Is Norway the Ultimate Destination for Extreme Bikepacking Adventures? | Ep.5

Two years ago, a friend and I cycled around Breheimen National Park. Okay, when I say cycled, there was a serious hiker bike section which we totally underestimated. But memories fade and adventure is always burning on. You see, Breheimen has an older brother called Jotterheimen. 1,200 square kilometers of more rock, ice and tundra. There are roads that go all the way around Jotterheimen, which I've cycled many times before. What we were after was this. In general, roads are prohibited in Norwegian national parks, but for some reason, this road exists. And where it ends is where our sequel to Breheimen begins. An adventure where we take hiker biking to the extreme. Flashbacks? Oh my goodness, this is Breheimen Mark 2. Look how steep it is up there. Two stupid guys, part two. Any series on loop rides must include at least one hiker bike route. I understand that hiking with your bike for many kilometers to connect roads isn't popular. It's a new evolution of bikepacking, pushing the activity to its extreme. I'm curious though, is there a future for this in Norway? There are so many dead-end roads just waiting to be connected by idiots like us. If it goes wrong, it's all on you. Look like hiking shoes, but actually they've got cleats on them. Very, very smart. So here's the master plan. We start in Randsvøk, a small tourist spot on the outskirts of Jotterheimen National Park. From there, we take one of the best gravel roads in Norway to the park boundaries and then inside for seven kilometers before it comes to an end at Glitterheim cabin. From Glitterheim, we're going to hike 16 kilometers to the next mountain cabin. After that, it's another 70 kilometers of riding before we reach our accommodation on day one. More details about that later. Not bad at all, just got above the clouds here. So we must be what? One thousand and odd meters above sea level and it's just an autumn paradise up here. We'll show you this later, this little baby here. It always surprises you, Norway. This really is one of the best gravel roads in Norway. It's a hidden gem, few know about it and few will ever recycle it due to the fact that it comes to that dead end. Now the footage might look good, but trust me, it is nothing compared to what it's like being there. It is so wild and open and right now we're around 1200 meters above sea level but just on flat roads. Seriously, this is as good as it gets for gravel paradise. After around 30 kilometers of cycling, we finally reach the gate to the national park. So we've now reached the end of the road for cars. No more cars are allowed to go past as we head towards the hitter at the bottom. And what you can do is you drive up and then you can just pick up a bike. There's lots of them, you can grab a bike, grab a helmet and then cycle the seven kilometers to the hitter and then people walk up the mountain. But I mean, we just cycled that road and it was incredible. I mean, the thought of driving it in a day like this probably just shivers down my spine. But you know, if you want a different helmet, just help yourself to a new helmet. Or if you want a different bike, just help yourself to a new bike. But I think my FARA all-road bike is a little bit better than these bikes. I might be wrong, but I think I'll stick with the FARA today. It's bike heaven here. Welcome to Norway. So I took a photo and this turned out to be the most popular photo on my Instagram account. Over 450 likes. I thought probably that's the most anyone's ever got for a cycling photo. But then I went on to Instagram to check it and it seems that every girl in Lycra has more likes. There's even a girl in an elevator with more likes. And then I discovered this one has over 14,000. I'm like, how is that even possible? And then I realized it's got to be the horses. So I republished mine with a little bit of Photoshop editing and boom, over 250 million likes. So we reached the cabin where the road comes to an end and the first thing you must do is make sure you put your bike in the right pile or some cheeky bugger is going to cycle it back to the car park. And they're not short of bikes here, that's for sure. Now I've never hiked a bike for 15kms before. Last time we did was 10kms and that was hell on earth. But I've been promised, I've been promised that this is going to be a lot easier to hike. So all my faith here is in Erik. 15kms? It all depends on your skills, not on my strength as well. So you have two routes available. One is over Glittertind, Norway's second highest mountain. New one is a little bit lower down. That's 16kms and on either side there are mountain cabins and the plan was to eat at both of them. But the first one, Glitterheim, breakfast had stopped serving so we had to head out only with energy bars. There he goes. I wouldn't say this is... Now Erik believed we could cycle the first part but this wasn't going to last long on an all-road bike. This is a stupid idea, break a leg. So last year when we hiked Breheimen, carrying your bike for 10kms on your back and shoulders was horrible to say the least and by the end my arms felt like they were dropping off. But in 2023, ReStrap created the perfect solution and they sent me two over to test out. Really, really comfortable. Carry the bike and while it's not loaded at the moment I'd be more than happy to walk up the hill with the bike strapped to my back. Two, hands free. 15kms. Let's see what happens. It's definitely a game changer this. I mean it just adds so many opportunities to cycle and hike in incredible areas. You know, in 10kms time we're going to hit a road, a gravel road. Amazing