Last night the rest of the group decided to take advantage of the clear night and 24 hour sunlight to skin up a mountain we can see from our cottage, the 687m Rundfjellnasen, at 23:30, getting back down at 02:30. They had a great time skinning in what Patrik called the “blue hours” where it’s the darkest point of the day but the sun still sheds enough light to see without needing head torches.
We had a late start the following morning, our sense of time is getting warped by the unending sun. We headed down to Lyngseidet to stock up on provisions, and then drove through to park at 713217. There was no snow this low down here, so the first few hundred metres of climping was a mixture of skinning and booting over snow, mud, and rocks, but before long we were touring up sticky wet snow.
The visibility again wasn’t great, so we took care with the navigation and took several GPS fixings to make sure we’d be able to find our way back if the weather really closed in. The summit we were heading for was Fastdalstinden, which being a popular mountain had tracks leading most of the way up. As we feared the weather did close in but the navigation was fairly easy, skirting to the west of Loktosvarri before cutting to the north west to skin up the broad ridge to the summit. The tracks had disappeared at this point, and with the summit obscured by fog we had to follow a bearing to the top.
After a quick cup of tea we followed our track back down, pausing at the eastern edge of the shoulder to enter some coordinates into the GPS to make sure we were on track. The fog had really come in, and visibility was down to ten yards, but after a short ski following the compass and GPS we dropped out of the really dense fog and enjoyed the ski back to the car.