Kjerag: Climbing mountains high and valleys low

 Michael had to conference again today (gave his second talk), so I took myself off adventuring to Kjeragbolten, a popular hike destination about 2 hours southeast of Stavenger. I went with a guided group, mostly because they picked me up in the morning and dropped me back off this evening. 

The hike was spectacular - Norway really is stunningly beautiful. The area reminded me a lot of Yosemite... Except bigger. It's lots of enormous granite domes rising above deep fjords, with clear waterfalls and sheep. 

The hike went up (and down) over three big hills to reach a lookout point over the fjord. And it really was up - none of the pictures I took really do the vertical scale justice. But parts of the hike were much more like climbing.

From the carpark: first step is to summit that hill. It's steeper than it looks. 

And much of the trail was shear granite.

Made it to the top! Now it's time to go down into the valley, and then back up the next hill. 

Going up again!

I'm quite proud of myself, because I didn't find the hike too exhausting. Challenging, sure, but in a really good way. And it was pretty. 

Whoops, gotta go back down and then up some more. 

There are some very majestic sheep in this picture. 

The third hill was the most "up" of them all. 

But holy moly the view. 

After that it flattened out such that we walked along the top of the fjord cliff. 

Lots of rock. 

The destination was worth it, though, I think:

Standing on Kjeragbolten. It's a stupid far way down. 

From the back. Getting on the the boulder was a little scary. Very much a "don't look down" deal. I looked it up - no one has died here.  

The view from behind the boulder. I think this was more impressive than Preikestolen. 

The boulder is wedged in a crack that is also a very pretty stream bed with a waterfall. 

I feel like there are already a lot of pictures of me on this post, but here is another one. 

After, we hiked up to an overlook (as if we weren't high enough (about 1000m)

Pretty happy with it all.