On Thursday I had a long steep climb to get to the top of Sognefjellsvegen – I’m really glad I got a head start on the climb the previous day. But wow was it a pretty ride! In Norway, you can only be a few thousand feet up to reach the Alpine environment – at 4500 feet everything looks like what you would see at 10000 or 11000 feet in California. And there were glaciers!
It got really cold at the top – maybe low to mid 40s? I’m really glad I carried all this cold weather gear for 2000 miles
After reaching the top, I had a fast ride down into a valley, which I then followed down along a crystal blue river for about 20 miles to the village of Lom.
Had some tasty pizza, then headed east UP a valley along a different crystal blue river, until I found a nice place to set up camp on the shore
On Friday morning I made a tasty breakfast of pancakes with brown cheese and cottage cheese (you can buy premade pancakes at the grocery store)
The rest of the day was just a beautiful ride slowly climbing up the valley past lakes and waterfalls
I ended the day a bit early because I didn’t want to go down the other side of the mountain too late. Instead, I set up camp at around 3200 feet, which was practically a tundra. I had to use the extra guy lines on my tent because the wind was gusting so hard. I then went on a short hike up along a cascade near my campsite
Another damp, chilly night, but I was cozy bundled up in my tent
This morning, after packing up, I discovered I had a flat….boooo! I’m pretty sure it was from a defect in the tire rubbing against the tube. I put in a folded up dollar bill to hopefully prevent it from happening again.
I had a little bit more climbing, and then another glorious switchback descent down into Geiranger, a small village on a deep blue fjord.
The town itself was a bit of a letdown – it’s another giant cruise ship stop, so it’s a bit overrun with tourists
In Norway, what goes down must go up, and so I climbed back UP a series of switchbacks to around 2100 feet. The climbs really aren’t so bad when you have such excellent scenery though
I did have a crazy incident where, as I was huffing up the hill, an RV stopped in the middle of the road. I continued on past it on the right, when suddenly the door flew open and almost knocked into me as a guy jumped out, presumably to take pictures. I never expected I would almost get doored on a switchback mountain road!
Another fun descent led me to another ferry crossing. Then a fun ride along a fjord before turning up another valley to head to another climb! I’m pretty much just winging my route at this point, but I’m driven to buy all of the scenic roads I can. Tomorrow I’ll be tackling the Trollstigen, probably my last big climb, then I head back out to the coast.
