Norwegian Mountains - Route Descriptions - Mulbukttinden, Muvlletjåhkkå

Norwegian Mountains, Nordland

Mulbukttinden, July 19 2007

For Information, maps, trailhead and route descriptions, click HERE.

It was day three..

.. of our holiday week in northern Norway. On Tuesday, Torill and I climbed Stetind as part of a guided group, and we had a fun hike to Stefjordnestinden on Wednesday. On the hike to Stefjordnestinden, we had noticed the characteristic Mulbukttinden. Rita, the owner of Stetind Hotell had a map that outlined a path under the powerline. The target for Thurday's hike had now been settled.

After the awesome (nice and large) dinner on Wednesday's evening, breakfast on Thursday wasn't all that necessary. Neither was the lunch-bag, but Torill made sure I brought one (ref. Stefjordnestinden trip report for the point). On Thursday morning, we said goodbye to Rita, thanked her for her warm hospitality and checked out of Stetind Hotell. We then headed to the Mulbukttinden trailhead in our rental car.

Yet another training day

We left the trailhead outside the Brattlitunnelen tunnel 09:05AM. After a few minutes in the forest, we found the path below the power line. The path was vague, but visible enough. This mountain certainly didn't have visitors every day. After an uneventful hike up the forest, I figured we should break away from the path and scramble our way up to the mountain ridge.

After some easy scrambling, we arrived the mountain ridge at 540m elevation, and I immediately suggested that we should climb a very distinct rock. This would be the balance training. The rock was succeeded by two small cliffs, and now we were rolling.

Torill and I had begun our climbing careers with Store Skagastølstind (not together), then Romsdalshorn and now recently, Stetind. We had skipped the basic stuff. The stuff that's supposed to get you ready for climbs like that. Every rock we can scramble means valuable practice. I'm the eager beaver and scrambles every rock I come up. Torill follows .. willingly :)

Climbing??

We reached Mulbukttinden summit 10:55AM. I watched down the east face and felt that I was going through a mental change. The change begun already while climbing Stetind, watching climbers on the southern pillar. I wanted to climb that route. Now that I was looking down from Mulbukttinden, I felt the same thing. These routes seemed to be the natural transition from my level of climbing (Norwegian grade 4-5) and "up a notch". Perhaps it was the numerous ledges that was the comforting factor. Big-wall climbing scares the living daylights out of me, and I'm decades away of that type of climbing. And besides, I'm probably too old already...

More scrambling

Upon descent, we scrambled some more. A large rock became quite a challenge for Torill. We worked at it until she succeeded. She surprised hersef, and it was a true pleasure to watch. Now she was rollin'. Her climbing mojo was rising. We found more cliffs and she was climbing up and down like a cat. It was easy to tell that she was enjoying this, and she agreed that it was too bad that we weren't climbing Stetind the day after.

Bye, Tysfjord

We were back at the trailhead 13:15PM after a nice morning on Mulbukttinden. We now had a long drive To Harstad ahead of us. During the planning phase, we had hoped that we were able to climb Stetind within the first three days, and rather than spending the whole week in Tysfjord, we agreed to change our location. We assumed Harstad would offer some nice mountains too. The next day we hiked Sætertinden (1095m) in Kvæfjord kommune.