Norway at 25 kph (or less)

It was May and it was starting to get even hotter in LA, but for the first time in years I wasn’t particularly excited about summer. For one thing, summer in LA has pretty much exactly the same weather as any other month in LA, but mostly it was that I didn’t really have any big plans. Summer for me has always been a time of big adventures, but the grad student budget wasn’t allowing me to plan something as awesome as I was used to. But I found a way to do something amazing and it worked so well that I just need to share it with you. 

I found inspiration at a slideshow by Kyle Dempster. He is an amazing mountaineer and mainly does trips that are far beyond my comfort zone, but one trip he talked about seemed up my ally. He had biked around Kyrgyzstan and had some amazing experiences climbing the mountains and meeting the locals. I had hardly even heard of Kyrgyzstan and it was impressive to me that he could just go there on his bike by himself and travel around the country. I was inspired and quickly started thinking of how to do a big adventure of my own. I was lucky enough that I had just been admitted to a two-week summer school in the Norwegian tundra, but really this trip could have been anywhere, even right in California. I extended my Norway trip by two weeks, bought a touring bicycle, and started getting ready for this summer’s bike adventure in Norway. 

Robb and Bike, biking day 7

The key point I want to get across is that really anyone can do this type of trip with a little training as long you are in reasonable shape. I had to buy a bicycle for this trip and that should emphasize that I really had no idea what I was doing on a bicycle. There was a fair amount of new gear I needed to get, waterproof bike bags and some bike tools, but these are all things that I can use again. Start up expenses out of the way this was actually an extraordinarily cheap trip and definitely can fit into a grad student budget. 

Going to the airport I was about as nervous as I have ever been for a trip, I had a bike, a map, and a route, but very little plan other than that. Traveling wasn’t without problems, my cat got sick two days before the trip and my bike got lost in transit, but generous roommates taking care of my cat and an accommodating airline that set me up in a hotel while I waited for my bike got me through these problems. A little bit behind schedule; I assembled my bike and was off. It was a bit of a rough start. I started right from the train station in Oslo, and my first task was to find a place to store the cardboard box that allows me to fly with my bike. This wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t pouring down rain at the time. I eventually found a hostel that would store my now damp cardboard box and started biking through the water-logged city and out of town. My map wasn’t quite the right scale for city navigation so I had a few wrong turns, one that led me on an extended detour and one that led me on a brief stint on the freeway, one of the only freeways in the country. When I finally got out of town I got to the first of many beautiful rural villages. It had cute shops and a raging river right through town. It was called Bærums Verk. I had lunch. Then I travelled into beautiful farming valley and beyond where my scenery turned to forest and my road turned into dirt. I had expected my road to turn into dirt but after an hour or so I realized this wasn’t the right dirt road and I had no idea where I was. I still have no idea where I went, but I backtracked and found a local that was nice enough to make me a hand drawn map complete with horses. I still managed to end up on the wrong route but this time found it on the map and after an entire day lost in the woods found my way through to a view of the next town and set up camp. 

A frozen landscape near Finse

I need to mention something unique about Norway, well Scandanavia, that made this trip a little easier than it would have been in the states. Anyone is allowed to camp anywhere! Even on private property. My requirements for camp were only that I needed to be 100 meters from any building and off of any farmland, not a difficult challenge in Norway. Norway has more open space then it knows what to do with. I had all my camping gear on my bike and spent every day camping in the woods and cooking dinner for myself. This is the core of what made this trip so cheap. I did need to pay for some buses and trains because I planned a route that was too ambitious for my schedule but those expenses aside I don’t think I spent more than $300 for my 10 days on the road. The extra transportation expenses could have been avoided by planning on averaging no more than 70 km a day (I planned on 110 km/day). The later would probably work for more experienced bikers or less avid photographers but certainly not for me.

The next day was the first day that really convinced me this trip was for me; I had been a little worried I wouldn’t like the trip after such a rough start. Day 2 took me 111 km through lots and lots more beautiful farmland (seriously the farmland is really beautiful in Norway), more dirt roads through remote woodland, a few first glimpses of fjords, and after a bit of a bus ride to get back on schedule, the mountains. From Geilo onwards the terrain was increasingly rugged; starting with cute mountain villages nestled among lakes until the civilization started to gradually disappear. 

Mariann leading the way up the Funicular stairs.

I spent the entire next two days on Rallarvegen, a dirt track along the Oslo-Bergen railway, often considered the most beautiful railway in Europe. This was much more time than I expected to spend but the road was really rough and I wasn’t feeling 100%. There was really no need to be 100% because the scenery was so beautiful that I couldn’t help myself but push on. The highest stretches of this track took me past one of the biggest ice caps I’ve ever seen and into a winter wonderland somehow holding out in mid-August. The pass was quite cold and surrounded by ice-covered lakes dotted with beautiful little melt pools. Rock and ice extended as far as the eye could see. I followed an old rail line the whole way so I never quite got pure nature, but the rail line was interesting, because, being deserted, it added an eerie element of a ghost world overrun by ice. The trail was especially rugged over the pass with more than a dozen snowfield crossings and a very rocky descent. A nice challenge for my road-bike… At this point I was having a blast and didn’t even notice feeling a little bit sick anymore. I never really felt done with Day 3 but eventually it got late and I found a spot near a waterfall so perfect that I just had to stop for the day so I could camp there. 

