Hike description

When you start walking in from the parking lot, there are a few hundred meters of flat road before you enter Sunndalsbakken. When you round the bend and look up the road/hill, try to catch a glimpse of the old stone walls from the two farms up below the hammer on the left. There is dense forest here, but you can see through the forest – at least before the leaves come out. Another option to see this cultural monument is to turn left up on Sunndalsbakken, go back again on the uphill side of the hill where you will find a path out towards these ruins. The farms were abandoned in 1902, and since then there has been no permanent residence on Sundal farm.
However, in the 1960s and a little into the 1970s, there was summer milking of goats on the farm.
The current owner of the farm is Ivar Jarle Åsvoll.

A little past the red house you will come to the end of the road, where there are gates on both sides of the bridge over Sunndøla.
Just after the bridge, you must go left into a path. Here are also signs for the two paths you can choose to take. The path for this description will go along the river ahead to Sunndalssetra. In local vernacular it is called – “to go Hola”. First through Småøyaner before starting the climb. A little up the first climb, you pass the border of Jostedalsbreen National Park.

In this area, there was once a time when spruce trees were planted. A few years ago, these spruce trees were removed, since this is undesirable with spruce trees in the national park.

Here, there are no grazing animals on this side of the river, which results in a large growth of grass and leaves

There are many beautiful waterfalls along the way into the valley

After passing the bridge over the river at the outbuilding, you gradually come inland towards Pineguristeinen and gradually to Hestholbakken.

At Hestholbakkjen there is a long climb. Up at the top there is a large and old pine tree on the uphill side of the road.

Soon you will come to the Tverrelva River, which dances down the mountainside from the Tverrelvskaret gorge.

During high water flows, there has previously been some difficulty getting past the rock face. However, in 2024 the landowners did a nice job of building up the rock wall where the path runs.

After passing Tverrelva and the hill up there, the path is flat all the way to Sunndalssetra.

Through the management plan for the national park (prepared in 2022), measures have been prepared under the auspices of the Jostedalsbreen National Park Board to safeguard both the paths and the saddle landscape in Sunndalen/Sunndalssetra. This is in collaboration with the landowners.

This also means that landowners who carry out prioritized tasks/work are paid for this work according to fixed hourly rates.

More information about the nature and culture trail posts can be found in separate articles.

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Tor Guddal