Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

July 29, 2024

1850m

Sunndalsøra, Norway

“Store” means “Big” in English and Store Trolla is the highest peak on Trolla massif and is generally considered as one of the hardest peaks in southern Norway that boast over 1000 m prominence. This peak was not on the original agenda but turned out to be one of the two objectives that Petter recommended Adam to skip, which suggested some sort of difficulty in reaching the summit. I made Erica to do a bit more digging and it sounded like a “class 4” scramble. This peak isn’t obscured among the Norwegians as Erica even found a GPX track on AllTrails. I of course did my own research as well, and found a track on Peakbook and I had also consulted with Petter about the feasibility of doing this objective by just two of us. I did bring a rope in this trip but given the 1800 m elevation gain we preferred to do it as a “scramble” if possible, and that should be the case. We did not however, know the current conditions so the decision was made to carry ice axe, crampons and mountaineering boots, which of course all turned into training weight. Petter mentioned patches of snow even during his September trip but that was 20 years ago. Global warming must have changed something, as we did not encounter a single patch of snow anywhere close to the standard route.

Erica and I did Skårasalen in the previous day and drove 4 hours afterwards across two fjords using the ferry services. The ferries in Norway are nowhere as difficult/expensive as in B.C. and in fact, they are more like a “toll road”. The fees were paid automatically and surprisingly not hefty, and the queue was literally “nothing”. We somehow managed to get onto both ferries with less than 5 minutes of waiting combined. We however, needed at least two napping stops as the lack of sleep in the past week had finally taken a toll on us, myself particularly. We thankfully found a neat trail-head area that was not the one for Trolla, to set up camp for the night and I had to give Erica credit for that. I was getting impatient in finding that “best” camping spot but she managed to convince me to try a few more minutes and sure enough, we got our camp set up right next to a running creek. Of course both of us slipped and fell while trying to get water from the creek and I hit my face quite hard on a rock. Thankfully when I’m writing this trip report it’s already been over a week since the incident and I don’t think that fall had caused any damage, but at the time it took me a few seconds to realize where I was and what I was doing. I also spent at least an hour and half catching up with trip reports at this camp as we got there quite early in the afternoon, but by 10 pm we all decided to go to bed. The weather was not a problem on our summit day so there was no point in doing another alpine start. Instead, I didn’t even bother to set up an alarm so we woke up naturally at around 8 am and leisurely did our morning routine. The drive to the actual trail-head which was basically a pull-out on the main road took 5 minutes and we got there at around 9:30 am.

The start of the approach was by hopping over a fence but I doubt any sort of trespassing was involved, as this was such a popular hike and nobody had mentioned anything about trespassing, and in fact it is legal to go into anyone’s private lands in Norway. In any case we plodded through their farming area and picked up the steep trail that ascends out of the steep and deep valley where the town of Sunndalsøra locates. The view looking back into the valley kept improving the higher we went, but the real show was the blueberries and raspberries. This was the best berry-picking trip I’ve done that we each ate easily over a kilogram of them within half an hour. There were infinitely many more, but we had to move on. I bet the grizzlies would love this country but unfortunately (or fortunately) there was hardly any in Scandinavia. We were also passed by a fast couple who weren’t carrying much but was planning to do the entire Trolla traverse, which was an alpine climb. We ended up summitting the main peak together with them and got to know each other a bit more in depth while celebrating the success, so more on that later. By the time Erica and I finished ascending this truncated spur into the hanging valley we had already gained over 800 m elevation and we took a much needed break at the running creek, filling up water bottles and ditching unnecessary gears. The entire route was visible and I decided for us to ditch everything. I did make a stupid mistake here by eating half of a moldy muffin but I realized what I was doing after feeling some tastes that should be coming from chocolate. It took me a while to finally forgive myself but whatever. Since I did not get any illness from this incident I wouldn’t complain more.

