
Norwegian Mountains, Møre og Romsdal
Regndalstindane
Råna and Midtre Regndalstind, July 8 2008
To the main Regndalstindane page (maps,
route descriptions, etc.)
The route to the Råna plateau
(Click for larger image)
4:15am, I woke up in my tent at Haukåssætra in
Urkedalen. My first thought went to the GPS I had lost while descending
Urkedalstinden the day before. Today's
project would
be to ascend Midtre Regndalstind and Råna, and then head back up Grøtdalen to
see if I
could recover the GPS.
5am, the tent was tucked away in the car, and I was on my way up Urkedalen.
The weather
was nowhere as brilliant as the day before, but I didn't expect any rain. I was
able to follow
the path well into Nordkopen, but then I lost it. The original plan was to head
up to the
Regndalstindane - Elsandtindane saddle and gain the ridge from there, but now I
was focused
on saving energy for my Grøtdalen hike later in the day. So I just picked a
random route
along the small waterfalls. Besides, I couldn't quite see where the Nordkopen
route ran.
There was still a lot of snow, and the slab rock looked steep.
Soon, I was up in the basin (or plateau) below Midtre Regndalstind and had a
strenuous walk
on snow ahead of me. For every step, I sunk in a little and this was exhausting.
Arriving at the foot of the
steepest hill, I pulled out the ice-axes, mainly to poke in the snow to see it
was firm. This was not a place I wanted to be in for long. Huge chunks of snow up to my
right could
come down at any given time. The primary exposure to these chunks was further
down in the basin.
Right now, I was just focused on not falling through a lurking hole and
disappear under the snow.
I aimed for the leftmost of the two rock features on the ridge and the ascent of
the ridge
was quite trivial. I then followed the route towards Råna until I got a good overview of
Midtre Regndalstind.
Midtre Regndalstind
(Click for larger image)
I chose to ascend along the snow,
and put the crampons on. The
snow was quite
hard here in the shade.
High up on Midtre Regndalstind, the snow got very steep, and I felt
uncomfortable. Rather than to descend and find a better route, I traversed the steepest section and didn't enjoy it one bit.
To get the axes
properly into the snow, I had to lean backwards. But this pitch didn't last very
long and soon, and it was mainly my lack of experience on steep snow that made
me uncomfortable.
Soon,
I was on safe ground, just meters away from the summit.
I arrived on the summit 7:50am and the weather was now back to brilliant. In one
direction, I
could study the beautiful Urkedalstinden, which I visited the day before. In the
opposite direction
was Råna, my next stop. The Regndalsbreen glacier laid white and shiny before my
feet.
I have this thing for descriptive mountain names.
Regndalstindane (Rain Valley
Peaks), Vintervindskaret
(Winter Wind Pass) and Synnavindsnipa (Southern Wind Peak). All seen
from my little spot
on Midtre Regndalstind. Also close were Hundatinden (Dog Peak),
Blåbretinden (Blue Glacier Peak), Slogen and Jakta (not easily
translated). And the view wasn't bad either.. It was time to visit Råna, and I
slightly dreaded the descent. I was about to descend the
west ridge
(towards my ascent route from Urkedalen), but something made me take a closer
look at the steep
snow. I discovered a narrow passage that had melted away, between the snow and
the steep drop towards
Regndalsbreen. With great care, I maneouvered myself down to safe ground.
Scrambling along the humps of Råna
(Click for larger image)
The walk towards Råna was a plod on rock and wet snow. I arrived on the
Råna summit
8:45pm.
I was already aware of some humps along the east ridge, but I had to blink twice (at
least) when I
saw the exposure. As Råna's high point may be on one of these humps, I
had to go there too. I descended a few meters, left my backpack and headed up to the first hump,
which was surprisingly
trivial (just a walk, really). I had to scramble down to the next saddle. The ridge up
to hump #2 was
indeed sharp, but
there was a fissure on the left-hand side that I could follow. It reminded me
very much of
Slettmarkpiggen's summit (Jotunheimen). I still couldn't figure out which was
the highest point,
but after a careful study, I decided not to visit the third hump. The risk was
simply not worth it. I couldn't see
a cairn, and there
was probably a reason for it.
Back on "the mainland", I left Råna and headed back down towards Urkedalen.
Down by
the Grøtdalen junction,
I was now strongly motivated to search for the missing GPS. While descending
Grøtdalen the day before, I had constantly been trying to get to the river in
the upper part of the valley. Thus, it wasn't
difficult to retrace my steps. I was pretty sure that I had left, and not
lost the GPS. I looked through the
pictures in the camera and saw that I had been taking pictures of the waterfall,
which was still high above me.
At 670m elevation, I arrived at a spot which I remembered taking a picture from.
And sure enough - the GPS was
right there on the ground. It had stopped logging tracks 5am in the morning. All
alone. The poor thing.
Having ascended two splendid peaks AND recovered my GPS, I remember yelling
"What? What?" all over the valley, as if anyone had
claimed I couldn't find it. I probably picked up that intelligent phrase
from Martin Lawrence in one of the
Bad Boys movies. Not 100% sure, though.
My less-than-24-hour stay in the Urke region couldn't end in any better way.
11:50am, I was
back at the trailhead and had a nice drive back to Ålesund. Next stop was Næremstindan on Ørskogfjellet. Report will
follow.. |