Hiking in Norway – Ulriken to Floyen

I recently spent a week in Bergen Norway. While there my friend John and I spent a day hiking in the mountains surrounding Bergen. There are said to be seven mountains surrounding the city. Ulriken is the tallest mountain at 643 meters. This may not seem that high, but you must consider that the old section of Bergen sits at sea level. Ulriken has a cable car that quickly takes you to the top. Floyen mountain is visited much more often by tourists and locals. A train run by cables quickly takes people to the top. The main station for Floyen is much more accessible to downtown Bergen and there are expansive running / hiking trails that lead to the top. We decided to explore this mountain region by first riding the cable car to the top of Ulriken. This will cost you 80 NOK (~$15 US) per person. We would then spend the day exploring the mountain and make our way to Floyen.

Me standing on Ulriken's the observation platform

We rode the bus from downtown to the base station for Ulriken's cable car. The ride up was fast and upon exiting found it much colder and windier than it was some 600+ meters below our current altitude in town. We had a map, but it was poorly done in my opinion. There are signs on the mountain pointing to various destinations.

Typical wet trail

After consulting with a local she told us which way to go and asked "are you sure you want to go the whole way to Floyen? Do you have shells (rain coats)? We assured her we had coats in our packs and we did want to go to Floyen. It was a mystery on how far it was. We had heard anywhere from 10 - 13 kilometers and 4 to 5 hours of hiking. This seemed a bit off to me. It would not take us 5 hours to hike 13 kilometers. I made a mistake on two fronts here. First here in the US when someone tells you a time to hike a trail they usually build in a lot of time for the "inexperienced / out of shape" hiker. Case in point - the sign at the bottom of Old Rag Mountain in Shenandoah National Park states to allow 6 to 7 hours to complete the circuit hike. A person in average condition could complete this hike in under 4 hours easily. The other mistake was assuming the distance was correct. As it turns out the time was right on and distance was much greater than stated.

Typical trail marker

The top of the mountain consisted of rocks and grass. It was very boggy in spots with numerous small ponds. It was very brown this time of year and very wet. I can only imagine how green it must be in spring an early summer. After hiking for a while we can upon a deep canyon that lead to a lake. Many of the lakes in this area are reservoirs for the city. We hike part of the way down the canyon and the trail turned steep and technical. We had never planned on descending to the lake, so we turned around and headed back to the trail after snapping a few pictures.

A large lake at the foot of the mountain

At various places on top of the mountain were cabins. None of then appeared to be inhabited, but a few had first aid signs on them. I assume that in the tourist season these cabins are staffed and provide shelter and supplies as needed.

A boggy area on top the mountain

We then ran into a couple and they told us about getting a stamp at the top of the mountain and pointed off into a general direction. We headed off to find this stamp and after a while spotted a rock pile with a green case built onto the side of it. John stamped the ticket from the cable car as I wrote in the log book. Hikers will forever see that we were there on October 31, 2009 at 12:00 pm.

Me at the stamping box

We continued back to the main path and were on our way. After hiking for a long time we though we would soon reach our destination. The mountain had other ideas. The day was wearing on and the sun sets early when you are at 60+ degrees of North Latitude. After a while we ran into an old man with a dog and he pointed us in the right direction. We finally made it to the top of Floyen. We decided to hike the 2.5 miles down the trail and through town to the hotel.

View from Floyen

In the end we hiked 16 miles with 2200 feet of ascent and 4100 feet of descent. This would have 2.5 less miles and 900 less feet of descent if we would have elected to ride the train down the mountain. I would highly recommend this hike if you find yourself in Norway. Just be prepared for the weather as it can be nasty and make sure you know where you are going. The trail is marked very well to a point, with the last few miles into Floyen being poorly marked. It appears that this is a very popular place among the locals so you will see people on the hike. I have been told you can hike up Ulriken and this would add some miles and 2000 feet of ascent to your journey.