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We came into this area after visiting Preikestolen in late August, 2002. In the morning when we first came across the area, the sky was blue, the sun was shining, and the lakes were like mirrors. The photo at right is of Valevatn along highway 45.
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Soon after, we turned onto the Lysebotn-Sirdal road passing yet another crystal clear image (left), with the puffy white clouds now starting to form.
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The landscape up on top of the pass was quite different than that below (right). Up here, there were no trees and the big, rounded boulders dominated the landscape. Although it looks quite barren, there are lots of low-growing plants growing wherever they can get a foothold. The effect is very striking. Amongst all the rocks are several reservoirs and small lakes.The reservoirs are all linked to the power generation system below at Lysebotn.
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Just above Lysebotn, there is a lookout point where this gorgeous panorama opens before your eyes. There is a cafeteria here that serves good food and has a great view! This is also the starting point for the hike to Kjerabolten.
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(right) where you can hop out onto this rock stuck between the two larger boulders, with a vertical drop to the fjord 1,000 meters below. We didn’t trust the weather for the long hike (3-4 hours each way), so passed on it this trip. To bad really - Jim was really looking forward to taking the place of the lad in the picture (from a postcard) at right.
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The road down to Lysebotn is shown below left, complete with 27 switch backs and a 1.1 kilometer long tunnel at the bottom containing 3 of the switch backs.
Below right is the view from the bottom, looking down the Lyse fjord.
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After retracing our path to the main highway (yes, there is only one way in and one way out by road), we continued east over the Håhelleren pass. Here we met up with the local sheep which is easy to do as the entire area is full of free-range sheep. There were quite friendly and came right up to us as we stopped. Then they started licking the dirt off the bike (we suppose for the mineral salts). This one at left managed to do a good job cleaning off Verna’s moose sticker on her rear fender (you couldn’t see it before the sheep got started).
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Just down the road, the storm clouds started gathering and put an end to our nice clear day. By the time we descended from the pass and turned onto highway 9, it was raining.
Although we found this area to be drop-dead gorgeous in the morning when we started, we found the same lakes and views in the afternoon to be windblown and not exciting photo opportunities. Clearly, the weather affected our outlook and we were even more thankful that we got the beautiful weather we did.
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