Last of summer - one more hike

This weekend, Michael, Mariah and I had big plans to do an overnight hike to Trolltunga. You've seen its picture - the tongue of rock sticking out over the fjord with people doing leaps? Well, summer ended, kaboom, and knocked out that plan. Saturday had heavy rain.

Mariah's dad, Tom, is here for a couple of weeks. We couldn't let him miss out on hiking on the mountains around here! Sunday's weather forecast was better, so we decided on a hike. The highest mountain in the Bergen area is Gullfjellet. I've never hiked it, for no good reason. We added Zoltan to our group and headed out. White birches agains fall colors!

The weather was cloudy and windy, with some sunbreaks.

Tom, Mariah, Zoltan, and Michael

Seattle friends, notice that Mariah has on a Mariners cap! Michael carried a cooler full of shish-kebabs, dreaming of a BBQ up top. Strong man.

Navigating was fun. I brought a map which Tom liked, plus I brought my new GPS thingie, but we still ended up at a cabin with a map that showed we had taken a wrong turn. I keep expecting trails to be more clearly "trail-like". The path that looked like one to go take a picture of a waterfall was actually our turn. The trail has changed since Opptur Hordaland was published, too.

Back on the trail, we found the numbered cairns at #7. Mariah and I were relieved to find evidence that we were on the trail, but Michael was disappointed, knowing that #26 was our goal.

We got to see if our boots were waterproof on the trail. They were.

This is #10, where we took a break.

Michael had carried up a tarp and a windbreak! Wow!

Sitting overlooking all the miles of golden grasses and lovely little lakes, Tom came up with the right description, "stark beauty".

Unfortunately, the wind was too strong to have a BBQ. Zoltan had tweaked his knee, too, so we headed back down after eating our cold food.

That bridge was where we took a wrong turn on the way up.

Conquering Gullfjellet is left for another day.
P.S. Tom gave me the clue needed to get the route off of my GPS, so you can see it. We started at the right, looped up and down, then headed to the left. The left-most point is our break point,