Norway Bonus Level - Romsdal!: August 31st - September 5th, 2023
With about a week remaining on our visa for Norway, we had time for one last excursion but also needed a real plan about how to escape to the UK from the Schengen zone. Storm Hans over the summer had washed away some of the rail bridges to Oslo, so managing to catch trains farther south wasn't looking good (not to even mention the number of different trains we'd need to get from Oslo to the UK). We'd really wanted to check out some of the southern Norwegian mountains, in the Romsdal area, and discovered that Widerøe (now our favorite airline) ran a flight from Molde to Aberdeen, in Scotland. Perfect! We definitely had some apprehension about disassembling and packing the bikes ourselves and then flying with them, but it sounded much more palatable than taking 6 different trains.
As for how to get ourselves and the bikes all the way south to Molde (without having to pedal)... there's a boat! Boats are our favorite because there's no fuss (well, sometimes my seasickness causes a little fuss), just wheel-on and wheel-off. So we rode down to the harbor in Trondheim bright and early to catch a ride on the Hurtigruten, Norway's famous ferry/cruise ship hybrid.
The Hurtigruten (Norwegian for "fast route") boat runs up and down the entire coast of Norway, calling in lots of ports along the way, and a lot of people take weeks to make a whole holiday of cruising the coast. Our journey was only about 12 hours, but that still gave us more than enough time to enjoy the fanciest boat we've ever ridden on (without having to splash out for our own cabin). After coffee and a little second breakfast, our immediate priority was the on-board jacuzzi. We kept expecting someone to come by and kick us out for being dirty bikepackers who'd snuck into the nice section of the boat, but sometimes we do actually get a little bit of luxury. We chatted with a nice Italian woman who snuck us some cookies later (we didn't spring for the level of luxury that also includes free snacks).
So by about 10 PM (and after a little obligatory seasickness) we rolled off the boat into Molde and headed to a paid campsite just north of town. As we checked out the kitchen a big group of mostly-sober Israelis who'd cooked too much pasta called for our help to finish their food, and we happily obliged. Sure, we had to pitch the tent in the dark, but coming in so late had it's perks!
The next morning we caught an early bus from Molde to Åndalsnes - the mountain capital of Norway! That's some bold branding for Norway, so we couldn't leave without checking it out, and honestly the area lived up to its reputation. From the shore of the ocean, we could see enormous ragged spikes of dark rock towering over the land an impossibly short distance away. In between Molde and Åndalsnes is an under-the-ocean-forbidden-to-bikes tunnel, but thankfully the bus over was a simple "shove your bike underneath" type so that made it easy. As we pulled off our bikes and stacked up the accompanying 10 bags, the bus driver asked us “Have you ever considered a CAR!?!” and laughed uproariously.
As we got into September the seasons were already starting to turn in Norway so it was getting harder and harder to find weather cooperative with our outdoor ambitions. We really wanted to climb the mountain Romsdalshornet and had a clear window of weather just the following day, so we turned around quickly in Åndalsnes, stocking up on groceries before trundling over to the trailhead to start our climb early the next morning. Well, we didn't really get to the trailhead, because even though it was only about 8 miles away we'd glossed over the fact that it involved a stupid amount of uphill. So after crawling up a particularly steep bit we found the first decent place to camp and happily took the chance to ditch most of our baggage.
Of course, that just meant an even earlier start the next morning, as we still had to cover about 6 km and 460 meters of uphill on the bikes before even starting the approach. Riding in the early, hazy light of a gray September morning went quickly enough, though, and gave a little bit more time for the clouds to lift off the peak. Nevermind that our legs were already burning before we even started the approach - just another totally normal Norwegian "hike" that involved using fixed chains as handholds to help scramble over damp rock ledges.
Romsdalshornet ("The Horn of Romsdal") gradually shedded its misty cloak as we approached, and there was a moment where we looked at each other and said "Oh ****, we're going to climb *that*?". Our goal was a relatively easy route on the north side of the mountain, but at first the north face appeared sheer and darkly foreboding through the clouds. But with each step we could see a little better that the angles weren't too steep and that maybe the rock would yield a moderate way to the summit. The approach followed a ridgeline and the views to the right and left were astounding; on one side sat Venjetinden, with so many jagged pinnacles on its flanks that a dragon must be sleeping underneath, and on the other the Rauma river rested far, far below, the Trolltinden peaks and Trollveggen bigwall (like, *really* big, 1000-meter-tall wall) rising grimly from the valley floor.
The climb itself ended up going quite nicely, minus a few obligatory wrong turns and difficulties. About 200 meters of scrambling and low-5th-class interspersed with a couple of harder (but still only Norwegian grade 4) pitches, on rock that turned out to be much more solid than it had any right to be. Quite a relief, given the fact that the last Norwegian mountain we'd climbed (Vågakallen in Lofoten) frequently crumbled in our hands! Being a Saturday with a rare bit of decent weather, on what's supposedly one of the most popular climbs in Norway, we of course ran into a few other parties, but just a few. One pair of older guys repeatedly pointed out that I was leading up a needlessly hard way instead of staying on the "proper" route. At first, while the climbing still went smoothly, I wasn't too concerned, but it wasn't long before I worked myself into a weird corner and rigged a slightly-panicking-anchor to regroup with Susan. I tried to find a way forward that felt climbable and safe to no avail, while Susan kept telling me "Those other guys know what they're doing and say it's the other way...". Finally she "talked me down" (pun intended) and we rappelled back to a big ledge (so we had to leave some cord behind, but that was fine, anyway, because I'd already got it hopelessly wedged between some rocks).
