Going NORTH

13 July - 10 October 2023

Summary

I wanted to reach and unlock Norway and the northern countries. The big obstacle was the sea between Denmark and Sweden, that I crossed using a packraft, loading bike on top and gear inside. Once I reached Norway and the original goal of Bergen, I prolonged the trip to explore more of the coast, using the packraft again to cross fjords, and to finish at the very top of Europe at the North Cape. It took 89 days for 4541 km and 8 packraft crossings, with 15000m of elevation.
In addition to the classical "human or nature power only" rule, I also added one specifying I had to be autonomous for the nights : no hotels, campings, warm showers or anything.

Map & links

Link to the Map shown above The google maps list with all the places I slept (misses a few entries at the start) Google Drive share with files and stuff

Summary

• Context
• Destination & planning
• Days 1-20 : Germany
• Days 21-28 : Denmark
• Day 24: THE Crossing
• Day 28: Oresund Crossing
• Days 28-38 : Up to Oslo
• Days 39-47 : Crossing the mountains to Bergen
• Days 48-65 : Across fjords and mountains to Trondheim
• Day 52 : The hardcore crossing
• Days 66-82 : Endless forests
• Days 83-87 : Winter in the arctic
• Days 88-89 : The North Cape
• The Way Back
• Conclusion

Context

After finishing my first studies, I felt like I needed to take a gap year to do some big and long adventures before doing my bachelor. I wanted to be able to just ride my bike everyday without worrying about getting back home in time. I was recently coming back from a very annoying knee injury (femoro-patellar pain syndrome) from my last big ski trip, that lasted me around one year due to bad healing practices. I still felt it sometimes after big efforts but had mostly learned to live with it and treat it on the go. Mentally I was kind of in a rush and the adventure was meant to be my great escape, running away from my problems and chasing better spirits.

Destination & planning

I was fascinated by the fjords and the huge wilderness of the northern countries, it looked so big and beautiful, it was an obvious destination choice. But how to get there was a bit harder to figure out. Indeed, if you zoom on Denmark, you can see there is two bodies of water to cross to reach Sweden. Storebaelt, 17km, to reach the big Denmark island, with bridges for train and highway, and Oresund, 5 to 20km, between Denmark and Sweden, crossed by ferries and a bridge that ends in a tunnel for trains and highway. How to cross that without cheating and removing all the fun of the adventure ?

At first I wanted to try biking on the highway of the bridge "discretely" at night and hope that no one would call the cops in one hour. But for the second strait, the highway passes under the sea, which means no emergency lane, and no hope to pass "safely" on a bike. I was kinda bummed until I read about the concept of bikerafting(using a packraft, inflatable small adventure boat, and loading the bike on it to cross lakes or go down rivers) online. Had it already been done to cross Storebaelt? Welp I found nothing but it sure looked like a potential solution. And oh boy, how epic it could be. But it was pretty dangerous and stressful : the packraft is closed by a zipper and you have to load all your gear in the only air chamber, you could get blown offshore by the wind and currents, a lot of things could go wrong.

But I was confident in my small experience on the sea at the end of my stand up paddle trip on the Rhine river. If the wind is with you and not too violent, it is doable. The only thing left to do was tests. First, try to load the bike on the SUP to see if it is really doable. If good, buy the packraft and see how fast it can go on still water. Third, test with all the gear on a two days trip to train and see if we can keep paddling for the amount of hours required. That was without accounting for me stabbing my thumb deeply with a knife 5 weeks before the departure, right when I should have been doing tests and training. Thankfully, the cut was clean, 3 weeks later it was healed and I had the time to do the minimal tests right before the big departure. I also trained the biking part a little bit, but really not that much. I knew that I could just start slowly and that I would get stronger on the way. The camping part was not too much of a worry, at least for the beginning.

Days 1-20 : Germany

Leaving Basel, I felt amazing. I was going on an epic quest, planning to go further from home than ever before. I was rediscovering the towns and landscapes I had passed 2 years ago on the Rhine, so I was still in familiar terrain. Physically it wasn't that great and mentally I was often doom-scrolling or reading stupid stuff on my phone, so not that amazing either.

I followed the Rhine cycling road for the first 7 days, so there were a lot of fellow bike travelers. Twice I met cool people and spent a few hours of the road chatting with them, even with a girl from Lausanne, a city right next to mine in Switzerland. A default of the bike route sometimes is a loss of efficiency, with gravel instead of asphalt or with big detours. But most of the time this one is pretty straightforward, way more comfortable and peaceful than the road.

