Sylan
The summit on the right-hand side of the picture is Storsylen, at 1743 meters (5717 ft) the highest peak in Sylan, a small cluster of mountains on the Norway-Sweden border east of Trondheim. In late August we went there with the uncertain hope that at least some of us might get to the top -- with unfamiliar maps, terrain, and weather we just weren't sure how the 18 kilometer round trip from nearby Nedalshytta would go. The weather cooperated spectacularly, and we all hiked at family pace past the lake in the picture to where the trail started the serious climb, up the steep slopes to the left of the peak. Molly and Rick made the scramble up to the summit and made it back to the hut just in time for supper.
Here's a view looking back down from near the summit. The big lake in the distance is Nesjøen (the southern or left hand end) or Esaandsjøen (other end), the product of a two-stage exercise in damming that apparently drowned a lot of prime wetlands for breeding birds. Norway is never as wild as it seems... Nedalshytta is located near the southern end of the lake, so we entered this picture stage right and wandered over the slopes to the left of the tarn. On the way back down, Molly and Rick took a quick dip there.
Here we are on the top, with stupid looks on our faces but still in shorts and t-shirts. It does actually get warm in Norway sometimes -- even in the mountains.
Here's Molly with her right foot in Sweden and her left in Norway.
On the Swedish side there is a small remnant glacier with an odd hump in the middle, kind of like a scoop of ice cream in a bowl. Pour a few million liters of hot fudge over it and you'd have new contender for the world's biggest sundae!
And here is a dramatic pattern of crevasses and swirls in the ice layers on the upper reaches of the glacier.
The lower part of the climb was on quite steep slopes of loose dry till, the upper was a climbing traverse across this boulder field -- both rather hard on the knees during the descent.
Here's a future project for the same area: a ridgetop traverse over the whole range...