The usual thing to do is to book a room in Odda to sleep well and start the route early the next day, but since our budget was so tight we decided to take a late train from Göteborg to Oslo and the night bus from Oslo towards Odda. It went perfectly although we arrived much earlier than the first buses to Tyssedal run, so we had a small breakfast while we waited for them to start!
Tyssedal is about 6km from Odda and the proper route starts about 7km from there, in the Skjeggedal car park. Our initial plan was to walk from Tyssedal to the car park, which we immediately realised was a mistake. A couple of super kind strangers motioned us to jump into the back of their pickup truck and gave us a ride! 💜
The first part of the hike is a bit boring, as you zig-zag endlessly up the sharp cliff to Mågelitopp. Apparently there are a few alternative ways of climbing including the steps of the old funicular, but we preferred taking the road although it is much uglier. It would have been so beautiful if the funicular had been restored instead of cutting the landscape with such a huge road!
As you can see, the weather was incredibly foggy and we took a lot longer than expected to complete our hike, but the trail is pretty well marked with red arrows every few meters. Sometimes it felt like we were floating in the middle of the air. The Gryteskaret pass is tough but it was incredible to climb over a glacier and ice in the middle of June. Definitely recommend having good hiking boots for this!
We finally made it around 18:00 and decided to camp a little way down because of the bad weather. We were so tired that after having our dinner we fell asleep almost instantly! (Click for Part 2)
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