The Mittelrhein region was pretty amazing, with cool castles, nice mountains / hills, etc. The landscape became a little bit less interesting after I left the Rhine on the 11th day, it suddenly became really flat and basically consisted of just farms and cities, except for a few lakes or forests here and there that were pretty cool. Another reason I enjoyed this part less is that my body was growing a bit tired and the old injuries were coming back. On top of that, I set my saddle too high, causing huge calf pain, and only understood the problem after 4-5 days...

I was slowly advancing and was pretty stressed about the crossing I would have to do soon. So I found an opportunity to do a test run of packrafting on the Elbe, avoiding Hamburg and its huge annoying periphery. The was perfect because it allowed me to warm up my arms properly, and see what I had to improve on the packraft and gear setup, the watering, the landing, etc.

Day 21-28 : Denmark

A few days later, I arrived in Denmark. That's when I really felt the discovery and exploration feeling kick in. Germany was a known country, I knew the language, the currency, etc. Suddenly it was a new land! Better bike roads, a few small hills making it more interesting, everything felt new. I also saw the sea for the first time of the trip at Flensburg, right before the frontier.

I quickly arrived at Lillebaelt, the first strait to cross to reach Sweden. This one was easy, since it is so small there is also a bridge for bicycles. After an epic day, a bit longer than usual but still very reasonable (80km), I finally arrived at Nyborg! For the past week or so I was constantly analyzing all the wind predictions from different apps and different models, and it looked like I was lucky and had a good weather window for tomorrow morning around 5 or 6. Seeing the hugeness of the crossing with my own eyes (you can't even see the other side!!!) was a bit intimidating, but also very exciting.

Day 24: THE Crossing

4AM. Wake up & eat a little. 4:30AM. Pack stuff inside the packraft, inflate it, load the bike. 5:55. Time to do this shit. The pressure and stress was pretty intense. The wind was on my back for now, but I knew it was planned to turn at some point. I knew I had the time. I knew I was as safe as I could be. But damn it felt so far away. The beginning was pretty chill, with the waves and wind helping me a little bit. My goal was the island in the middle. Seeing the sun slowly rise above the horizon in front of me was pretty amazing. At some point I tried counting the bridge arches to check my progress, but it just felt even further. I just kept paddling and eventually arrived at the island.

I then used my super power: music ! The weather was perfect, almost no wind, my body felt great, it was amazing. I listened to one of my favorite albums, "Let light overcome the darkness" from Our Last Night. Now the final goal was in sight. I took a bit too much my time on the beginning of this second bridge, because I stupidly wanted to see some of the big cargo boats passing there from closer. I then remembered that it was not over yet, and went to cross the huge gap between the two center pillars, where the boat way passes. Except when I arrived on the other side, I had also been deported to the north of the bridge by some slow but still pretty powerful drift current. I hadn't really realized the wind slowly shifting, but it sure did and was starting to push the water on the surface. My left shoulder started hurting due to the effort of compensating for the wind. Thankfully I was still next to the bridge, so I was able to seek shelter behind the huge pillar, where the water was still.

I took a good 10-15' pause, ate some good energy bars, read some shit on my phone to calm myself. When it was time to go, I put on some heavy metal viking songs (Amon Amarth), and went for an epic fight with the waves and the current. The waves had grown bigger now, and I was getting really drenched from the splashes. The goal was pretty simple: use each pillar as a small rest point to catch up with the deviation. I also could have just went with the deviation and arrive at another beach down the coast, but it would have been longer and I was already pretty tired. At some point the adrenaline kicked in and helped me push a bit stronger, I was just focused on making it pillar after pillar. Eventually I arrived near the last, but I now had to take a trajectory facing the wind and currents more to reach the beach I wanted and avoid landing on shitty rocks. Since I was right next to the end, the adrenaline was slowly wearing off, which made this little part feel particularly slow and tedious. But the GPS on my watch kept me grounded and focus, assuring me that I was still progressing at a reasonable speed, around 3 km/h.

I landed on the beach around 11:00. I felt very glad that it worked out without major issues and relieved of the pressure of having to do it. This was the major obstacle after all. I had spent countless evenings arguing with my family about how it was indeed doable and not at all a suicide mission. It had been on my mind for so long, I think I had trouble realizing just what I just did. I spent the afternoon and evening on that beach, doing a small laundry for the cycling clothes, drying everything in the sun. The sea and sunset were absolutely beautiful.

