In the afternoon, we hiked the Storseterfossen trail which leads you up (yet another) steep trail to a waterfall. Most of the trail was stone steps and large stones placed as bridges over creeks. Looking down you could occasionally see Geiranger and looking up you could see the glacier near Mount Dalsnibba, several waterfalls and several other pointy mountains.
We reached the waterfall after 40 minutes and 230m of altitude gain (described as “it takes 100 days to get there” by an exhausted young boy coming down). Luckily they have chains to hold along the edge since in order to get behind the waterfall you need to lean over to avoid hitting your head while climbing down wet slanty rocks. The volume of water coming down is large and noisy — pretty fun to be right behind it! It was also surprisingly dry. In fact, it drizzled the entire walk up to the waterfall so while we were in the cave behind the waterfall we were dryer than the rest of the walk.
On the way back we also encountered some sheep on the path and saw some goats from a distance. The shot on the right below shows the glaciers on Mount Dalsnibba.
We felt pretty good about avoiding the cruise ship crowds while in Geiranger. At lunch we’d made reservations so we enjoyed a harbor side table on the deck which felt quite secluded under the circumstances, and although the waterfall hike had a lot more people than other hikes we’ve done, we figure that the rain kept some of them indoors. But then as we headed back towards our rental, we encountered more of the crowds. Our car was stuck at one hairpin turn for about 5-10 minutes as tour buses and cars contended for the very limited parking and driving space at the Ørnesvingen (Eagles Bend) lookout. We were stuck so long that Megan and I had time to get out of the car, go check out the viewpoint, take some photos and come back. Eventually though the bus causing the hold-up managed to maneuver around the hairpin and Leon was able to start the car up again and make his way to a parking spot so he could see the view as well.
Balents Trip Blog 