The basic idea behind this trip with Jonas, Julian and Adam was to go climbing at Tangowall and camp two days in the area, next day would be 15k hike with bivy and boulder equipment to Tretjonn, stay there for a night and hike a different route back to make it a round trip, but you will see how it turned out in the end.

The moment we stepped on the path we were immediately awestruck by the beauty of the giant wall, its colourful layers and the field of elephant sized boulders that stretched out from the bottom all the way to the path. The most prominent boulder resembled a lion’s head almost too well. We followed the path along the stream, past a waterfall and spread out to look for a nice campsite. Julian eventually stumbled upon what seemed to be taken straight out of a kids’ fairy-tale. The entire ground was covered in moss and a small glade let the sun come through the otherwise dense forest where two huge trees had been overturned by a storm right by the south-eastern edge of the hill.

Obviously we had no other choice but to set up camp there. Jonas and Julian put up their tent and Adam and I built a big shelter between two trees. Literally the second we finished it started to rain which suddenly turned into a serious hailstorm and minutes later the sun came out again. We used the time to build a fire pit and get a fire going to stay warm and enjoy a hot chilli con carne and a fair bit of conversation around the campfire.

The next morning after breakfast we only had about two hours of climbing in the sunlight, so we decided to explore a smaller wall on the opposite side of the stream and see if we could set up a top-rope or an abseil in the sun. Soon we discovered the rock was too porous to climb on so we set up an abseil. Once everybody had a go at it we wanted to find a spot higher up with a longer abseil, so we did that and afterwards Julian and I spent at least an hour trying to get the friction knots for climbing a rope to work. They kept tightening after a few steps although we were sure the knots were right, so we blamed the rope and headed back around the wall and up on the hill to our camp.

After the too short climbing session that day and due to the fact that we had already fallen for our campsite and the wall, we decided to stay at Tangowall for the week and enjoy it as much as we possibly could. We realised we had crammed too many things into such a short trip and came to the inanimate conclusion that this was the best was and it was.

The next sunny morning, we had made plans to go climbing earlier come back for lunch and then go on a hike to a lake about 4 kilometres away that looked nice on the map and on to the highest point in the area in hope of a nice view.

We tried to climb harder routes that day and I at the end of the second one I couldn’t find any way to clip to the last bolt, so we climbed around and set the rope from the top which was another example of absolutely flawless teamwork. With the sun slowly disappearing behind the wall, we headed back to the camp, had a good meal and were on our way to the lakes. At first we stuck the marked routes but every time we saw a different way that caught our eye we took it. From the highest point we could see all the way to the sea in the back and the lakes at the bottom of the cliff. We picked the prettiest lake we could find with a nice svaberg going into the water and made our way down the hill and straight into the lake.

On our way back we chose a different route and decided to have a barbeque on the west side of tangwall. Our way led us through the forest and a wide valley with smooth rock walls at first and suddenly got quite steep and we had to fight our way through dense undergrowth until we reached the path again.

Once we got back we drove into town to get food for the barbeque and were already on our next quest of finding the most beautiful and safe spot for a counselling fire to grill some sausages. Of course we found the perfect spot for our sundown dinner and went back to our camp for one last time to sit around our fire pit and recalled the highlights of this fantastic week.