After resetting we made quick work of the remaining climbing, shivering our way up the last 200 feet (we've made an accidental tradition of climbing a mountain on Labor Day, even though we inevitably end up chilled), and at the top chatted some more with our Norwegian "guides" and marveled at the views of neighboring peaks and the Romsdal river nearly 1500 meters below us. Also, the fact that people had built an honest-to-god HOUSE on top of this mountain (not to mention the massive summit cairns; maybe the mountain wasn't quite tall enough?). This is why Europeans think the US is so rugged and "unspoiled", I guess. We ended up sharing our ropes with the other Norwegian party for the 5 rappels to get down, which sped things up very nicely and helped us beat the encroaching sunset (we were still getting used to those), although we still sped back down the hill to our camp in the dark of night.
Between the rain that moved back in the next day and our aching legs, we decided to take it easy, sleep in, and not get up to too much. We biked back into Åndalsnes and stayed dry by checking out the Norwegian climbing museum in their climbing center, which proved to be a pretty enjoyable way to spend a few hours. We even got the chance to climb a little on Stetind (a really cool mountain we wanted to climb farther north but had to take off the list) - even if it was just a replica. Yet another trip to the grocery store saddled us down with several more days worth of food and we rode up a different valley to some paid camping at the Trollstigen Campground. We're usually loath to pay for camping but when you're staring at days of rain having a warm shower and a dry place to cook dinner and hang out starts to be worth $20 or so. Plus, this campground was troll themed so definitely worth it.
Trollstigen ("The Troll's Stairs") is a ridiculous road connecting Åndalsnes to another village, winding up and over a plateau and through a national park; you get the feeling the Norwegians built it just to prove they could. 11 hairpin turns allow the road to snake up almost 800 meters from the valley, dodging thundering waterfalls and sheer cliffs to bring you from lush temperate rainforest to barren alpine tundra in a few short miles. Cycling this road had been on our Norway bucket list since we first saw photos of it in the US nearly a year ago.
However, we'd gained *some* wisdom over the last 2.5 months, and elected not to carry our full 80-90 lb. loads up like we'd originally considered. Based out of the Trollstigen Campground, we lucked out with a few hours of clear weather in the morning and took our chance to pedal up and down in dry-ish conditions and without clouded views. This ride was quite possibly the most scenic we did in Norway: the tannish-gray granite spires of the King, the Queen, and the Bishop towered on our right, and the toothy skyline of ashen Trolltinden loomed on the left, all conspiring to remind us of our incomprehensibly small existence nestled in the valley. Waterfalls, from thin silver ribbons that split and braided and recombined and dissolved in the wind to torrential white cascades winning their million-year war of attrition against the dark rock, spilled from all sides and betrayed the existence of the mysterious lands that must exist higher along the flanks of these mountains, or maybe it was just trolls playing tricks with barrels of water from the tops of bony ridgelines?
The ride was breathtaking, and while I mean that both figuratively and literally, all-in-all we ended up making good time on the way up, finishing nearly twice as fast as expected (although we have enough experience to chronically underestimate ourselves). There's a really nice visitor center at the top with a beautiful water feature (in a typically stark-but-aesthetic Scandinavian way), and even though the main cafeteria building is still getting repaired from a devastating avalanche 2 years ago we managed to snag some coffee from a temporary trailer. With the rain returning, we did our best to treat our wheels as wings and fly back down the hill, but those hairpin turns really check your speed. The nearly 40 mph top speed, though, was still more than enough to keep us engaged. Back at camp with most of the day still ahead but our legs already burned-out we mostly relaxed in the warm and dry kitchen area and made some long overdue phone calls to our families in the US.
For our final day in Åndalsnes we really wanted to do a little more sport or single-pitch climbing, but the persistently unsettled weather never let the crags get very dry. There was still some amazing nature to see, though, so we cycled a little ways up the last valley we hadn't seen yet, along the river Rauma, to go gawk at Trollveggen. I mentioned above that we'd gotten some views of Trollveggen while climbing Romsdalshornet, and even though the weather was cloudier this day, being at the bottom of it really drove home the scale of the big wall. Mostly, anyway - there's a point, when looking at a mountain 1800 meters above you, the last 1000 meters of which is a sheer cliff, where my brain just ceases to make sense of it and the world flattens into simpler concepts of "really big" (the rock wall) and "really small" (me). Trollveggen is the tallest vertical cliff in Europe, about the same height as El Capitan in Yosemite, and although the rock is much chossier (loose and crumbly) it draws a similar number of adventure athletes; a memorial at the bottom commemorates the climbers and BASE jumpers who lost their lives to the cliff. Being in this valley also gave us the chance to stare almost 1500 meters straight up to the summit of Romsdalshornet, where we'd stood a couple days before, and remember that we're pretty OK at living among the giants.
Still looking to get a little vertical fix, we went back to Åndalsnes and spent the afternoon in the climbing gym attached to the climbing museum (it never rains in a gym!), pulling on plastic for the first time in a few months. That evening we biked back to some free camping we'd spied several days ago, a big gravel parking lot designed for RV's but plenty accommodating for a tent as well. Of course, a beautiful waterfall cascaded down just across the road, and I spent a few minutes staring at the ocean and the sunset and feeling bittersweet about our time in Norway ending while Susan snuggled into her down in the tent. On the other hand, when we woke up a little ahead of dawn the next morning, patches of delicate frost decorated the ground, and while shivering over coffee we knew it was time to head south! So we caught the early bus back to Molde; we had a full day of prep ahead of us to be ready for our flight to Scotland!
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