 Skardalsegga and Skardalstind seen from Kyrkja
Friday 20th August We started out from my grandfathers' house in Denmark near Helsingør. Low pressure and heavy rain dominated the week before our departure and I felt that we had timed our trip very well. Heavy showers and rain drummed down the night before and into the morning as we departed close on 6.30am. We were soon at Helsingør for the ferry to Helsingborg. The weather looked brighter but there were still showers over the inland parts of Sweden as we made the crossing to Helsingborg. During the drive up between Helsingborg and Goteborg the weather got progressively drier and brighter and revealed a fantastic blue sky of a clarity that I have seldom seen in England. I knew we were in for some good weather now.  Hello Sweden (Helsingborg) The drive up to Leirvassbu felt daunting. I reckoned that it would take an extra two hours to drive round from Gjendesheim to Leirvassbu. I found that estimated extra driving time to be pretty accurate in the end. We had driven up for nearly thirteen hours that day with only a 15 minute break at Fagernes and two diesel stops. It was an exhausting drive but my dad has done driving times like that plenty of times before. Whilst the entire drive is scenically much nicer than driving up the M6 in the UK, it's the drive up beyond Oslo that's best. The valley between Hønefoss and Fagernes is thickly wooded with few farms. The valley sides that are periodically quite dramatic. It captures and holds the attention without risk of falling asleep. Despite the prettiness of this valley, I felt like falling asleep when we arrived at Fagernes at 3.45pm. I so far had no drink that day which probably explained the headache I had. Fagernes seemed to be a bustling town similar in size to Fort William but without the council estates!  Surtningssua seen from the road near Leirungsdalen We were off at 4.00pm and I reckoned that we had about three more hours of driving to get round to Leirvassbu. Clouds seemed to be brewing up to the north and the sight of the Bitihorn with a mass of cloud behind it made the place feel bleak. The bleakness was emphasised by the tundra environment we were driving through with loads of rock and not much grass. We arrived at Valdresflya and beyond we could see the skies clearing. We would be saved a drenching when setting up the tent! Now we were driving in bright sunshine past Gjendesheim and back into forest. The mountains of the Gaustall Vestfjell (to the east of the road) appeared in the evening sun to look akin to some Cairngorm summits. We dropped steeply into the valley containing Lom and its blue-green lake:- Ottavatnet and continued westwards along a faster road towards Leirvassbu. Lomsegga was a very prominent silhouette with the sun behind it. Beyond Lom, the valley narrowed and deepened and revealed the edge of the high mountains of Jotunheimen towering high above us. Their height from the valley bottom looked both menacing and daunting from this angle and I was glad the car would be bringing us up from the lowly height of 300m at Lom to 1400m at Leirvassbu. We left the main road and set off up the toll road that went up Leirdalen. Time to get the camera out and go mad with photographs! The river was a milky grey from the glacial rockflour and some of the glaciers themselves were pretty wild with some showing cross sections of the ice being ~ 50metres thick! Other glaciers protruded precariously over hanging valleys and seemed like they would periodically release large lumps of ice into the valley below. No I wouldn't want to camp beneath one of those glaciers. The fact is the trees beneath some glaciers were flattened! Hmm, now I wonder why that is !?
We arrived at Leirvassbu at 7.00pm and walked round Leirvatnet and then camped. The parking was free unlike the parking at Gjende which charges ~15 NKr a day. It was a fantastic evening and I couldn't leave my camera alone especially when the last rays of sunshine turned the glaciers red! It was going to be a cold night ahead.
Saturday 21st August
We left our sacks at the col between Kyrkja and Kyrkje - oksle. The ascent was up a moderately steep boulder slope before easing in angle. Then a small rockstep was ascended before the angle eased again. Ahead lay the final scramble to the summit. This was as far as we went. I decided not to tackle the scramble after looking at the big drops either side of the scramble. It had been a long time since I did scrambling (last time was October 1998 up the Y Gribin ridge of Snowdon) and I decided to act on the cautious side. This caution had probably developed from going alone so many times in the Highlands of Scotland where you know you are a long way from help if you need it.
After lunch we left the crowds and headed up to the Kyrkje oksle. Despite the forbidding appearance of Visbretinden, I decided to just walk along the ridge eastwards to beef up the day and get some good pictures. The going was rocky and mostly over bedrock rather than huge boulders so the going wasn't too bad. Yet it still seemed to take an age to walk just 1km along the ridge. I was reminded of how slow progress can be over such terrain. I got a few good snaps and the day was wearing on so we got back to the packs and headed down to the lake of Høgvagltjønnen via Høgvaglen. Despite a direct descent looking possible on the map to the lake, there were barriers of Slabs and loose rock barring the descent.
It's worth bearing in mind that the slopes above 1400m are typically rock rather than grass and as such, gradients that you may consider easy on grass can become much more hazardous on rock. It's also worth considering how many shattered cliffs may lie hidden in the contours of the map. The slightest kink in the contour lines of an otherwise easy slope on the map may indicate trouble. As such, it's worth doing a recce of the mountain you intend to climb. Doing a recce is often best done on foot but I find that photos of the peaks seen in books and numerous websites to be of great help. Thankfully at the altitude of 1440m we found a great place to camp with a great view south-westwards to the Svartdalen and Leirungsdalen mountains. From this angle those peaks looked unfamiliar despite having been there two years ago. We eventually settled down to a fine night looking forward to climbing Skardalstinden the next day.
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