gravel road. How cool is that? And in the meantime, we've got an incredible glacier right in front of us and we're the only people on this hiking path. So the first 5kms of the hike was absolutely perfect. Flat, wide, open landscape. No trees or anything to get in the way of your bike and of course, views fit for a king. But as always, that wasn't going to last forever. Nothing is ever straightforward in the Norwegian mountains. So we've reached the point now, we're 5kms into the hike and now we've got the climb. This is kind of the biggest climb on the journey. We're going to go up through this narrow... The hard part is trying to get your bike around the rocks. So you really have to walk like a crab at certain points and walk sideways. Ow, ow, ow, ow. Slash breaks. Look how steep it is over there. Here we go. It's never ending. It's just a rock field. This goes on forever. You've got to be so careful where you put your foot, you lose your balance. That's it, game over, leg is broke. We were hoping it might ease off with the rocks and become a little bit more grassy, the terrain, but it's like a boulder field here. It's very, very slow going, walking with your bike. Unbelievable views of the glaciers coming off the mountains here, Norway's highest mountains. Just 300 years ago, this whole area was covered in glaciers and when they melted, they left behind this barren rocky land with no vegetation. But some things do live up here. We were going at a reasonable pace and even overtook a couple that we met along the way, but the environment makes every kilometre hard work. Hours tipped by with no sight of a clearing. We've done about 12km right now. So tired, it's unbelievable. 3km to go, which we estimate may be an hour if we're lucky to be descending off this mountain platter. Eventually, after 7.5 hours of hiking, we see the promised land. 14.5km gone and we see a road. Not just any old road, a beautiful gravel road. We also see glaciers, waterfalls, incredible river, a majestic valley with high peak mountains and why are you pointing the camera on yourself, Matthew? Just turn it around, baby. Turn it around. Oh my God, that is phenomenal. But getting the bikes down the mountain is no easy feat. How mad are you at me from a scale to 1 to 10? Well, that made Breheimen look easy. God, that was mental. Absolutely mental. If you told me to walk up there with my bike, I'd tell you to go f**k yourself. Oh my God, it's not gravel either. I'm not going to complain, that's for sure. I don't even know if I can remember how to ride a bike now. Once again, we were supposed to get some food at Spitterstuen's mountain cabin, but we were way behind schedule. We had to push on. Our cabin for the night was 70km away and the kitchen closed at 10pm, where we had already booked and paid for a meal. I can't describe to you the feeling of only eating energy bars the whole day while burning vast amounts of calories. All you want is a real meal and every bar you consume becomes harder to digest. We've got 13km left on a gravel road through this valley now. I'm exhausted to say the least. My whole body's aching so I just want to get there and hope to God there's some food available because we've not had a meal all day. Not fun, and the last 13km took forever. Climbing back up to 1400m above sea level, we're now heading back to the gates of the national park. We began this journey at 8am and finally finished at 10.45pm. The restaurant kitchen was closed, but some kind souls at the cabin prepared some food for us. It was a godsend. Ready for round two? After cycling in the dark last night, it was so nice to wake up and see what we'd missed yesterday. Today we could hike the bikes 15km back through the national park to where we ended the hike yesterday. But we didn't have the time and I certainly didn't have the legs. We needed to be back in Oslo that night so we decided to cycle the gravel roads around the park outskirts, completing the loop. We'll save that hiking section for another time and I'll cover it in a future video. This road used to be gravel but it seems they've paved it over this year. Regardless, it's spectacular, especially when you're descending with a tailwind. September, one of the best times to cycle in Norway. Few though know about the gravel routes around Jotterheimen National Park. On CycleNorway.com we've mapped them all out and detailed your options if you're interested in cycling the entire loop. The ride back was, as expected, beautiful but challenging in places and thankfully uneventful after yesterday's shenanigans. But as we rode the quiet and peaceful gravel roads back to the starting point, the hiker bike concept was on my mind. How far is too far? Who can do this? Who wants to do this? Norway for years has been a hiking paradise and as you saw on day one, there are hiking cabins fully facilitated all over the country. Everything is already set up for a bike and hike adventure. All you need is a harness and you have endless opportunities. I want to do more but you really need to do your research, you need to be prepared and you need to presume nothing. Yesterday would have been far more manageable if I'd brought real food with me and shortened the cycling section. A 15-hour day is not appropriate if you're going to plan multiple days. But with no market set up for this yet, you have to be that guinea pig, the one that tests the limits and sees what is possible. One thing is for certain, this is not going to be the last time I use a hiker bike harness. There's certainly more videos to come. Thanks for watching. Let me know your thoughts. I'll see you in the next one. We're in the land of the gods here.