Day 28 : Oresund crossing

Small anecdotic detail that will be important later on: on the 25th Day while leaving Storebaelt behind, I was hearing a weird creaking noise from the bike when pedalling, but could not figure out from where it was coming from. A huge ass crack in the frame of the bike, near the rear wheel. It was an old 15 yo bike, originally a MTB, with a rear suspension, but the front one was not working anymore and the tires & handle bar had been changed. My theory is that the constant play of the rear suspension with the additional unsprung weight of the luggage put too much stress on this particular part. But hey, the bike was still holding together thanks to the other side and the thicker bottom bar. So I did the most reasonable thing and just used tape to hold the crack together and stop the noise. Problem hidden, problem solved.

Two days of biking later, I arrived at the next crossing. This time, the weather was a bit more aggressive, with some 10m/s wind and 14m/s gusts. But it was going approximately in my direction! There was also 2kts of drift current going SE, towards the city of Helsingborg. My ideal trajectory was NE, but I made sure to have some margin and my real plan was to paddle NE and end up like ENE. The good stability in the waves of the packraft had surprised me, and I was pretty confident I could take on the 1-1.5m significant waves. The big difference was also the length of the crossing: this one was only 5.5km long at the shortest.

Leaving the beach was without a doubt the hardest. The problem was that the big waves were rolling up in big white rolls up to something like 100m from the beach. I tried carrying the packraft to the water a first time but got ridiculously washed up before even managing to pass the first waves. I tried again, this time letting the packraft get lifted up by the upcoming waves, passing it manually over the first one, and walking along it until it was a tiny bit deeper. I got water up to my waist but it wasn't my main concern in the moment: more bigger waves were coming and threatened to flip the packraft over! I jumped on it as well as I could and started paddling while I was still on my feet, just to try and sneak through the waves. Once I managed to add some distance between me and the coast, I sat down and started paddling more normally.

It was still pretty wild and wavy, but manageable. With the big but steady 1-5m waves, the funny thing is that you periodically get lifted up, you get to opportunity to see where you go, then it goes down and you only see the water around you. At the same time, there is the wind waves, a bit more annoying because shorter and more "splashing". But the packraft is still very strong and stable when pushed, even on the sides. (It still requires a bit of skill to keep balance and orientation with the help of paddle strokes.) I was following my trajectory pretty smoothly, but then a big boat had a trajectory crossing mine, and I didn't feel like trying to sprint to pass before him, so I changed a bit my direction so he could pass first. I ended up pretty deported but still not totally in the city, I could paddle and land on the beaches at a reasonable distance. Hard to distinguish between rocks and algaes, but it ended up fine.

The next problem was that it was still raining, that I was absolutely drenched, and had absolutely no way to shelter from the rain. After unloading the packraft and transporting all the gear next to the road, I was getting colder and colder from the lack of activity. I did an arguably dumb move and changed in some dry clothes, which helped on the moment but condemned my only dry change to unavoidable wetness.

Days 28-38 : Up to Oslo

The landscape was slowly becoming more interesting: hills were growing bigger, the coast became rockier, forests grew wilder. I once settled next to a super cool castle, sneaked in by climbing the outer walls (5-6m), made a tiny tour and climbed back down. Since the sun was getting lower on the horizon, my solar panel wasn't enough anymore to fuel my excessive phone use, so I started going in libraries on the way to charge up.

The second side of the frame broke. After trying a desperate fix with pipe clamps, I had to give up one day later when I noticed a huge crack on the bottom of the frame. It did kind of beat me up emotionally, but thankfully there was a bike shop very nearby and I was still able to pedal to there.

My main criteria for choosing my new bike were:

• Gears ratio equal or lower than before to able to take on steep uphills
• Sturdy and comfortable frame
• Reasonable price
• Gravel or road tires preferred

In the end, I had to compromise on the tires because only the MTBs had small enough gears ratios for me and all my stuff. But I would get to appreciate those bulkier tires very much later along the way :).

After a few days enjoying my new bike, that I named Einar, and beautiful roads of Sweden, I arrived in Norway and build a small memorial near the frontier with the handle bar of Friedrich. I also did the first repair on Einar with the front shifter I had to change already (I installed my friction one).

