Oh look, another stunning waterfall!
- jasey5
- Jun 11
- 6 min read
Updated: Jul 13
Before we get to the waterfalls, welcome to the land of crazy roads! Norway must have employed an impressive set of engineers and construction workers to build the road system here. Western Norway is not a landscape easily traveled by wheeled vehicle, at least until they started blasting an absurd amount of tunnels through it. Let me take you on a drive…
Start your drive with me in the mountainous, but still rolling coniferous forests, in the Telemark region. The roads are narrow and winding along the valley floors. Slowly the mountains get higher and the road starts to climb up the side of the mountain as you slow down to pass a train of German camper vans coming around a corner. Then you enter a tunnel, expecting to pop out in a matter of a minute or two, but it goes on and on, finally releasing you several minutes later to a stunning view of snowy peaks and clear lakes before you plunge back into the mountain, disappearing for an inclined 3.7 miles as you pass under a snow capped mountain. A while later, as it begins to feel that 1/3 of the drive is in tunnels, you’re driving along the mind numbing length of yet another one when a blueish light appears in the distance. As you get closer, it becomes clear you’re entering an alien spaceship. Oh wait, actually it’s a roundabout! In a tunnel!! This tunnel spits you out onto a skycrapingly high bridge across a valley then you promptly disappear into the mouth of another long tunnel. A later tunnel features changing color LED lighting to wake you up during a 6.8 mile semi-dark drive and a third is long enough to sing the entirety of The Ants Go Marching. In between the tunnels are jaw dropping views of waterfalls, fjords, lakes, glaciers and for the first time on this trip: packs of tourists.
As we made our way northwest, we stopped to check out another hut, beginning a weird new habit of starting hikes at 6pm because it’s still full daylight at 11pm now. Then we stopped in a small town called Odda and did a very memorable hike out to a glacier complete with lush forest full of bird song, highland shaggy cows and a lot of scrambling up rocks with installed chains.
The glacier itself was both impressive and also just a huge heap of dirty snow and ice slowly sliding down a cliff. The fact that there are so many glaciers here though is why the landscape appears nearly volcanic and so dramatic. What really made the hike was turning our backs to the glacier to see one of the best rainbows I’ve ever seen appearing in the valley behind us. Given how hard it is to take a photo of a rainbow, you can imagine how bright it was in reality, right down to the red and yellow tinted trees where it touched the valley sides.
While we were there, we tasted some potentially bazillion year old water which tasted like, well water, but was cold enough to give you an ice cream headache.
Next we continued our drive to a small port town in a UNESCO world heritage fjord called Flåm. It’s a popular cruise ship destination because of the insane train that starts at the port and takes you up to meet the train between Bergen and Oslo, high in the mountains. Once again, the engineering is crazy and involves a lot of tunnels, mostly blasted by hand over a 20 year time period. The track is only about 12.5 miles but contains 20 tunnels, all of which are along the sides of a beautiful river valley scattered with a few small farms. Once at the top of the train, we rented bikes and rode back to town. Along this ride the joke got going of pointing out waterfalls with the line, “oh look, another stunning waterfall,” because once we reached Odda and the fjords, the waterfalls pretty much haven’t stopped. It’s an amazing example of how the human brain adapts, watching us go from gawking at waterfalls clearly designed by Disney (more likely the other way round ;), to looking at hundreds of gallons of water pouring off cliffs with, “oh that’s a pretty one” or “ah, another one.” Really though, the waterfalls here are insane. Because the land refuses to be flat, and there is so much water, there are creeks everywhere and most of them end up tumbling off a cliff at some point. In some of the fjords you can look around and see 5 or more creeks running pretty much vertically down rock walls and at least one gushing waterfall people would drive hours to see in Colorado.
While staying in Aurland, a small town near Flåm, with a lovely Airbnb host, my dad and I spent an evening in a gorgeous floating sauna. Saunas have long been a part of Scandinavian culture however they don’t appear to be as common in Norway - at least where we’ve been - as I’ve been told they are in Finland. The cool thing about the saunas here is they are often built on docks in the water so you can jump straight into the fjord to cool off. It also had never occurred to me that saunas could have windows, and boy did this one have windows. The Sauna experience is definitely improved by a 180 degree view of steep mountains flanking the calm waters of a beautiful fjord, oh, and they had a high jump.
After discovering that fjords aren’t as salty as you’d expect for being part of the ocean, we took off on 6 days of hiking to huts. My mom and I got good at packing up hut food in grocery store parking lots and we adapted to the crazy long daylight by hiking out of one hut in the morning, driving an hour, going to a museum or other attraction, driving a bit further, starting our hike in at 6pm and then arriving at the hut and making dinner after 9.
The first hut was uneventful, but the other two huts we hiked into were particularly memorable. Being early June, snow conditions have been a little hard to get a grasp on, especially because the altitude is so different here. This far north treeline has gone down to maybe 1500 feet and there has been snow below 2500 feet. Anyway, this hut was a little closer to still being under snow than we expected and we ended up having to cross a snow field on a steep scree field, slowly sliding into an alpine lake full of small icebergs to get there. Oh and when we got close to the hut we found a small river with a washed out bridge. I spotted a ladder down stream and my dad found a stack of 2x4s and a cam strap nearby - it turns out they dismantled the bridge for the winter - and the bridge building began. We ended up unknowingly reconstructing the usual bridge (as described by the farmer from the area as we hiked out two days later) and we arrived at a classic 9pm, in full daylight and a light drizzle of rain.
Our last hut adventure was out to an island called Runde where a 100,000 breeding pairs of Atlantic Puffins nest. The old lighthouse residence on the island has been converted to a very busy hut full of people from all over the world wanting to see puffins. The puffins come back from a long day at sea late in the evening, so the best viewing ended up being around 9:30pm. I have no idea why the puffins don’t mind the humans watching them, but they happily sit around within feet of the camera bedecked crowds.
They are such adorable little birds but what might have been the most interesting sight was the flock of humans willing to stand in the cold wind at 9pm on a small island, a 45 minute hike from any buildings, just to watch them watch us.
Wooo, that was a lot! Now we are off on a 6 day kayak adventure in the Fjords! See you on the other side! Hopefully I’m not a popsicle by then :)