Cycling Norway - Day 3

It’s crazy spec­tac­u­lar gor­geous around here like noth­ing I’ve ever seen.

You come around a corner and “wow”. You rise over a hill, “wow”. The boat rounds a bend. “Wow”.

The pat­tern for the day, as Rich ex­plained to us at din­ner last night was:

  • hotel ->
  • van ->
  • tun­nel ->
  • start rid­ing ->
  • road-road-road ->
  • ferry ->
  • massive climb! ->
  • lunch ->
  • climb a bit more ->
  • des­cent ->
  • ferry ->
  • big climb ->
  • amaz­ing view ->
  • fast des­cent ->
  • fi­nal little climb to kick you when you’re down ->
  • hotel!

And, yeah, that’s pretty much how the day went.

First a few pic­tures from the morn­ing,  with some gor­geous views and wa­ter­falls of the morn­ing fjord…

And now let’s get to the climb.

The climb was the Troll­sti­gen, or “Troll’s Lad­der”. The road goes out a long val­ley, climb­ing stead­ily, rounds a bend, and ramps up to­wards a dead-end canyon. It climbs out of the trees past amaz­ing wa­ter­falls, then switch­backs up one side of the moun­tains, crosses a set of wa­ter­falls, and climbs up the oth­er side of the val­ley… even­tu­ally sur­fa­cing in­to a high alpine val­ley still covered with snow­fields. It’s prob­ably the most amaz­ing climb I’ve done… the road was fant­ast­ic, the wa­ter­falls stun­ning, the views epic and mag­ni­fied by the close prox­im­ity of everything in the nar­row val­ley… just tre­mend­ous.

As we ap­proached the Troll­sti­gen, I was rid­ing with Rich on the quiet back­road. I kept look­ing up at the peaks sur­round­ing us. “These aren’t the Alps… or the Saw­tooths… or the Dolo­mites. They look and feel dif­fer­ent.” He nod­ded. “This is Nor­way.”

The van stopped at the base of the climb for people to ad­just their gear. I tossed in all my warm gear, choos­ing to ditch arm warm­ers, knee warm­ers, the gi­let… pre­tend­ing it was a warm sum­mer day - gen­er­at­ing heat while go­ing up was not go­ing to be a prob­lem… - and left be­fore every­one else was ready. I knew I would be caught, but I wanted to do most of the ride on my own to en­joy it… plus I figured that if I was out in front, it would give Mark and Dan some­thing to gun for, and keep me push­ing to stretch that lead out as long as I could.

The climb was spec­tac­u­lar. I had to stop a few times to get pic­tures… couldn’t stop my­self.

It was SO GOOD to be on a ser­i­ous climb again. I’m not a climber, but this is what hard road cyc­ling is about… push­ing your­self to the break­ing point, get­ting through the pain, find­ing out what’s up on top, mak­ing in­fin­ites­im­ally slow but steady pro­gress to­wards the peak that you know must be up there some­where… those flat rides along the coast were pretty, but this is what it’s about. This, and go­ing down­hill fast.

Mark and Dan even­tu­ally caught me just near the top. I man­aged to latch onto Dan’s mo­mentum just at the end and we all ar­rived at the vis­it­or cen­ter in the high val­ley.

Great views… lousy food. We hung out, cooled down, and took pic­tures while we waited for the rest of the group to ar­rive on top.

The des­cent down the oth­er side was meh. Very pretty, but long and not that steep… took a lot of work to get down. From there we took an­oth­er ferry, to the next climb.

The next climb was not as amaz­ing… more of the long, usu­al, steady climb mak­ing pro­gress up and over a high pass. Dan and Mark van­ished ahead while I rode with Rich.

Even­tu­ally he faded off the back to ride with some of the oth­er folk. I sum­mited and then dropped down the des­cent to the first hair­pin, as in­struc­ted, where we gathered the group and en­joyed an amaz­ing view of the Gerainger fjord.

Wow.

After a fant­ast­ic, steep, hair­pin-loaded des­cent (best of the trip so far), we ar­rived in Gerainger, a sleepy little vil­lage that is a des­tin­a­tion town for cruise ships on ser­i­ous fjord duty. We climbed up through the town a bit to get to our hotel.

Phew, done for the day.