Trollstigen Cycling — Geiranger & Eagle Road Loop

When I rode this in August 2021, I left Geiranger at half past eight in the morning — early enough to beat the tourist buses but late enough to let the fog lift off the fjord. The Eagle Road starts climbing from the first pedal stroke. Ornevegen throws you into 11 hairpin bends at close to 9% average, and within twelve kilometres you are at 600 metres with the Geirangerfjord stretched out far below. The viewpoint at Ornesvingen is worth every drop of sweat — the Seven Sisters waterfall, the cruise ships reduced to dots, and the fjord narrowing into the distance.

From the top of Eagle Road the route descends toward the Eidsdal ferry crossing at around km 30. The ferry terminal had a small kiosk selling sveler — traditional Norwegian pancakes — and I ate two while waiting. After the short crossing to Linge, the road follows the fjord northeast through Valldal, a quiet stretch that gives the legs time to recover before what comes next.

Trollstigen. The road was opened in 1936 by King Haakon VII and carries up to 2,500 vehicles a day in summer — but on a bicycle you experience it differently. The climb is 12 kilometres at around 7% with 11 hairpin bends carved into the mountainside, and the Stigfossen waterfall thunders 320 metres beside the road. The upper section steepens past 10% and the road narrows. I could hear the waterfall the entire way up, and the spray from it reached the road on several of the bends. The Trollstigen cafe at the summit at 880 metres is mandatory — coffee and waffles with a view straight down the switchbacks.

The GPX shows this route as an out-and-back loop: after the summit, the road descends the north side toward Andalsnes, then turns around and climbs Trollstigen again from the same side. The return follows the exact same road back through Valldal, across the ferry, and over Eagle Road into Geiranger. Climbing Eagle Road a second time with 130 kilometres already in the legs was a different experience entirely — slower, harder, and somehow even more beautiful in the late afternoon light.

The total is 159 kilometres with over 3,100 metres of climbing. It was the hardest single day of that trip, and the one I think about most often.