Mount Skåla - the Great Butt and Legs Workout

I hiked Skala last summer (almost a year ago) and I can still remember how painful it was. Tomio and I didn't really put Mt Skala on our list of must-sees but kinda threw it in our itinerary just in case we had time. .

I think it was this one time where we were looking for a camping spot when we chanced upon the starting point for Mt Skala (there were a few camp sites around that area). By that time we had already failed Trolltunga and Hornelen, and we thought fine, let's try Mt Skala.

Btw, this was our expectation of Mt Skala (photo from Flickr)

There's a little cabin at the top, which legend says used to house sick people. I don't believe this, because I cannot imagine someone sick trekking up this mountain. Like I said, I remembered it to be painful. Skala is about 1843m above sea levels, and an average hiker would take about 3-4 hours to reach the top. But we all know Norwegians are not your average hikers. Apparently they have a competition every year called La Sportiva Skaala Uphill, also known as Northern Europe's Toughest Uphill Race. The record is 1h7mins. Yupp. Tomio and I took 4 hours. And of course we didn't know all these before we climbed, so we basically entered a torture zone with zero clue.

Nevertheless, the views were quite sick. We walked past green pastures, rocky plains, and then snow, then green pastures, then rocky plains and I had to keep taking out and wearing my outwear cause the temp changes quite a bit along the way too. Anw, enough said, here are some pictures/videos of our hike. Didnt take much cause we were so shag. I looked terrible too - you can see the pain in my face. Also, sorry but the video quality is not the best. They were all filmed on Tomio's phone cause obviously we were too tired to take out the cameras.

This is us all bright-eyed and chirpy at the start of the hike. Oh yes, the first part of the trail was already steep lelelel.

Dont think we walked very far at this point but I was already drenched in sweat:

Took some pictures with the pretty view:

Also I'm looking back at the videos and Tomio says "almost there" in most of them. We were far from being "almost there" at this point LOL

More pretty views and a little break. Note: jacket on.

Look! I was perspiring but it was cold so I had my jacket on. It was a weird situation. You'd think I just need a windbreaker but honestly it was cold cold.

Also, most of the time I was walking behind Tomio. So we reached one part where he was like hmm, need to climb. Please see video below (it's much steeper and scarier than it looks here)

I was like wlao, if I fall I die already. Tomio thought it was a pretty cool obstacle so he decided to film me. My legs were wobbly too btw. So after I climbed up on my hands and knees, I saw the people who were behind me casually walked past us. And I was ??!!?? How??!?! Turns out there were properly paved out steps RIGHT NEXT to these bunch of rocks. Hiking myopia is real guys. Why do we make things more difficult for ourselves why?

Ok then there was this pretty young looking lady with her two kids who zoomed past us. They were wearing shorts, the kids carried water bottles only, and mum only had a fanny pack slung around her arms like a handbag. That was it. Climbing as though this was a hill. I bet they reached the top in 1.5 hours or something. When I grow up I wanna be just like her :( The lady was super fit and here's Tomio calling her an aunty:

It got wayyyy colder when we were approaching the top and had to trek on snow. I hated it LOL there's this certain faintness it caused me cause everything was white. Would've worn my sunglasses but I was too lazy to get them out.

And at this point I was really quite tired already. My legs felt super heavy and I had to tell myself to lift my legs for every step. And this stone said 10 more mins to the top but I remember that being a lie (well, we were taking breaks every 10 steps though, who am I to question the stone).

And then TADAH! We finally reached the cabin! Look at the view!!!! There was none!!!! We were freeeeeezing and starving so we hid in the little house for a while. Also, remember the lady with two kids, they had already zoomed down in the other direction and was probably 1/4 of their way down.

We had our dehydrated meal and it was pretty awesome actually. And there were two ladies with a cute doggo who were resting inside too. They had been walking for the past 7 days (think they covered 200km?? If that's even possible).

After a nice warm break we headed down and it ws pretty straightforward. There was this couple we crossed paths with. Dont think they made it to the top cause the wife was having knee troubles. Anw the husband looked like the most badass person. They were probably in their 50s and the husband had knives on his boot and a cool beard. But he was the sweetest to his wife, helping her slowly down every step. When we got back to the base we saw an ambulance waiting and found out that they've been called up to get the couple :( The wife must have been in a lot of pain.

But yeah, Mount Skala was definitely a hike to remember. We felt like the unfittest bunch after just cause the locals were so fast with the hike. Our butts and calves also ached like mad the next day. It wasn't even a nice little ache - it was pain level at 100% with every step we took. Our butts were probably perkier too. I loved Mount Skala - knowing it is one of Europe's toughest climb made us feel better about the aches too. But yknow, if you want to experience a great workout, just casually head to Mt Skala for that. Guaranteed results in 8 hours.