Our fellowship, hiking the fjords, looking epic.

Day 4 was more of the same awesomeness with an increasing frequency of large waterfalls and beautiful scenery all day. I only made it about 20 km though before the rough road finally took a toll on my tire and I got a flat. I had never actually fixed a flat tire before… Turns out my patch kit did not have glue and my spare tubes were the wrong size so I had to walk 3 km to the nearest town, Myrdal (3 km was actually quite lucky because the next nearest was more than 20). There I got my tire patched and was hoping to continue a bit farther before taking the train to Bergen. First I had to take a train through the mountain to Upsete; there were no roads. I didn’t get far past Upsete before my tire problems resurfaced and I hiked back up the hill to the train station. I was stranded there for two hours waiting for a train, but stranded with a beautiful view. The town was so small that I was the only one at the train station the entire two hours. I eventually got a train down the hill to Voss and on to Bergen. The hill between Upsete and Voss, from what I could see, was a mouthwateringly spectacular road with very few cars through spectacular scenery. I really think I will go back to Voss at some point just to do this ride. I had to wait some more in Voss for another train so I got to look around a bit. Voss is an extreme sports mecca and reminded me a lot of Interlaken, Switzerland. I was really impressed by the lake and the public parks there. It is so lush in that part of Norway that everything is green and the parks look very natural. That night was actually the first time I ate out in Norway and I was very surprised to get a pretty big pizza for only $15, I had heard terrible things about prices in Norway. For the record, it wasn’t very good. 

Eating some curry noodle, watching the sunset.

I was travelling to Bergen to visit an old friend, Emily, who, by an awesome coincidence, happened to have been living there for the past nine months where she was an au pair for a Norwegian family and lived with them in a spectacular house on an island in the fjord. She was nice enough to let me stay with them and I got a day of relaxation exploring Bergen. The highlights were a boat cruise on the fjord in the family’s boat, a delicious home cooked meal, and hanging out with her friends in an old grain mill (one of their offices, where they were a graphic designer) where they were shooting a scene for a Sigur Ros video contest while we enjoyed the amazing views of the city. 

Robb, Trolltunga, and the fjord

I only had one day of relaxation because the next day we left early for a two-day backpacking trip. Backpacking is certainly relaxing too, but maybe not quite the way to let me exhausted body recover. Emily and I along with her friends Mariann and Christian set off on our way to Trolltunga (Troll's Tongue), a famous rock overlooking a fjord. Any road trip in Norway takes about twice as long as you would expect. The roads are mostly one lane and they are all windy. It is hard to get anywhere without taking at least one ferry ride. The drive to the backpack trip was long but there wasn’t a moment that wasn’t absolutely beautiful. We drove past some of the biggest waterfalls of my trip. The four of us started hiking at about 3 pm with a long climb up some steep stairs along an old funicular railway. The stairs gave us a jump-start to 1000 meters over the valley floor. The views from the top were incredible. Being high up in the fjords really gives you the sense of being on top of the world. We didn’t make it to Trolltunga before dark but we found an amazing campsite on a peninsula jutting out into the fjord with steep cliffs on three sides. The sunset over the fjord was brief but beautiful before we were engulfed in clouds. 

The beautiful farming town of Brykjelo

The next morning was bright and sunny and perfect for pictures at Trolltunga. We made it there early in the morning. Tolltunga is a well-placed overhanging rock dangling more than 1000 meters over the fjord. Its a great spot to get pictures of yourself to take home and scare your parents. The long hike back went quickly because the scenery was simply incredible. At some point we blew up our inflatable shark and inflatable mattress that we had brought along because, well, why not? It was lots of fun getting funny looks from all the other hikers and we went for a nice swim in one of the many lakes on the way back. We didn’t get back to the cars until nearly 6 pm so we had to rush home because we all had plans in the morning. The drive home was notable because the sunset seemed to last forever. It was starting to get colorful at about 7:30 but the color hadn’t completely disappeared until we got all the way back to Bergen around 10:30. Three-hour sunsets, way to go Norway.

Fjord landscape near Stryn.

