Sunrise hike to Preikestolen

It’s an early autumn morning. It’s still dark and you can feel the chilly autumn air on your cheeks when you get out of your car at the car park at Preikestolen Basecamp.

We’ve checked the time of the sunrise and allowed two hours to be sure to make it up to the iconic plateau in time.

We’ve put on plenty of clothes, hiking trousers and a warm coat. The most important thing however is the headlight you’re wearing. There are reflective posts at regular intervals along the route, and people to guide you safely across wooden bridges, up Sherpa steps, through birch forests and over bare rock. Following the posts is easy.

The blue hour

The day starts dawning when we get to Tjødnane around 1 km from our goal. The sky takes on a light, cold shade of blue, and you’ll suddenly understand why the morning and evening twilight is called ‘the blue hour’.

We speed up a little, afraid that we might be too late. But when we arrive on the plateau, we realize we still have plenty of time. It’s cold at the top, but luckily we’re wearing a hat and gloves and have an extra coat and a blanket in our rucksack. We find a sheltered place to sit by the mountainside and pour ourselves a cup of coffee. We sip the warm drink as we watch the sky taking on a light golden hue.

Alone at Preikestolen

Suddenly we see the sun emerging from behind the mountains in the east. We stand up and walk out onto the plateau. We see more and more of the sun as it rises from behind the mountains south of the majestic Lysefjord. We stand and soak up the sight, enthralled by the colour of the sky becoming warmer and warmer.

We have Preikestolen all to ourselves, and it’s important to capture this unique moment for all eternity. I walk out towards the edge of the plateau, sit down and slowly make my way to the edge and stop when I can feel my heels dangling over it. I’m not actually all that afraid of heights, but not having terra firma under your feet when you’re 604 metres above the fjord tells me otherwise. I have butterflies in my stomach when I raise my hands above my head. My hiking companion has a camera at the ready, and I ask her to hurry up and take a photo. I then make my way away from the edge and look at the photos she’s taken. I’m happy with them and share them with friends on social media. We take a last look at the sun which has now risen above the mountains and go back down the same way we came.

We’ve had a sunrise hike to Preikestolen on our bucket list for a long time, and we now happily tick it off our list.