A Trip to Lyngen

July 25-30, 2005.

We walked from Lyngseidet to Svensby, over Rotenvikvatn, Russdalen, and Stortinddalen. We tried to climb two mountains: Istinden and Trolltinden, but were stopped 100m before summit for different reasons. At Istinden there was a high vertical pitch in the ridge, which we could have contoured via a snow gully, but we have left our ice axes behind and did not want to take risks. At Trolltinden, snowfall and poor visibility destroyed our motivation to continue the whole length of the ridge.

To compare with the Alps, you can add around 2000m to the altitudes to get the corresponding climate and vegetation zones. This implies that you can get to an essentially high-alpine terrain without vertically long approaches. For instance, in Istinddalen there is a glacier reaching down to 200m. But you may have to walk quite a bit from the road and definitely carry everything with you! Despite the growing popularity of Lyngen, we did not see any other human beings during the six.day hike.

You can click on the pictures to make them bigger. The jpg file size is around 1M.

Picture 1: Kjostinden, our first destination, from the Lyngen fjord.