Days 39-47 : Crossing the mountains to Bergen

Soon, I arrived in Oslo. I went climbing at the iconic gym of Magnus Midtbø for a day and then left for the more mountainy terrain standing between me and Bergen. On the second big uphill I met Bridget, a super cool woman with the same destination, going at an obviously faster pace on asphalt. But on the super steep and gravelly terrain we were on at the time, my bike had the advantage and I was able to keep up.

To keep enjoying her company and also for the challenge of going a bit faster, I followed her rhythm for the next 3 days. We were waking up earlier than I was used to and took less breaks. We did a record day of 100km with 800m of vertical elevation, faced a few hardcore rains, enjoyed beautiful sceneries. We even had to overcome some destroyed roads, washed up by a cataclysmic recent flood (I enjoyed it more than I should have lol).

We parted ways just before I took the "Hardangervidda" road. I could take it only because my packraft would allow me a big shortcut later in the fjords, she had to do a much bigger ascent by Finnsnes. The descent from the high altitude plateau to the fjord was absolutely epic: The valley sharpens abruptly, the road passes next to waterfalls, into steep tunnels (forbidden to bicycles officially), along the cliffs.

Paddling in this beautiful fjord was a tiring but very rewarding experience. Counting the time to load, unload and dry the gear, I don't think it was much faster than the normal cycling road through Finnsnes, but it was way more stylish and gave my legs an occasion to "rest".

The next day, I stopped at a gas station and spent 3 hours on my phone selecting the best itinerary across the fjords and mountains to reach Trondheim. From there, I left the google maps suggestion for cycling intact. The rest of the road to Bergen was pretty beautiful, sometimes steep and very rainy, but with amazing waterfalls and views.

Finally arriving was super satisfying: It was the original goal after all. I sent some more useless stuff home, mainly my 600g tarp. I also bought new waterproof shoes. Enjoyed a piece of chocolate as reward and carried on :).

Days 48-65 : Across fjords and mountains to Trondheim

One sunny day later, I found myself paddling on the middle of the fjord between mountains, huge boats and ocean. Add that to an epicly scenic road, and I was starting to feel like I was in paradise. Pretty proud and glad to be doing what I was doing.

On the next day, I packrafted 10km to the base of an epic mountain, hiked to the top for sunset and got down under the moonlight. Heavy day but so very worth it, easily one of the best of the trip.

The next morning, I managed to waste all my phone battery reading a webtoon in my tent. Thankfully I could charge it back at a supermarket. But for training, I wrote all the useful map, planning and weather info for the next day on a piece of paper and shut the phone down. It worked well, but the day didn't go as planned.

Day 52 : The hardcore crossing

All the packraft crossings had gone approximately well up to this point, and it was time for me to get reminded how hard it could get. Relatively bad wind and a lot of rain were announced for the next 2 days, I was feeling tired, but I would have lacked food if I tried to wait until better conditions. The road passed by a 10km tunnel only for cars, and I found it irresponsible to try this one because an accident could put other's lives at risks. So I had to paddle those 14km along the coast. But after one hour, maybe because of the rain, the wind or the tides (I still dont know for sure!), a pretty strong current lifted up against me on the whole fjord!

Progress was slow and pretty excruciating. At one narrowing, I had to paddle very hard and could barely go faster than the flow of the water. If I slowed down just a little bit, I stopped advancing, and if I stopped paddling for just a few seconds, I would have lost all the progress I had worked so hard for. Thankfully, I managed to find two places sheltered from the current on the way to take two very appreciated breaks. My body was painful, cold and sore, my resolve was flickering and I seriously considered giving up and setting up camp on the shore. But the prospect of having to paddle again tomorrow morning was not very appealing. After 3-4 hours, my watch died and left me alone to evaluate my speed. When I was finally close to the destination, the adrenalin started dropping. Cursing and pleading for myself to hold on, I managed to pull the packraft on the first remotely accessible kelp-covered rocks.

I still had to carry all of my gear up to the road along a sketchy steep slab climb and path. I don't think I ever enjoyed the comfort of my dry tent more.

One day later, it was already time for the last crossing. This one was way easier, only 2 kilometers. The weather was sunny and the water slightly wavy. I dried everything neatly and then kept pedalling for a few hours, enjoying the unusually long sunset colours of the sky and fjord.

Now was the time for some epic sightseeing touristic detour. I cycled up the Jostedal valley, went hiking to have a view on the huge glaciers and cycled up to a dam the next day to packraft on the lake leading directly to a majestic one. Mission accomplished, now time to keep going north.