So after a relaxing three days in an around Bergen it was back on the road and on to my final destination, Snøheim. Snøheim is actually a mountain hut in the middle of nowhere in the Norwegian tundra, more on that later. I had bought some new tubes for my bike tire but hadn’t realized that the problem was now with the tire itself so I went through all three tubes by the end of the day, they would all end up so worn out that they were impossible to patch. So at around 4 pm I was walking my bike down the road through a small town in the middle of nowhere. I was heading to the nearest ferry, on the other side of which I was hoping to catch a bus for the nearest bike shop more than 100 km away. Turns out that there may not have been such a bus, but I didn’t have to find out the hard way because the most helpful stranger I’ve ever met stopped to assist me. She walked with me down to her house and we looked through her family’s various bikes (Norwegian’s have several) for a tire that would fit my needs. We found one and I was soon back on the road. I tried to give them some money to replace their tire but they wouldn’t have it, they said that was the Norwegian way. What a great country, such nice people.

Strynevatnet

I quickly got to the ferry where I got a private ferry ride to the remote other side of the fjord, not a good place to be without a tire. The next day I had a bit of awesome riding, but also spent some time taking buses to get some riding out of the way. I got to the next bike shop and got a tune-up that would keep my bike going for the rest of the trip (at that point I had almost no brakes left). The next four days everything went perfectly, I biked continuously from Byrkjelo to Snøheim with no more problems. This was the most beautiful part of my bike ride and the scenery kept me extremely motivated through 12-hour days. I wouldn’t be biking all day because I also managed to take over 2500 pictures in the course of my trip, but for this stretch of the trip I did manage to get 60-85 miles a day. My favorite day was probably the day starting in Byrkjelo. I started with a steep downhill to the fjord, an exciting start to my day. Then I followed the coast for 50 km to Stryn. This stretch was perfectly flat with views of 1000+ meter rock faces jutting out of the sea every few miles, really the perfect bike ride. It helped that there was hardly a cloud in the sky except for some occasional wispy ones that just added to the photographic value of the place. This scenery continued for the rest of the day but from Stryn it was all uphill. I started from sea level and finished the day way up in the snowy mountains at more than 1000 meters (3250 feet). Most of this climb was concentrated into the last 15-20 km. This was so much harder than any climb I had done on a bicycle and it was extremely rewarding. I found a nice campsite next to an ice covered lake and went swimming in the last rays of sunlight. 

A beautiful campsite, somehow completely empty on a Friday night.

I wasn’t sure if I could make it all the way to Snøheim without a train ride but an 85 mile push on my second to last day was enough to allow a leisurely ride into the finish on the final day. This was the longest ride I’d ever done in one day and it really pushed my endurance to the limits. Worth it, because it made my just-add-water dinner taste like the best meal ever and I was awarded with a spectacular sunset. It was also interesting to see such a range of scenery. I started with a steep descent down a glacial cliff face on world famous switchbacks, Trollstigen. Throughout the day the fjord landscapes disappeared as I went up onto the former ice sheet and into the much flatter mountains. After hours of biking through completely flat woodlands I emerged into a slightly more mountainous valley near my final destination.

Trollstigen, downhill for me, downhill in a rainstorm.

It was a bit more uphill and a bit more dirt roads on my final day. I saw a moose (which Norwegians call Elk). This was particularly exciting because I was beginning to think there were no animals in Norway. So far I had seen one hedgehog and one squirrel. I saw some birds as well but not an exciting number or diversity of them. But now I was up in the tundra in which I have since found many more animals. I had more flat tire problems but I was able to fix it (for a while at least) and push on to the finish. I did have to pump up my tire several times in the final stretch because at that point it would only hold air for about 10 minutes at a time. The scenery around Snøheim is different from anything I have ever seen before. It is a barren rocky landscape. In the high areas the ecosystem is dominated by moss and few other plants survive. The mountains aren’t very large but they aren’t really the main attraction of the place. The alien feel of the landscape is the main draw, you can find beauty in the small details of this strange landscape. In particular I have found the different varieties of moss and broken rocky terrain to be interesting foregrounds for mountainous landscape pictures. It felt glorious to reach my final destination where I am now working on switching into science mode for my conference. Its not so hard when I am staying in a cabin nestled in such a beautiful place and the organizers actually want to make sure we have enough time for hiking (we get three hours a day minimum). We are in such a remote place, the nearest grocery store would take several bus rides to get to and there are no other buildings for at least 10 km. We do have internet here but it is quite unreliable. What an interesting place for a conference.

Snohetta, the setting for my Climate and Landscapes conference.

As I’m writing this it is actually nearing the end of my conference a week and a half after finishing my ride. At this point I can look back on this experience and already realize how special this experience was. I feel like I know Norway, not in a complete way that one would get by living here, but in a unique way that not all Norwegian’s even know. I have seen such a variety of places in Norway from the standard tourist destinations to the isolated dirt roads that probably see no more than a couple people a day. At the same time I realize that I have only seen a narrow sliver of Norway, and am excited to come back for more adventures. I really feel like there is no better way to see a country than biking or hiking across it. It is really not as hard as it sounds and the pace is entirely up to the individual adventurer. I highly recommend this type of travel to anyone, even if (or especially if) you have never biked or backpacked much before.