FROM WEST TO EAST IN 24 HOURS

Hestgrovheia and Storkluken

4. & 5 of September, 2021

SATURDAY

We are writing the 4. and 5. of September 2021. The weather forecast has promised a nice September weather so we have to get out of the house! Thanks to the fact that we have been around a lot in Trøndelag and like to look for new places, we came across Hestgrovheia. Portalenagdenes on Instagram had picked us up earlier when we posted our paddle trip on Øyangen a year ago. We then started following them and by going through the posts on their Instagram, we came across Hestgrovheia. This is Agdenes' highest peak (656 above sea level) with a fantastic view in all directions. From the top you look straight to the west and the North Sea.

To get there, from Trondheim, drive to Orkanger and follow "Riksvei" 710 out to Lensvik. Here you turn left up to Landrø and pay a small fee at a small hut on the right side of the road. Then follow the gravel road up to a small intersection where you park on the left side. The sign Vester Varden is the path you must follow. Now just put on your backpack and start walking.

Blue dot: Hestgrovheia.

Blue dot: Exit from main road.

Yellow dot: Parking.

Red dot: Hestgrovheia.

The trail is easy to follow and the altitude meters are eventually swallowed up by our leisurely pace. The sun is shining and we get better and better overview of Trondheimsleia and Øyangen. It's a little bit wet someplaces, but good hiking boots keeps the wet element out. The path takes, after a steep hill, to the left and from here you follow a small ridge. We see a cool rock formation and get "Trolltunga vibes" by looking at it., although this is very small. Still, we try to get pictures taken at such an angle that it can look like we are on Trolltunga.

After a short while we reach the barren mountain and now we notice that this is September. The wind picks up a bit and we have to wear more clothes. At a small lake, which has no name on the map, we take lunch before we continue up to the top. After refilling our batteries, we initiate the final push to the summit but first we arrive at a cabin. Up in the mountainside we have spotted some antennas and they originate from when the military had a post there.

It is a simple climb up and we arrive at the sign we have seen been posted on Instagram through #portalenagdens with the writing "Vester Varden" or Hestgrovheia as it`s also called. Here the wind is blowing harder and it is not a comfortable place to stay for a long time. We sign the book and take the pictures we want. We try to enjoy the view in all directions even if the wind is strong. Ørlandet protrudes into the water, flat and coastal, and we see the island of Hitra in the distance.

On the way down, Martin takes a bath in the water we ate lunch by, just because he thinks it's fun to swim at any time of the year. He admitted that it was cold, maybe 8-10 degrees. The trip down goes well and we are very happy to have been here. We can really recommend going here.

SUNDAY

Saturday night, after being up on Hestgrovheia, we are looking for a new place. On the way down from the mountain the day before, the thought struck me to check if there is an accessible mountain in the far east of our county. Towards Meråker and the Swedish border. Norgeskart provided the answers and we found Storkluken at 1110 meters above sea level. From the little we could find online, it said that this is an easy enough mountain the get up on. We were looking forward to get going the next day.

Blue dot: Exit from the main road and on to the road called Kluksdalen.

Red dot: Storkluken.

It is almost a two hour drive from Trondheim, but it was worth it. You follow E6 to Stjørdal, turn off towards Meråker and drive until the sign Dalådalen / Kluksdalen appears on the right side. A long gravel road takes you all the way to a farm. The farmer here has set up a parking lot for hikers and you pay 50 kroner to park here. This is a popular mountain as a race called "Storkluken up" is arranged. This is not a mountain to go to if you want to be completely alone, but at the same time there were not so many people that we had to walk in a line, either.

Blue dot: Parking.

Red dot: The summit.

It starts flat on a good and wide gravel road. After a while you see a sign that says "private road," but there is an arrow pointing to a small path that you must follow to get further up the mountain.

From here it only goes uphill in a nice mountain birch nature. We choose a place between these crooked mountain birches and eats lunch. Here I make a decision that I must have a new and better insulating sports bra. Now I'm tired of getting so wet and cold with the one I have. In a later post I will tell briefly about my nice experience with wearing Brynje's sports bra.

After lunch we head further up. At the tree line we see a bench called "Kjell's bench". We would have liked to have taken a picture of it, but it was so popular that we did not get to. Now we have reached the barren mountain and the trail is ok with some wet parts here and there. There should have been placed some wooden planks here, but since we have come up on the barren rock and it is sloping, it is probably not so easy to put them down.

We start spotting something up on the mountainside and we are soon to confirm that it is what it looks like, namely a a stone house up on the hillside. The mountain that towers above this stone house has a shape that reminds us of something we could have seen in a fantasy series a la Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings. It's really cool and we try to capture both the mountain and the stone house at an angle that matches what we see in reality, but it's difficult. Here, too, there are some people who prevent us a little from getting some good pictures, but we do what we can.

Stone house to the left.

When you get up here, there is a steep slope with more typical rock formations for a height of 1000 meters above sea level. After forcing the last steep bend, the stones lie like huge steps in front of you. However, you do not see the top. It is hidden behind another peak you have to your left. Still, it is not a long way up and people we see up there confirms that we are on the right path.

We get up and stand on the cairn. We are in Norway and Sweden at the same time. As it is still a pandemic, and at this time the borders were not open, we actually "broke" the law when we wandered around up there and were probably over on the Swedish side. We joked that now we must be in quarantine as we had been in Sweden.

Sweden in the distance.

The wind obviously made it unpleasant to be up here for a long time, so after signing the book and taking pictures we started down again. Hovever, we did not follow the same path down from the top. We chose to go to different peak, the one that looked so special from below at the stone house. Just below this peak there were quite special boulders that could look like thrones. Here, of course, we had to pose and pretend we were in both "Game of Thrones" and "Lord of the Rings" land. A funny thing to do.

A little chocolate break at the stone house was good to take before we continued down. It was nice to finaly walk downhill again since my legs were really worn from walking uphill. After all, we had climbed a mountain the day before as well.

Not a bad place to take a breath and eat some chocolate.

The "Kodak moment" used to be a moment worth capturing on film, at least before it was understood as "missing the chance". Anyway, we had such a moment on the way down, but of course without any of us having a camera. A small bridge was to be forced and Martin went first. Due to some mud and wet ground on the wooden planks, he lost his balance and made an impressive fall that included a somersault with a screw outside the small bridge. It went well, but it looked very stupid. His movements were sort of all over the place, first forward, then to the side before he finally landed backward. We laughed well afterwards and luckily no one else there saw it and he did not get hurt.

We were a happy bunch when we got down to the car and felt that this was one of the weekends we will remember well in retrospect. The funniest thing to think about was that in just 24 hours we had been far west and far east in the county. Nice combination. By all means, take the trip to Storkluken and enjoy the beautiful nature.

God tur!