Location: North 66.10607, East 014.41191 (GPS at the summit)
Difficulty (YDS) class 2
Climbed April 30. 2021
Information:
How to get there:
Drive E-12 from Mo i Rana towards Sweden. The best place to start is
about 1 kilometer into Sweden. In the spring of 2021 one could not visit
Sweden (Corona pandemic) and I parked about 1 kilometer before the border.
My parking was at location N66.14223, E014.58820, elevation about 535m.
Route description:
Ski towards location 66.11, 14.55 at the other side of the lake.
This is
slightly left of the distinct valley (with a creek) that you may see.
Ascend the gentle hillside more or less directly north. This is towards the
lower slopes of Gresfjellet. Near point 748m, (this is close to the
Gresfjellet slope), find a nice slope that you can descend slightly, in order to
traverse south to reach a broad, obvious ramp. Beware of avalanche danger from the
big cornices above you. Note the name - Skavlen (cornice).
A safe route here will loose a bit more elevation in order
to keep a good distance from the avalanche slope.
Continue up the wide, nice ramp to acccess
the east end of Gresfjellet.
From here,
ascend west, as you traverse the slope. If you ascend too much north, you will
climb the "false" 1140 summit. Pass the small lake at 995m, then more north west towards
the slightly steeper upper part. Do an ascending traverse west (that is from right
to left) aiming for about the 1300 meter level. This will get you nicely
into the last col between the two summits. Finally, ascend the peak on its west (left) side.
Comments:
Since we had, quite exceptionally, restrictions on crossing the border to Sweden, I
parked about one kilometer on the Norwegian side. To ski a few kilometers across
some Swedish lake would not matter wrt. the Corona pandemic.
I was staying at the DNT hut, Reinfjellhytta, located near E-12, and therefore ready to ski already
at 0745. I skied across to the natural saddle crossing to lake Gresvatnet. However,
the descent to the lake was slightly cumbersome, due to vegetation and somewhat
unfirendly terrain for skiing.
My recommended route (above) therefore avoids this descent altogether.
Ascending from the lake was very nice and I soon got to
the top of the ramp. Here, I skied into a complete white-out. Mainly thinking that
uphill would be right, I had completely missed to notice the "false" 1140 summit and ascended much
to high before understanding my mistake. I got myself back down and then had
better visibility until near the final col. Unfortunately, another snow shower
arrived and took all visibility away from the summit. I was there at 1215.
Descending was slow due to the white-out conditions.
This improved as I got lower,
approaching the large ramp. Instead of descending back to the lake, I now crossed
the slope to access the ridge running north of lake Gresvatnet. From here, skiing back down
to the lake was easy. I was back at my car by 1530 for a total trip time of 7:45.
