Most people arrive here having seen one photograph, taken from a cruise deck in Geirangerfjord in July, and expect the whole coast to look like that. Sunnmore is the district, not the postcard. Geiranger is one arm of it, about two hours east, and it is the busiest half mile of water in the country on a summer afternoon. This week does not go there. It goes to the Hjorundfjord, which is one ridge west, has no cruise berth, and on most days in June has more boats tied up than moving.
The photographs also leave out the vertical. Pictures flatten the walls into a nice green backdrop. Standing at Saebo and looking across, the far side rises from the water to 4,600 feet in a mile and a half of horizontal distance, which means you are looking at something closer to a wall than a hillside. The farms you can see on it are real farms, worked into the 1960s in some cases, reached by a path and a winch and nothing else. Several are visible from the water as a pale rectangle of cut grass with a dark roof in the middle of it, nine hundred feet up, with no road and no obvious way anyone got a cow there. They did. It took two people and most of a day.
And the third thing the pictures leave out is the water on the road. Ferries here are not an outing. They are the road. The crossing from Solavagen to Festoya takes twenty minutes and runs every half hour, and people sit in their cars reading, the way you would at a long stoplight. Two of your eight days involve a ferry before breakfast. If that sounds romantic now, it will sound ordinary by Wednesday, which is roughly the point.
- What the week is
- Eight nights split between a fjordside inn on the Hjorundfjord, two nights in a valley guesthouse in Norangsdalen, and two nights in Alesund, moved by car ferry and minibus, with your main bag carried between beds on the two moving days.
- What sets it apart
- Alesund airport at Vigra is eleven miles from town and about ninety minutes from the far end of the Hjorundfjord, two of those minutes on a ferry. The ground is wet rock, cut grass and old cart tracks laid with stone; there is very little flat walking anywhere. Beds are small family inns and a guesthouse, six to twenty rooms, no elevators, some with the bathroom four steps down a corridor. The season runs late May to late September. Eight nights, from $2,940 per person.
- What the figure covers
- Eight nights in a shared double with private bathroom at all three bases; breakfast every morning and four dinners; all car ferry and passenger boat crossings on the itinerary; airport transfers both directions from Vigra; luggage carried between the three bases on moving days; two guided walking days with a local mountain guide; one boat day up the fjord arm with a farm landing; a printed route sheet with ferry departure times, tide notes and bail out options for every day.
- What it leaves to you
- Flights to Alesund, typically $780 to $1,340 round trip from the northeast in summer; four dinners, running $38 to $60 per person at the inns and about $28 in Alesund; all alcohol, where a half liter of beer is $12 to $14; the single occupancy supplement of $610; a rental car if you want one for the free days, $95 to $130 a day plus roughly $8 a gallon for fuel; travel protection of any kind, on which this desk sells nothing and counsels nobody; the Norangsdalen guesthouse laundry service at $22 a load; anything at the summer farm cafes, which take cards but not always reliably in bad weather.
- Who this one is wrong for
- Do not reserve this if you cannot manage stairs and uneven stone. The two guided days are five to seven hours on foot with 2,100 and 2,650 feet of climb, on wet rock and loose scree, with no vehicle access at the turnaround point and no way to shorten the second one once you are past the halfway hut. Two of the three beds have stairs and no elevator. If somebody in the party needs level ground, a lift, or a short day they can count on, the fjord itself is fine and the walking is not, and you would be paying for half a week.
Rock, grass and the way the rain gets there
The ground under your feet changes about four times a day. Down at the water there is cut grass and gravel and old stone quay. A hundred feet up you are on a cart track built by hand, laid with flat stones set edge on, which is excellent walking when dry and behaves like polished tile when wet. Above the tree line it turns to broken rock and, in the two corries the guided days go into, to loose scree that moves under you. Nobody in your party will be surprised by this if they have read the route sheet, and everybody will be surprised by it if they have not.
The rain comes off the open sea to the west and it arrives fast. Alesund gets around 75 inches a year, and the inner fjord arms get more, because the air runs into a wall and has nowhere to go but up. A clear morning turning to heavy rain by one in the afternoon is a normal June day, not bad luck. Temperatures in the valley sit between 52 and 66 degrees from mid June to late August, and the wind on an exposed shoulder at 3,000 feet will take fifteen degrees off that. Two of the summer farms you pass have a stove going in July for this reason.
