Tuesday 26 July 2011

Blåtinden

Another ti-på-topp tur on a warm Sunday, this time we chose a proper mountain, 1180 m high. Blåtinden, or better known as the 'sovende soldat', the sleeping soldier, at the southern end of Lavangsdalen about 30 km SE of Tromsø. There were very few people here and most of them were going down when we went up, so we had the top for ourselves. Blåtinden is one of the mountains with a nearly flat top plateau, a relatively common but not well understood landscape feature that I am interested in. This particular plateau is virtually parallel to the bedding/layering in the quartzitic rocks, there is little evidence of glacial erosion, and the stones appear to be more or less in situ.

A common 'bad' habit many geologists have is to pick up interesting rocks. On the way up we saw some very rounded out of place looking rocks that I picked up and the top plateau is littered with flat quartzite rocks that would be perfect as stepping stones in the garden. So we both filled up our backpacks with quite a few kilo's of rocks and the walk down the mountain took therefore nearly as long as the walk up. Good exercise I guess ;-)

Blåtinden looks like a sleeping soldier when approached from the south

Looking W over Balsjorden

Halfway

Stony top plateau

View W: low hanging clouds over Lyngen

Large cairn on the top

Looking NE

Gjømmerdalen

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