katspeech

Day 1 in Norway started in Stavanger with a visit to the office of the Norwegian Trekking Association. We loaded up on maps and became members to get a discount on the places we were planning to stay. We took a ferry from Stavanger to Tau and then a bus to Preikestolhytta, the staffed lodge at the beginning of the hike to Preikestolen (a.k.a Pulpit Rock). We trekked the 2 hours out to Pulpit Rock (shown in these pictures) and it was soooo windy up there! I was absolutely terrified of getting blown over the edge of the 600m ledge so I tried to stay near the middle—Rob was, of course, walking all over the place like nobody’s business. Our next plan was to find the adjoining trail to make the 7 hour walk to Bakken where we were planning to spend the night in a hut. Trail sign for Bakken? Check. TRAIL for Bakken. Nope, can’t find that anywhere. So after an hour of searching we decided against hiking until midnight in the remote wilderness and we sadly made our way back to the trail start at Preikestolhytta to spend the night. This was all made better when we met the four others sharing our bunk room. They were a great bunch of people and exchanged cell phone numbers so we could let them know the next day that we made it safely! For some reason they seemed to have some doubts about our hiking prowess.