There was still a very visible trail that ascends the climber’s right side of this valley and it was heading directly towards our objective. We made the final load of water before leaving this creek but honestly there were more running streams even higher up on the face. I led us hopping across some boulders and then scrambled across some shallow gullies with grass but we came across a well-cairned path afterwards. This was not to be expected as I was anticipating a puzzle of route-finding challenges. I also noticed that my Peakbook track did not agree with Erica’s AllTrails track so my solution was to ignore both GPX and do our own route-finding. We were able to stick with this cairned path for a long while maintaining a general ascending traverse towards climber’s left, but for the final 100 m elevation gain to the col between the main and south peaks we managed to get off route. I was to be blamed but I also knew it after being off-route for literally 1 minute. I decided that it would be a better idea to just scramble up the route we picked as I wanted this objective a bit more challenging for Erica to gain scrambling experience. Of course it turned out to be harder than I thought, with lots of 4th class steps on wet, down-sloping terrain covered in moss, and the looseness suggested that hardly anybody had come up this way. We nevertheless persisted through and Erica handled it excellently without a single word of complaint, even though she admitted later that she did not enjoy this section. I was glad that she did not like it because otherwise it might be too much for someone new in this game to not having any fear here.

The SE Ridge of the main peak was supposed to be the hardest part of this route but that off-route section we did to gain the col was much more difficult. While scrambling up a section of 3rd class slabs we encountered a solo hiker descending, who was clearly off-route and scared. She was very thankful to see us coming up from the correct route. We then finally got onto the ridge and I mostly decided for us to stick onto the ridge wherever possible. I did not have any detailed “beta” about the scrambling but the route seemed obvious. We dealt with some increasing amount of exposure but the scrambling never exceeded 3rd class, until we walked up a polished slab to an abrupt drop-off. This drop-off was not doable without a rappel, so we backtracked and found some ledge systems on the south side. The down-climb onto the ledges involved some 4th class moves but we might or might not have found the easiest path. The final scramble to the true summit was no worse than what we had just done, and we sat on the summit for over an hour to watch the weather improving. We got up there in mostly foggy conditions but it gradually cleared up. We also saw the other team on the other route and we waited for them to show up. The guy in this team turned out to have climbed over 1000 peaks in Norway and both of them are runners in some ways, and we exchanged our Instagram so I could have some strong local connections on my next visits. Not many people could leave Erica and I in the dust like they did.

It was eventually time to get going, so we reluctantly left our final summit in Norway in this trip. Instead of taking the ridge crest I opted to explore those ledges on the south side of the ridge thank to more cairns and paths. I couldn’t say which of the two routes were “better” as the difficulty was similar, but both had decent amount of exposure on sustained 3rd class terrain. It’s definitely a good idea to be able to scramble any 4th class/low 5th class step with any amount of exposure, as then you wouldn’t worry that much about route-finding. We also found the easier on-route alternative way on the descent, which was indeed much better but did require some very careful route-finding. Some parts of that route were not intuitive and required a tight squeeze/traverse underneath a rock roof. In any case we finished the descent faster than the other couple who did the full traverse over to the south peak, and while hiking out we again spent at least 20 extra minutes picking berries. This was better than anything I’ve done in B.C. so we had to take advantage of that. We eventually finished the round trip in 9 hours but 3 hours of which was “stopped time”. I managed to drove us eastwards to Oppdal afterwards where Erica found another Norwegian restaurant that stayed open until 9 pm, and then drove all the way southwards to near Lillehammer by midnight. It wasn’t obvious where would be the best car-camping spot but I did find an excellent one a few hundred meters off on a dirt road that was also near the lake’s shore.

On our last day in Norway we woke up more or less naturally at around 8:30 am as we were both exhausted from the lack of sleep. The plan was to drive another 4 hours southwards to Oslo to explore the city of the capital and I did need to be back to the airport no later than 4 pm for the flight to Bergen, so we didn’t really have that much time at all. Erica did her research and found several worthy stop points in the city but that was basically it. We had a total of less than 2 hours to do anything. After landing in Bergen I got to meet the legendary peak-bagger Petter Bjørstad for the first time, and drove together to his house. Adam was also there and we would together fly to Ulaan Bataar on the following day to start the long trip in Mongolia.