleague Trond and I had discussed a hike to Trollkyrkja since early summer,
and when the weather forecast for this Sunday was very promising we decided to
have a go. And after closer look at route options we agreed to take advantage of
two cars and do the hiker from Hauge to Gudbrandsjuvet. This also gave us the
opportunity to include top 1711m south-east of Trollkyrkja, and we also noticed
that Korga could be added if we still had juice left in the legs.
The first part of the route, up to Blåfjellet, was a straight forward walk, and
we overtook and met a few hikers. From Blåfjellet the plan was to hike up the
east side of the north slopes of top 1599m, but since we were a little short on
water and saw snow and a little pond below the west side, we took on this route.
This proved very wise since two climbers ahead of us, hiking along the east
side, clearly got into difficulties and had to traverse across to the west side.
On Muldalsegga we had a proper stop and enjoyed the fabulous views, and also got
a good view of the next part of the route. From this we concluded that top 1711m
would be worth a try but at best 50/50 chance of success. And up here was the
last we saw of people until we got down to Gudbrandsjuvet.
The route across the glacier south of Trollkyrkja was uneventful, but we were a
little sceptical before crossing it since there were patches of blue, which
turned out to be slushy ice and not hard ice. And ascending Trollkyrkja's
south-east ridge was very straight forward, although we ascended quite high on
the ridge. The ridge itself was much easier than expected, and definitely
nothing anyone should be afraid to take on. After a relatively short stay at the
summit we headed across to top 1711m, with the intention to scramble the
north-west ridge, but soon concluded that this scramble would be pushing it too
far. Instead we started to investigate the west side, and also tried some
scrambling on two occasions, and one of these routes might have been an option
if we hadn't found the easy route further south in the west wall.
From the summit of top 1711m we had two options; either head back down to the
saddle between 1711m and Trollkyrkja, or head down towards the saddle between
1711m and Korga. Since the latter seemed to be no longer than the more obvious
option we headed steep down east, and down in the saddle it was obvious
that we couldn't leave Korga unvisited given we were this close. Hence we
threw in an extra 170 vertical metres across some steep boulder.
Descending the slab sections west of Korga caused no problems, but when we got
down to the top of the steep section at 1100m we got a little concerned. Trond
was sure this was a commonly used route up to Trollkyrkja, and with this in mind
we were confident we would find a reasonable route, but we had to search for a
while, and in hindsight I'm not sure we found the easiest route; we probably
should have descended even further west than were we found a scrambling route.
After this it was very easy walking, but a long one, down to Gudbrandsjuvet.
Photos 20.07.2014
Trail head at Hauge.
Start of mountain road at Hauge.
Route from Nysætra to Hegguraksla.
Route between Blåfjellet and Muldalsegga.
Route between Muldalsegga and Trollkyrkja.
Route up to Trollkyrkja-1711.
Route up and down Korga.
Route below Trollkyrkja down to Gudbrandsjuvet.