Norwegian Mountains

Beinatjørnvarden, 500m (Midtfjellet)
Kinno, 571m

Fylke/Kommune : Hordaland/Fitjar
Maps : 1114-I Fitjar (Statens Kartverk, Norge 1:50 000)
Primary factor : Beinatjørnvarden: 102m
Primary factor : Kinno: 98m
Hiked : Dec 2004
See also : Handfjellsåta
See also : Kattnakken
See also : Mehammarsåta
See also : Melsåta
Kinno seen from Midtfjellet

Kinno seen from Midtfjellet

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Introduction

Midtfjellet is the dominating plateau on the northern side of Stord Island, with Beintjørnvarden as the high point. Kinno is the highest mountain west of the Mehammarsåta - Kattnakken high plateau, but Kinno is not considered an independent mountain on this web-site, having only a primary factor of 98m (100 is the minimum) towards Mehammarsåta. It is quite a paradox that Beinatjørnvarden, being 71m lower, barely makes it on my list, having a primary factor of 102m towards Mehammarsåta.

The views from these mountains are very good, but most of the east-to-southeast views are blocked by Mehammarsåta and Kattnakken. The good news is that a good mountain road takes you all the way to Lake Svartavatnet (389m), located at the foothills of Kinno and Beinatjørnvarden. "T" trails take you up the two summits.

This mountain road, as well as the suggested windmills on Midtfjellet, have caused (I assume - strong) debate between locals and environmentalists. It is not the purpose of this web-site to have a political point of view, but now that the road is in place, I'm quite sure that more people get more exercise than they otherwise would. I expected that I would see no one on my 2nd day of Christmas hike. But I counted 15 people on my way down the mountain. And by looking at the tracks, a larger number of people had already visited Lake Svartavatnet while I was on the mountain. This is obviously a popular hike!

Primary factor:

Beinatjørnvarden (M711: 500m, Ø.K: 499,53m) has a primary factor of 102m towards the higher Grønafjellet (623m) and subsequently Mehammarsåta. The saddle is found N of Lake Svartavatnet. Ref. Økonomisk Kartverk (5m contours), you cross the 400m contours on the high route, but not 395m. The saddle height has been interpolated to 398m. This is not in accordance to the M711 map, where you never cross the 400m contours. Also, based on my GPS readings, I doubt that the summit is 500m. My GPS was right on target (571m) on Kinno, but never exceeded 496m on Beinatjørnvarden. I have however chosen to stay with the height given on the maps.

Kinno (M711: 571m, Ø.K: No height. Highest contour is 565m) has a primary factor of 93m towards the higher Grønafjellet (623m). The saddle is found N of Lake Mosavatnet. Ref. Økonomisk Kartverk (5m contours), you cross the 475m contours on the high route, but not 470m. The saddle height has been interpolated to 473m. The mountain is only 2m from making it to my list of independent Hordaland mountains.

Trail descriptions:

Notes: Class ratings are in reference to YDS. Click here for more information.

The trails described below are not necessarily the *easiest* trails to this mountain.

Fitjarelva - Kinno - Beinatjørnvarden round-trip (winter)

Difficulty : Class 1
Exposure : No
Comments : Mostly on trail in summer/autumn
Distance : Approx. 15Km round-trip
Time : Approx. 5-7 hours round-trip (w/o pause)
Starting Elev.: Approx. 70m or 110m
Vertical Gain : Approx. 800m (total)

Map of the area
Map of the area
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Detailed map
Detailed map
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Access

From Bergen, follow highway E39 southbound towards Halhjem (outside Os). The distance is approx. 23,5Km from the RV580/E16 junction at Nesttun to Halhjem. Take the ferry to Sandvikvågen on Stord. Drive up a hill (approx. 700m) and turn right towards "Fitjar". Follow this road (through the place Fitjar) for approx. 7,2Km from where you turned towards Fitjar. Turn left onto an unsigned, narrow road. Follow this road for approx. 800m. You are in a 3-way junction. Turn right. After approx. 350m from this junction, you pass a small cabin. You may continue 300m up to the end of the road. The mountain road that continues is blocked by a gate. In winter, some choose to leave the car at the lower parking, as the last hill can be difficult when the road is icy.

