For this trip I really wanted to take advantage of the time we were given and go some place that was really beautiful and famous, so I decided that I wanted to go and visit Preikestolen! Luckily two other people in my group wanted to go so we made a plan and hiked in a car and drove all the way up there.
When we got there in the afternoon we took our bags and hiked around a lake, searching for a good place to make camp. I spotted a perfect place hidden off the trail and there ended up being a secluded spot to set up our tent in. There was a medium chance of rain, so I opted not to use my hammock to sleep in, but after we got everything set up Stella and I both laid down in it and took a nap. We were fortunate to have beautiful weather.
The next morning we woke up and got our day packs together for the hike up to Preikestolen. The whole hike was pretty and mostly made out of stone. There is so much natural rock just lying around everywhere that it seems like a never ending resource. So all the steps, stairs, and paths are made out of stone. This would have been okay, but the stairs were really steep and went up for a good distance so by the time we crested the top of each section we were all sweating up a storm and tired out.
The view at the top was gorgeous, but there were a lot of people there so it was hard to get a good pictures with everyone crowding the area but we managed to get some good ones! It was more beautiful than I expected and we had our lunch up there. While we were just waiting around, enjoying the day, it started snowing! So this cleared out a bunch of people and we got the area pretty much all to ourselves.
The hike back down was much quicker, but we got stuck behind about a group of 50 teens who were leaving from visiting and it was really hard to pass them and get to the front, but using some ingenuity we did it. Once we got back we were pretty exhausted and didn’t really feel like hiking around the surrounding area, we wanted to go and find a waterfall. So we went up to the DNT hut to get wifi and searched for places in the area and found one about an hour away, only a little bit out of the way for our trip back.
So we packed up and gathered our stuff and left. After a couple of missed turns we eventually found the spot. The whole time we were driving we were trying to outrun the rain as the whole sky was dark and we could see huge amounts of rain pouring near us. When we got there we found that it was perfect, a perfect place for our tent beside the parking area, a stone table and bench to prepare food on, it was right beside a river and there were even bathrooms!
After we set up our tent the clouds went away so we were very thankful and gathered wood to make a fire. While we were doing this we heard some mooing and so we look over across the river and there is a whole herd of wild cows on the other side of the river! I was so shocked! I had never seen wild cattle before. And there was some sort of island like thing in the middle of the river and there were a bunch of goats on it! I had never seen wild goats either, so I thought it was all pretty darn cool.
The next morning we went on the waterfall hike and it was a beautiful sight. The other two still felt like hiking so they wanted to hike up about 30 min more to this building but I decided I’d rather stay and relax at the waterfall for a bit, so that’s what I did. I’m really glad that they both decided to come with me on this trip because it was tons of fun and if I hadn’t of been able to see any of Norway’s famous landmarks while I was here, I would have been severely disappointed.