Our first destination after renting our car in Bergen was Preikestolen or Pulpit Rock. Preikestolen is a square rock plateau standing 1,981 feet above the Lysefjord. We had a beautiful drive along the coast where we took several car ferries to get to the trailhead of Preikestolen.
We got to the trailhead at around 8PM, emptied our packs to only what we needed for the night (in Kelvin’s case this included his drone), and set out on the hike. Our plan was to camp by Preikestolen for the night. The Preikestolen hike is approximately 7.5 km (4.6 miles) roundtrip. The trail is super well marked with the DNT red Ts. Because the sun was setting as we were hiking and a thick fog was rolling in, the hike felt beautifully mysterious.
When we were about 1 km from the rock, it started pouring rain and visibility became very poor. We decided to set up camp by a lake for the night.
At sunrise, Kelvin woke us up to hike the last 1 km to Preikestolen. The fog was super thick, and the trail was slippery from all the rain from the night before. The great thing about camping along the trail up to Preikestolen was that we were the first people on the trail in the morning. We had the trail and Preikestolen to ourselves, which is a rarity for such a popular hike. Maybe it was just a bad day for hiking Preikestolen though because when we got to the rock, visibility was so horrible that we couldn’t see the fjord below. It was literally just white fog everywhere we looked.
We hiked above Preikestolen and waited to see if the fog would clear out so we could get a better view of the rock and the fjord below it. Kelvin, the cloud whisperer, was very determined that the fog was only a few minutes from clearing.
There were brief moments where we could see Lysefjord below and Preikestolen, but never together. The fog was relentless that morning.
After several hours, a steady stream of visitors started to appear, and we turned around and headed back to camp for breakfast.
We were very thankful for our camp. After a cold, wet morning hike, there’s nothing like a cooked meal to help warm us up.
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