The route

In short, follow the mountain road all the way to Lake Svartavatnet.

I chose to ascend Kinno from the south end of Lake Svartavatnet, which means I had to traverse the Kinno ridge twice. This was an easy ascent. A better alternative is to hike up from the south end of Lake Midtvatnet, and I can only say that the ridge from Midtvatnet looked fairly easy, although steeper than the ascent from Svartavatnet. Both ascents are off-trail, but you will run into a cairn path on the Kinno ridge.

After visiting Kinno (marked by a proper cairn), head northbound towards Lake Svartavatnet, and follow the ridge down to the meadow near Lake Mosavatn. This descent is partly steep, but should cause no problems. Either follow the cairn path (which I don't know where exactly leads), or continue across the meadow towards the hump on the other side. Pass this hump to the left and find an good route down towards the north end of Lake Svartavatnet. Down by the lake, you will join a path coming from Mehammarsåta. You will notice a peculiar rock at the north end of the lake. There is a trail register by this rock (may be emptied late autumn) Follow the path northwest up to 490m elevation (the path continues around the north side of Midtfjellet) and then break off-trail westbound towards Beinatjørnvarden. The summit is marked by a proper cairn, and a summit register box (may be emptied late autumn).

From Beinatjørnvarden, follow a cairn path towards point 491m. Either follow the cairn path, or break southeast down to Lake Svartavatnet and the mountain road, or proceed southwest and join the mountain road near Olstjørna.

Trip report Dec 26 2004

For the first time since Nov 21, we were promised a good week-end day. And what a day the 2nd day of Christmas turned out to be! As I expected it to get cold, I chose lower mountains for this Sunday. I have good clothes, but the dog hasn't. And after having put him through a blizzard on Fusafjellet last week, I had bad conscience afterwards.

I left Bergen early and took the 08:00AM ferry from Halhjem. The outside temperature varied, but I did read -9 somewhere along the road to Halhjem. I spent the hour on the ferry trying to figure out how to get up to these mountains. I had plans to do both Kinno and Beinatjørnvarden, and looked for a trailhead somewhere in-between. My choice fell on a road leading towards Fitjarelva river. A trail was running up along the river, and all in all, this looked like a good place to start.

I had brought along the skis, and hoped that the west side of the Stord island was rugged, and with little forest. It had been snowing for a week, and I didn't even consider the usual up-to-the-knees-in-snow hike. After driving back and forth on the road between Fitjar and Vik, I found the right exit. At a 3-way junction, I decided to turn right, and the road seemed to continue upwards for kilometers. But at the start of the first hill, I parked the car. The road was icy, and I decided to stay out of any trouble.

We left the car 09:50AM. Troll showed no interest in walking, and I wrapped him in a warm fleeze sweater and put him in the backpack. There was barely any snow, and I might just as well walk up the road. But this was to be a ski-trip, even with 0,5cm snow. On top of a long hill, there was only gravel. As I was strapping the skis to the backpack, another hiker caught up with me. He told me that this road was leading all the way to Lake Svartavatnet. He didn't think the snow conditions improved, and when I got a good look at the mountain sides, I decided to leave the skis by a small building along the mountain road. Troll was delighted about the company and wanted to get down on the ground. The three of us walked together up to Lake Svartavatnet.

My plan had been to ski directly up to Kinno, but since Troll was walking, I decided to continue to Svartavatnet. By the lake, I parted with the other hiker and headed up a hill towards the Kinno ridge. Troll was now in the backpack. I spent some time with my new GPS along the way. During the 6 years with my former GPS, I had never really missed the possibility of having a map on the GPS. Now that I had the map, I must admit it was great fun. To avoid falling for the temptation of relying on this cool device only, I used the paper map for navigation. It's however a great comfort that if things should ever turn ugly, the map feature can turn out to be quite useful.

