The main event of my visit to Norway (aside from Mario Kart of course) was a hiking trip! There are three well-known hikes in the area around Stavanger. Leslie and her husband Kyle hiked one of them earlier this year and Leslie wanted to do another. But with three kids at home, its hard for them to get away. My visit was the perfect opportunity for her to have a partner in crime (while Kyle kept the boys) and for me to do an amazing hike! Win win.
Our day started early and we had a couple hours drive to get to the base of the hike. You can see the parking lot down on the right in this photo as we started up the mountain.
When I call this a "hike", I don't just mean it was an outdoor walk. There was climbing involved. Look closely at the picture above. Along the left side of the boulder I was standing on, you can see some small posts - they had chains strung between them for the us to pull ourselves up the hills. It was really steep in some parts!
We saw lots of these stone piles on our drive up and throughout the hike. I googled it to see what it was all about and got mixed messages. They are called cairns. Sometimes they are used as markers for a trail that otherwise doesn't have noticeable landmarks. I read one legend that trolls turn into piles of rocks when they die, which is why there are so many rocks in Norway. General convention seems that it is just a popular thing for hikers to do - leave a stone on a pile as though to mark "I was here." In any case, they were everywhere!
The hike took about 2 hours to go up. From the car we had one steep ascent and then descent into a valley. Then another. This me in the bottom part of one of the valleys.
After the third climb up, we leveled off into this other-worldly plateau. Unfortunately this is when it started raining. And it was hard, torrential, windy rain. We were soaked and freezing cold but determined not to turn back. There were still plenty of other hikers going forward, so we did too! The best I can tell is that this plateau was basically the wide cliff that makes up the top part of the fjord. If you walked in the right direction, you would come to the edge of it. We kept following the painted arrows marking the path and walked over this landscape for about 30 minutes.
And finally make it to the top! This is Kjeragbolten. Its a large boulder that was wedged by glaciers between two cliffs. It is suspended above a 984 meter drop into the fjord below. And it is extremely popular to climb out onto the boulder for a photo op.
Did you think that was me above? Ha ha - not in a million years. That is my friend Leslie though! It nearly gave me a stroke to watch her do it though. The standing space on top of the boulder was actually pretty wide, you just have to pull yourself out there and then stand up. Not for me! But Leslie is very brave and couldn't walk down having not done it. So I was her photographer and she did it like a champ! There were about twenty other hikers at the top when we were there. About half of them did it.
This is a view down into the fjord below. If the weather had been more clear, these pictures would have been SO much better. Ah well!
A good view of the boulder with no one on it.
Just to prove I was there - and freezing cold and soaking wet! We didn't stay for more than about 15 minutes at the top as we were both shivering. The hike down also took about two hours. Thankfully the rain eased up as we came down and the hiking kept us warm.
This is at the last peak before we descended to the car. The sky cleared up just enough to have some really spectacular views!
We did it!!
When we finally got home, we watched OU football (Leslie and Kyle have a slingbox) and ate pizza. A really fun weekend!!
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