This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
Norway’s most popular mountain bike route
e West Coast of Norway contains some of the best mountain scenery in Europe and there is one mountain bike trip that captures this scenery — the “Rallarvegen’”. The Rallarvegen, which is approximately 80 km long, follows the Oslo—Bergen railway line over the highest and most spectacular part of this famous railway route. The track itself is in fact an old railway construction road that was built late last century for the purpose of transporting workers and materials during the building phase of the most mountainous section of the Oslo-Bergen railway line. Today the track is almost exclusively used by mountain bikers and a few walkers, following this most dramatic route towards the West Coast of Norway. As the Rallarvegen reaches a height of 1343m, the snow levels for most of the year mean that the season for mountain biking this trail is quite short: July to September. Even during this summer period there are a few mounds of snow about. We started the trip at Haugastgl, a small railway station that lies at 990 metres. From here we started
Wayne Stevens & Jeanine Langvik the very gradual ascent up to Finse, the highest station at 1222 metres. The route to Finse was spectacular as we cycled amongst mountainous terrain and small lakes. Despite it being late summer, the traces-of the winter snows remained, and it was not hard to see why the mountain biking season is so short. Finse is a popular winter cross-country skiing area, and we remembered only too well the last time we visited the area in 1991 when we spent a week skiing in the spring. There are also a number of summer hiking routes, some of which we had done in previous years, which descend from Finse down to the valleys nearby and after a couple of days’ hiking, to the fjords below. After Finse the cycle track follows the old railway line to Bergen. In recent years a sizeable proportion of the railway track has been placed inside a large tunnel and asa result, some of the scenery has become invisible to train travellers. The tracks remain and in one place we found an old railway cart and the Norweeegan was able to find a locomotive to pull her along the track — me!
Trip Reports
In a few places after Finse there were some sizeable areas where large snowdrifts meant we had to walk the bikes at times, but luckily these snow-affected areas were few and far between. After reaching the high point of the track at 1343 metres the track was largely all downhill. While the track continued on through some of the highest and most spectacular mountainous areas of Norway the track was generally ona gradual downhill slope — a dream for mountain bikers. As we cycled West towards Bergen the scenery seemed to become more mountainous and more spectacular. We camped for the night at Myrdal and had an impressive view of the valley and the branch railway line that runs down from Myrdal to sea level at Flam. This railway line drops quickly from a height of approximately 870m to sea level over 20 km of track. This track must be one of the great railways engineering achievements of the world, as the track does a number of loops inside the mountain and passes through mountainous terrain and a narrow valley. After reaching the end of the Rallarvegen cycle track at Flam the skies opened, and we were drenched as we took a passenger ferry on Sognefjorden to Sogndal. Sognefjorden is the longest fjord in the world — reaching over 200 kilometres inland. We regretted not having our sea kayaks at this point! Unfortunately the excellent weather we had had didn’t last, and we spent a wet afternoon cycling to Solvorn and then taking another ferry to Urnes where we visited one of the oldest churches in Norway, dating back to 1100AD. The following day we started the major climb of our trip from sea level up to the summit of Northern Europe’s highest road at 1430 metres. We were hoping for some spectacular views of the surrounding mountains and glaciers in Jotunheimen National Park at the top, but it was not to be, as we spent the afternoon and the night among a cold and wet rain cloud. We could only dream about the scenery that must have been around us. The weather was no better the next day, but the good thing about camping out so high was the morning's descent; it sure was quick as we cycled to the pleasant township of Lom and then further down the valley to Otta where we met up with the Oslo-Trondheim train line and caught the train back to Oslo.
gee aioe mae