Location: North 65.97355, West 018.88430 (GPS at the summit)
Difficulty: YDS class 2.
Climbed May 18, 2016.
Information:
How to get there:
Locate the small village Olafsfjördur on the north coast of Iceland.
This is west of Akureyri. The mountain is located to the south-west.
A road going south-west turning this mountain on its south side, then going north
back to the coast, provides access. However, this road is now closed (by snow) except
in the summer. In the spring, the best approach is to drive west from Olafsfjördur
through the (new) tunnels, then along the coast south in order to access the road from the
other side. Drive south (inland) from the small fjord called Miklavatn, most likely
the road is open as far as to the lake Stifluvatn.
This is a good trialhead, park here,
near location N65.98286, W018.98204, elevation about 135 meter.
Route:
Head uphill and ascend while traversing right
when the terrain permits. When approaching
the main crest you will notice a pretty sharp peak on the
ridgeline. This is not the
mountain. Continue more right to the base of what looks like a pretty bulky mountain.
Ascend a steeper slope, directly or after turning its first corner, the steepness is
similar. You will arrive at a flat summit plateau that connects with a second, flat
summit plateau via a fairly shallow saddle. The highest point is (north-east) at the far
end of this second plateau. You have a
pretty good view directly back down
to Olafsfjördur from this summit.
Comments:
We first tried to drive the access road directly from Olafsfjördur, however it was
blocked by snow. Thus, we drove back and around to locate good snow all the way down
to our parking near the lake.
I decided to use my randonnee skis for this ascent, a pretty
good choice. It was attractive to have yet another peak that could be skied from the car.
We started at 1245 and had a good ski up towards the crest, then traversing right.
Pål Jørgen also skied up to the sharper peak along the way.
We skied around the first corner and ascended the steeper section of the slope. Pål
skied all the way up, while Greg and I took the skis off and walked up the upper, steepish
part. It was somewhat difficult to get the skins to grip (as is often the case!) when
traversing in such a steep hill, too steep to ski directly uphill. The top was surprisingly
flat and I worried for a moment that it would be difficult to connect from our
plateau to the next and slightly higher. Fortunately, this was not the case and we arrived
at the summit at 1535.
We left at 1600 and were back at the car by 1700. The skiing back down was
quite excellent.
Here is a quick summary of peaks climbed in our trip to Iceland.
