Lihauet

  • Lihauet
  • 848 m
  • Primary factor 750 m
  • Hordaland, Norway
  • Location: North 66.11923, East 012.95247 (GPS on the summit)
  • Climbed July 21. 2020
  • Difficulty: YDS class 2

Information:

How to get there:
From Hwy. E-6, locate the town of Mosjøen and follow signs for Sandnessjøen from there. You will drive through a 10 kilometer long tunnel. After the tunnel, continue towards Sandnessjøen, and note when you drive along the fjord on your left (south-east) side. As you enter the small community of Leland, you should take a rather small road that forks directly right, this is at location N66.0653, E012.9501, shortly before the main road fork in Leland. Drive this road until it ends (uphill near the end) next to a building, there is parking for 4-5 cars here. This location is N66.08128, E012.95656, elevation near 90 meter.
Route:
A red marked trail starts directly uphill from near the corner of the building. The trail has 2 minor alternatives in the beginning, keeping right is the easier way. First, ascend to lake Simsøvatnet, the trail runs around a section of this lake going left. Also note that in 2020, the trail marked on the map is different from the actual trail, the current trail runs further west than what the map indicates. (Hopefully, this will be corrected in a future map update.)
Follow the trail, it is generally well marked, but may be harder to follow as you pass about 600 meter of elevation. There is a steeper section ahead, the trail ascends pretty much up the middle of some slabs of rock that may appear slippery when wet. Overall, this route still works well. You reach the main crest around elevation 740m, from here the summit is still a bit more than one kilometer to the north-west. The highest point is the top of a rock at location N66.11923, E012.95247. Note that some sort of cairn has been built 250 meter onwards (north-west) at a point with elevation 845m, 3 meter lower than the highest summit. (A practice that should be strongly discouraged!)
Comments:
We had stayed south of Mosjøen the previous night, then drove to this trailhead in the morning. A somewhat lazy morning, we were not off until 1115. The map promised a trail all the way to the summit, however this is a Norwegian mountain trail, no walk in the park. The weather was overcast, even some clouds/fog at the higher elevation, but not much rain. We made steady, but not particularly fast progress. I noticed that we were on the trail, but that this trail was about one kilometer further west than the trail on the map. We subsequently lost the trail, as we believed it would merge back (it did not) and failed to appreciate that it made it up the somewhat slippery looking slabs to our left.
We arrived at the cairn by 1510, quickly realizing that this was not the summit and that the summit was about 250 meter away, we passed nearby on our way to the cairn. Spending about 20 minutes at the summit area, we returned and located the trail on top of the steeper hillside. Going back home was not much faster than ascending. We made the final part of the descent in early evening light. We were back at the car at 1915, then drove back for dinner and accommodation in Mosjøen.
Thanks to Jostein for good company on a nice hike.

Resources: