I can see Ånnfjället and Gråstöten from my kitchen window. As it was with Blåstöten last year, it has been annoying to see Gråstöten every time I look out the window, but not have been to the peak yet. I conquered Ånnfjället many years ago, in fact it was one of the first mountains I’ve ever done. It didn’t make any impact on me, I thought it was rocky and barren and I’ve never wanted to go back, especially because I hated the initial climb through the forest. But now I had to tackle it again in order to get to Gråstöten, and I discovered that my initial impression was correct – I still hate it. But then the mountain above the forest, it was completely different from what I remembered!
On the way to Gråstöten I walked around on the south side of Ånnfjället. There’s a shallow and wide valley between the mountains and instead of going straight across the valley, I curved around it, keeping myself at around 1000m of altitude. Gråstöten is only 1124m masl and the northern side (where I was coming from) has a very gentle profile so it was almost no effort to reach the top. Shame about the weather again, it was warm but thankfully a bit more wind than yesterday so the bug problem wasn’t as bad, but the light was very counter-productive. Impossible to do any meaningful wideangle landscapes so I ended up concentrating on the details.
On the way back, I took a different route. It was a bit difficult to follow the 1000m line because there was a lot of wet places and the ground was often covered in low bushes, forcing me to constantly find ways around the difficult spots. So now I decided to just simply take the high road and walked over the Ånnfjället ridge to get to the trail, which would only cost me the trouble of gaining the altitude but save me all the trouble of wetland and bushes. And this was a good idea, not just because it was easier, but because I got to see Ånnfjället again and discover that it was not at all as boring as I had remembered it! I found a lot of good opportunities that only require better light so one day I will have to force myself to do that stupid hike through the forest again. But at least then I should get a nice reward for the effort!
I had a nice timing with my hike. It started raining about five minutes before I reached my car, and when I got to Ljusnedal (where the sun was shining) I saw that Ånnfjället was drenched!
