Day 8 - We Climbed To The Mountaintop And Saw Our First Fjord

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Today we left the glory of past Olympics in Lillehammer behind as Arpi guides the intrepid Insight Vacations Bus up the mountain road 4843 ft to the top of Mt Dalsnibba and the Geiranger Skywalk. But first we have to make a stop along the way. We left Lillehammer this morning at about 9:00AM following some unpronounceable river to Lom.

Lom is a small town of 2200 residents known for having some phenomenal cinnamon rolls and for the Lom Stave Church. The Lom Stave Church dates back to the 12^th century and is constructed entirely of wood and is one of the oldest remaining stave churches in Norway. Its unusual dark appearance is due to the fact that the exterior of stave churches are covered entirely with tar as a waterproofing agent and a preservative.

Our local tour guide was Emile, and he seemed a little young and timid, but he knew all about the church and gave us a lot of information about its history. The interior is really amazing, and it is very similar to the types of columns and decorations of a typical marble church interior, except it is all made out of wood. At the time of its original construction, glass for windows had not het been invented, so there were just a few small openings covered in animal skins to try and let in a little light. In later years plain glass windows were added, and biblical scenes where depicted in tapestries on the walls. The angels on either side of the alter were apparently stolen from a Scottish church.

We were really impressed with the church, but we were also impressed with the local bakery in the center of town. They had many choices of delicious breads and pastries, but Jody and I both set our eyes on the huge cinnamon rolls. We were surprised that for a town so small, they were doing a tremendous business. There was also a river passing through the town with rapids and waterfalls and general all around beauty.

But soon it was time to get back on the bus for our ascent of Mt Dalsnibba. We were expecting to do Mt Dalsnibba tomorrow, but the weather was promising for today and was looking a little rainy for tomorrow. The risk was not that we might get wet, but that if the clouds came in, it would spoil the visibility and might even close the road. But the rain gods were with us today, as we got closer the drizzle stopped and the sun even began to creep out.

The closer we got, the more dramatic the scenery became. Today we were lucky as we had the entire back seat of the bus, so we could move to either side to take pictures along the way. We did make a couple of photo stops along the way. The final section of the road to the summit is privately owned and is only opened for a few months out of the year, mostly due to snow cover. But today the road was open and Arpi was able to drive up the multiple twists and hairpin turns to the summit.

At the top of Mt Dalsnibba is a platform called the Geiranger Skywalk which hangs off the summit so that you can look straight down into the valley below and at the end, you can see the village of Geiranger and the Geiranger Fjord. The view is spectacular! It’s really hard to describe the beauty of this area as pictures just don’t do justice to the magnificence of the view. There is still a lot of snow at the summit, and snow melt causes lots of waterfalls on all sides of the mountain. I have included lots of photos and I will let the photos speak for themselves. These views are the main reason Jody and I went on this trip and they have far exceeded our expectations. I don’t see how sitting in a cruise ship parked in the fjord could compare to the ride through the countryside and up and down the mountain to see the view from above.

The top of the mountain was pretty cool, probably mid 40 degrees, but the sun made it seem a little warmer and we were pretty comfortable. We picked up a couple of t-shirts and a magnet from the summit gift shop before it was time to get back on the bus and head back down. There were quite a few motorcycles heading up and down the mountain road, and I couldn’t help being a little jealous. Most of the bikes were BMW Sport-Touring with removeable hard bags on the back.

The other thing we noticed was a lot of campers and campgrounds. The Norwegians are really big into camping and everywhere we looked there were RV’s or cars towing camper trailers, and every few miles was another campground. Norwegians also have the right to roam, and can park their campers most anywhere, so you do see lots of campers along the side of the road near a river or in view of a mountain, but you also see lots of organized campgrounds with activity areas for children.

The ride down the mountainside was even more spectacular than the ride up! Coming down, the bus was even closer to the edge and that made the views even better. When we reached the bottom of the private road, we made a quick stop at the still frozen lake to take a few photos before turning toward our final destination for today of Geiranger. Our hotel is in the perfect location for today’s activities. From the rear, we are looking up Mt Dalsnibba at the Geiranger Skywalk above, and to the front we are facing Geiranger Fjord with all its beauty. A Fjord is just a long narrow inlet with steep walls on three sides, formed by a glacier.

After checking in the hotel, we headed out to explore and attraction called the Geiranger Waterfall Walk which is essential a path and a series of steps that follows a waterfall of water as it runs down the mountain and empties into the fjord. We were warned by Maja to remember that the initial path is completely downhill, but if we walked it all the way to the bottom, we would have to walk back up and the walk up would be much more difficult than the walk down. Having encountered this phenomenon many times in our history of hiking, we were only too aware of the difficulty. But it wasn’t too bad and the spectacular views going down and going back up were well worth the effort.

The visit to the Village of Geiranger though, was not worth the effort. There really isn’t a village as only 200 people live here, and as far as we could tell there were only a couple of hotels, a campground, and a marina. The only shopping was a little camping store at the entrance of the campground. According to Maja, about 280 cruise ships visit Geiranger every year, but I’m not sure where 3,000 people would go if they got off the ship. But we were lucky today, there was no cruise ship in port for us to find out.

After settling in our rooms for a much needed rest, we were back out at 6:30 for dinner. Dinner in the hotel was a buffet with salmon, chicken, beef, and about any other food you could imagine, but the real specialty was desserts. Maja warned us to eat light and to make room for several of the over 30 dessert choices. We followed her advice and after trying several of the delicious dessert choices, I can feel my blood sugar rising as I write.

We couldn’t have been luckier with the weather today, and tomorrows Troll Rd tour is a little less weather dependent as tomorrow it is supposed to rain all day. But we’re in the mountains, and weather reports are notoriously inaccurate so we’re hoping for the best!

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