16 November 2019, by Oana Badiu
Måtind height: 405 m
Måtind trail difficulty: Easy - Medium
Måtind trail hike: 3.7 km one way (7.4 km round)
Måtind trail time: 3 - 4 h
Måtinden hiking trail is one of the most beautiful hikes I have ever done! This trail is situated on the island of Andøya, Nordland. In order to reach this trail you need a car. You can reach Andøya by ferry from Gryllefjord, Senja or just driving from Senja or Lofoten islands.
We stayed one night in Bleik in a cottage belonging to "Midnattsol rom og hytter".
There is a parking place next to the beginning of the trail. When you google "Parking for Måtinden" you will find the parking place next to the main road. This is not a very touristic place, as many people skip Andøya and drive straight to Lofoten or Senja, depending from which side you come, so you will definitely find a parking place.
The only reason why I decided to stay for one night in Bleik was because I wanted to go to the puffin safari. I had no idea that there is such a beautiful hiking trail next to Bleik! We arrived a bit earlier than expected at the cottage, so we decided to just google a bit more and find out if there is anything interesting to see around. We came across Måtinden hiking trail and since we saw that it was an easy one, we decided to go, despite some muscle pain from previous hikes.
The hiking trail is just a few kilometres away from Bleik and we started hiking around 6:30 - 7 PM. We visited Bleik in mid August, so we knew that the sunset is quite late and it actually doesn't get fully dark, so there is no problem if the hike takes longer than expected. This turned out to be the most beautiful hike with the most awesome sunset I have seen during my whole 2 weeks on this road trip around Northern Norway!
The beauty of this hiking trail is that it's really remote and there are not so many people around! You get to enjoy the views in silence and truly experience the wilderness of Norway!
The trail starts with a path between some short trees.
After the trees end comes the most difficult part of the trail. This is the steepest climb of the hiking trail and it's the reason why I added "medium" to the difficulty level of this trail. Even if it looks steep, the rocks are of great help here! Unlike other hiking trails that have slippery gravel, here you can get a good grip. You should still be careful and make sure you don't step on any loose rock.
After you are done with this part, the rest of the trail is pretty much flat and easy. We went a bit off the trail, towards the right side and we found ourselves surrounded by some really awesome views and a lake between steep mountains!
After this, we went back on the trail. After a small climb we got to a really flat side and it continues like this until you get close to Måtind peak.
You may also encounter some sheep at this point. I wanted to get a bit closer to them, but it turned out they were scared of me.
Once you get to Måtind peak, like all the other hiking trails in Norway, the trail ends with a vertical drop. There are awesome beaches on all sides of Måtind, but what was really special was the chain of cliffs below. These cliffs are called Pikstaven, Hegstaven and Breistaven.
There are 360 ° gorgeous views and we spent quite some time at Måtind, admiring the sunset.
Once we had our fill of these gorgeous views we went towards Bleik direction, where is also another hiking trail. We took a snack break and admired the village of Bleik in the distance.
There is a long trail that goes from Bleik to Stave, so we could have continued on this trail back to Bleik, however it looked a bit steep for us, so we just turned back on the same route. It was already 11:45 PM when we started to turn back, so we witnessed the midnight sunset from the trail.
We got back to the cottage around 00:45.
If you have one night to spare when you are visiting Northern Norway, it's really worth to spend a night in Bleik and do this awesome hike! There are trails all around the area, so you could easily spend a full day hiking here.
