🗻🗻 Climbing Kyle 🗻🗻

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Hello folks!Hope y'all are doing great and stay safe on your adventures! 🏃

As some of you might have figured out from my Instagram I live in the area surrounded by mountains. The valley where our tiny village lays is protected from three sides by three stone sentinels: Knuten, Kyle and Litjegrovla. Knuten is the smallest of em'all and is 110 m high while Kyle and Litjegrovla are 503 and 709 m high respectively. Knuten is visited by dozens of tourists every week and is sort of a main-stream here. Litjegrovla has no path to the top or at least I have not found one yet. It's pretty steep and my self-preservation instinct tells me not to go there. Or at least not yet. In the end of the day it was an easy choice for me: I went to Kyle.

The path to the top of Knuten starts on a road between Mefjordvær and Senjahopen right beside a little meteostation. It is marked  as a red path. This category is given to the trails that lead to summits of the mountains that are between 500 and 1000 m high. While climbing to the top of Kyle I found another explanation of the color choice for marking the trail: it was awfully hard. At least it felt like that in the beginning. But like in any activity it is always hard in the beginning. As I was climbing higher and higher the frequency of me saying "f*ck this sh*t" gradually went to zero and was substituted by pure admiration of nordic outdoors. 

But I am getting ahead of myself. The path first goes through a forest of midget birches with crooked trunks filled with mosquitoes. By the time you are half-way through the thicket you'll get sweaty and that's what attracts mosquitoes. Well, they will be attracted to you anyway, but it feels especially annoying to be eaten alive while you are balancing on one leg trying to figure out where to put the other one. Talking about legs: this path is going to make you make an oath to never skip leg days or start having them if it wasn't the case.

It's hard to tell, but I am actually enjoying it.

Once you make it through the thicket, mosquitoes let you go and you enjoy a great view over the Mefjordvær and inhale odorous mountain air. Enjoy it because you have about two minutes before local flies give you warm welcome. Those flies acted really weird: they were sloppy in a way. I think living higher in the mountains affected their quickness and made them really slow. It looks like they had a stroke or are high. Well, high they are.

This is me half way to the top admiring the view.

I said to myself: "If flies can make it up here--I can make it higher!" And off I went. The incline was very steep and at times it was pretty hard to make my way up. On the other hand, with such an incline ground was really close to me, so I used all fourth to climb higher and higher. Plus it gave me extra stability. It was exactly what I needed as I started to be out of breath. Also I got that painful seensation in my ears that signals changing in the air pressure. I was surprised it happened already between 250-300 m above the sea level. I used to think that it is something happening way over 1000 m. I don't even want to think what is happening over 2000 m. You probably burst like a bubble.

That painful sensation in my ears sort of distracted me from the fact how tired I was, and made me think that I was somewhere "high in the mountains". Well, it was for sure higher from the places I spent most of my life at. In any case that idea helped me to push forward, up towards the summit. The higher I was climbing, the less flies there were to bother me and the better the view was getting. Our fjord looked so beautiful with its turquoise waters that I froze in admiration for a minute or two.

They say euphoria is one of the signs of  altitude sickness. 

Just look at my face. 

A view over Senjahopen. Those round things are fishfarms.

However, mountain was not going to climb itself, so I had to get going. I was making short stops on the way up just to have a sip of water and taking a picture or two to share with you, guys. The path was getting even more steep than it was in the beginning and too narrow to my liking. Muddy trail turned into a some sort of a staircase made of rocks with sharp edges. Be careful when hiking there, because some of the rocks are moving and can cause serious injury. Up there (especially on my way down) I realized how important it was to have proper shoes with good ankle support. So make sure you have proper shoes before you go climbing.

Here I started to feel like I was running on a blade.

I am afraid of heights. Very much.

There's only one remedy for stress that I know of. That is food.

I could already see the summit, so I did the last leg of my ascend in no time. Being on the top of the mountain felt...it felt special I have to say. I was thrilled to be high up there, above the last year's snow. From up there you can see really far away and that is when the air becomes visible. Let me explain: when you look towards the horizon on a sunny day, your line of sight covers a long distance, so you see all the evaporation rising up to the sky. But it is not thick enough to be called a cloud or a fog. It's a haze, yes, let's call it a haze. It is an incredible experience to stand on a summit.

The view from the top of Kyle

That is very true what they say about climbing: descend is way more dangerous than climbing up. For a simple reason that a human bodie is designed for climbing up rather than going down. So, be careful, dear friends, when going back down from a summit you just conquered. Among other important things that I realized while climbing up was an idea of pacing myself. It's not a race, after all. 

Also, you should go up with respect and curiosity. Open up your heart. It's not a conquest you are on. It's an adventure. Up there you realise how small we are for this world. We are dust. Go on and explore our beautiful planet and bear this notion in your mind!🌍⛰️🗻🏕️✌️