I reached Kinno 11:50AM. The ascent was tiresome, as the snow reached halfway up to my knees, and the snow-free patches of grass, sunk when I stepped on them. On the high ridge, there was more rock to walk on. I decided to continue with my round-trip plan. We took a short break on Kinno. Troll got his lunchbox while I was taking pictures and simply ENJOYING the day to the fullest. A nice temperature had come along with the sun, and I was only wearing a sweater and a fleeze jacket. Once Troll was done, I put him into the backpack and headed back the ridge.

I descended down the Kinno north ridge and found a doable route down to Lake Svartavatnet. The snow slowed me down a good bit, but I at least I was moving on. I found a path which was possible to follow even if snow covered it. After a 100m (vertical meters) ascent, we reached Beinatjørnvarden 13:30PM. I was starting to look forward to get back to the mountain road. The snow was a bit exhausting, but one a fine day like this, it didn't matter much. I chose a direct route down to the lake instead of taking a more obvious shortcut. This was because I wanted Troll - the "downhill dog" - to walk all the way back to the car.

And so he did. First he walked the 2Km to where I had left my skis. The time was now approx. 14:30PM, and I started to wonder if I could reach the 15:00PM ferry. I told Troll to run like crazy down the road and put the skis on. Troll ran non-stop the remaining 2Km to the car. After a clearing the windows from frost, we were on our way towards the ferry by 14:47PM. By the time we reached Sandvikvågen after 9Km of driving, we had "plenty of time" before the ferry departed at 15:00PM. I was wet and probably not smelling my best. I chose to stay in the car during the 1 hour ferry ride. I put on a dry sweater, but got quite cold. I felt like the guys from "Dumb & Dumber", as they arrived Aspen. The steam from my clothes froze on the windows, and if I wanted to drive off the ferry with a minimum of visibility, I had to keep a window open. Brr...

On the way home, the moon caught my attention. I couldn't remember seeing a moon as crisp and clear as this one. The sunset was purple. Yes, purple. I arrived Bergen around 16:30PM and it was still light enough to see the features on the local mountains. And sunset was 1 hour ago!

Pictures from the Dec 26 2004 hike

Move cursor to read notes, and click on the images to see full version.
Some of the thumbnails may have been cropped to fit the format.

PANORAMAS WILL EVENTUALLY GET MOUNTAIN NAMES ONCE DETAILS HAVE BEEN SORTED OUT

1. The lower trailhead by Fitjarelva (67KB) 2. The upper trailhead by Fitjarelva (128KB) 3. The coastline seen on my way to Svartavatnet (265KB) 4. Arriving Lake Midtvatnet (232KB) 5. Lake Svartavatnet seen on my way to Kinno (279KB) 6. Lake Midtvatnet seen on my way to Kinno (265KB) 7. View from the Kinno ridge (433KB) 8. Kinno (and Siggjo) comes into view (118KB) 9. Rosendal mountains seen from Kinno (373KB) 10. Kattnakken tower seen from Kinno (199KB) 11. Siggjo seen from Kinno (81KB) 12. Northeast view from Kinno (622KB) 13. Seaview from Kinno (401KB) 14. Bergen mountains seen from Kinno (528KB) 15. Kinno summit, 571m elev. (93KB) 16. Troll on Kinno (122KB) 17. Lake Mosavatn seen from the Kinno ridge (404KB) 18. On the way down from Kinno (307KB) 19. Midtfjellet and Lake Svartavatnet (318KB) 20. Lake Svartavatnet (127KB) 21. Rock by Lake Svartavatnet (129KB) 22. View from Midtfjellet (439KB) 23. Beinatjornvarden summit (697KB) 24. Northeast view (zoom) from Beinatjornvarden (645KB) 25. Troll on Beinatjornvarden (169KB) 26. Beinatjornvarden (315KB) 27. Kinno seen from Midtfjellet (370KB) 28. Heading down to the trailhead (98KB) 29. Full moon above Gullfjellet (79KB)

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