A day here has a shape imposed on it by ferry times and by light. In late June it does not get properly dark at all, which sounds like a gift and mostly is, though people who need blackout to sleep should bring a mask, since half the rooms have thin curtains and one has none. Breakfast is early, walking days start by half past eight because the guides want you off the high ground before the afternoon weather, and dinner is at seven. The gap between four and seven is real free time, and most people spend the first one asleep.
The party this actually works for
This suits a party that does not move at one speed, and it suits it deliberately. On both guided days there is a genuine turnaround point at the halfway hut, roughly two hours in, from which one half of the party can walk back down to the road on the same track and the other half can carry on up. That is not a courtesy. The guide will say at breakfast which of the two options each person is choosing, and the return leg is walked, not driven, so nobody sits waiting in a parking lot. Somebody who wants 1,000 feet and somebody who wants 2,650 can both have a good day and eat dinner together.
It suits people who have not done this kind of week before, because almost nothing is left to you. Ferries are pre timed on the route sheet, the beds are booked in sequence, the bag moves without you, and the guide is a local who knows which of the two paths out of Norangsdalen is passable after rain. It also works for one person travelling alone: the single supplement is $610 rather than the full second fare, because two of the three properties hold small single rooms and we ask for those first. And it suits somebody in the party who will not fly far. Alesund is one connection from most northeastern departure points and the flying time is under nine hours in total, which is the shortest way into real fjord country from the United States.
Six cells, one for each obstacle, filled where this trip answers. Read the words below rather than the strip; the strip is a shorthand.
- The dates are fixed and short
- does not. The two guided walking days need settled conditions and the guides work a rota, so we can usually offer three or four start dates a month and not the specific week you have free. What does
- Somebody will not fly, or not far
- answers it. Everything else that answers it
- The party moves at two speeds
- answers it. Everything else that answers it
- Nobody has done this before
- answers it. Everything else that answers it
- The free weeks are out of season
- does not. The passenger boat up the fjord arm stops at the end of September, the summer farms shut, and from October the whole thing becomes a car trip between two hotels in the rain. What does
- One person travelling
- answers it. Everything else that answers it
When to come, and what each stretch of the calendar takes from you
- Late May to mid June
- The waterfalls are at their loudest from snowmelt and the valley is green, but the high tracks may still hold old snow above 2,600 feet, and the second guided day sometimes gets swapped for a lower route. Prices are at the floor figure. Mid June to early July | Light almost around the clock, the summer farms open, all ferries on their full timetable. The best walking conditions of the year and the reason most people come. Expect to add $180 to $240 per person on the bed rate. Mid July to mid August | Warmest water and warmest air, and the only stretch when the fjord swimming is bearable at 59 degrees. Also school holidays across Europe, so the ferries queue and the two inns are full. Book five months out or take another month. Late August to mid September | The quality week most people never consider. Air at 54 to 61 degrees, midges gone, ferry queues gone, hillsides turning. Rain probability rises noticeably, and the passenger boat drops from daily to four days a week. Late September | The season ends here rather than tapering. Summer farms shut, the boat stops, guides go back to other work. We will not sell you this week as a walking trip because it is not one by then. October to late May | Nothing on this itinerary operates. Roads are open and the car ferries run, but the beds close or go to skeleton service, and the week you would get is a different and much smaller thing.
The ferry queue nobody mentions until you are sitting in it
The car ferries are the honest weak point of a Sunnmore week in high summer. From about the tenth of July to the middle of August, the Solavagen crossing can leave three or four sailings' worth of cars behind on a Friday afternoon, which is an hour and a half of sitting on tarmac in a line with your engine off. Locals plan around it. Visitors find out on the day. We build the two moving days to cross mid morning on a weekday for exactly this reason, and it is why the itinerary does not do the obvious thing of putting you in Alesund on a Saturday night.
The other awkward fact is money. Norway is expensive in a way that catches Americans off guard even when they have been warned, because it is not the hotel that gets you, it is everything small. A sandwich and a coffee at a ferry quay is about $19. A liter of milk is $3.20. The four dinners not covered by the figure will run $38 to $60 a head at the inns, and there is no cheaper option nearby, because in the inner fjord there is no nearby. Budget an honest $90 to $120 per person per day on top of the reserved figure and you will not be unpleasantly surprised in week two when the card statement arrives. This office does not rank or grade anything and will not tell you the food is worth it, only what it costs.