Leaving the fjords, I faced an epic 1500m uphill at a gradient around 8%. Hardcore but beautiful. The real challenge was to carry on with another reasonably long day after that. I was now on a deadline, having 30 days to reach the north cape (2000km away) before having to go back to Switzerland for an army screening test I really wanted to take and had to show up to. A pretty reasonable deadline, but still less time to laze around than before.

I manage to save a bit of uphill and distance on the planned route by staying more on the main road and enduring the cars and trucks. The views were still as beautiful after all. I ended up in a beautiful orange coloured high altitude wetland for one night, and enjoyed the first negative temperature of the trip with a nice -2°C. I was already in *winter mode* since a long time because of the rain and autumn temperatures combo.

There were more and more cars and civilisation approaching Trondheim. At some point, the road switched to a highway just for a small descent, but there wasn't a lot of traffic so I cycled on it. I passed through the heart of the city just to validate the objective and immediately left, kinda overwhelmed. Just before going for the next part of the itinerary, I noticed Google Maps made it pass through 274 kilometers of wild forests and tiny hamlets, lacking cruelly in supermarkets. I changed plans and followed the bigger road E14, going straight for Sweden.

Days 66-82 : Endless forests

It took me 12 days to get to Finland. The landscape was, as always, beautiful. majestic and seemingly infinite forests, only interrupted by the scattered lakes, rivers and wetlands. I biked around 5 hours a day, took breaks between each hour. I was mainly on normal roads, but the occasional forest gravel road kept things interesting and made me glad Einar was a MTB.

Arriving in Finland was pretty cool, especially discovering their language, completely different from the rest of Europe. Seeing the fjells, super old and eroded mountains with treeless tops, was also nice. After a few days, the temperatures dropped and I was met one morning with frost everywhere, on my stuff and the landscape. Absolutely beautiful, but also quite painful for my feet: my shoes, previously wet, now iced up every morning.

Days 83-87 : Winter in the arctic

As I was back in Norway for the final stretch before Alta, I chose to follow the wilder "google maps favourite" bike road instead of the road, just for the adventure. It was pretty bumpy, but I saw reindeers and was really in the middle of nature. The next morning, I was amazed to finally discover a whitened landscape: it had already snowed! Since I made the plan to leave the north cape around the 10th of October, I had been hoping very hard I would not miss the beauty of the first snow.

The road gets wilder: huge and deep puddles taking the whole width for sometimes 10-15 meters, forcing to dip the feet, broken bridge leaving to cross a river by foot, steep uphills where the gravel was washed slowly by a small stream of water, changing the very path into a river. I lightly hurt my shoulder from tryharding on the bike, and had to take a little break. I enjoyed the treeless vastness of the hills, slightly covered in snow, but am still very glad to meet the normal road again.

The snows is there to stay. It twirls down peacefully around me as I pack my tent, makes the landscape change more and more day after day. When I leave Alta, late and already around sunset, I engage for a beautiful uphill. It starts snowing delicately, but constantly, and very soon the road is covered. Everything falls silent, the sound of the cars turns ethereal, my tires leave their trace in fresh powder, the ambiance is magic. I end up waiting in line with friendly norwegians for a part of the road to open. I settled soon after, it was already very dark.

Sleeping in the snow went approximatively well. I was pretty used to it, but my gear wasn't the most adapted, especially my mattress. I used emergency blankets underneath it to improve insulation, with approximative results. The famous pee bottle for added comfort and warmth had been in the game for a long time now, nothing new. Overall, I enjoyed those winter nights a lot.

Next problem was the iced up roads, the next morning. For the uphill, no problem, but I took a pretty big fall on the flat at the pass. It made me realise just how slippery the road is, I even had trouble walking on it. A literal ice rink. Thankfully, my amazing MTB tires had a lot of grip. I fell a few more times due to heavy side wind, and had troubles getting back on the bike. The real problem emerged for the descent. I was forced to go super slow to stay in control, but the descent was long, the temperature around -5°C and the wind still howling. It wasn't very long until I started shaking from mild hypothermia. I tried a few things to warm up, like pedalling while breaking. Better than nothing but not that effective. After a few hours that felt way longer, I finally arrived in the next town, where I could warm up at a supermarket and settle down right next to the road on a tiny patch of snowy grass.

Another high and pretty icy pass later, I made it to Olderfjord. The E69 road leading to the north cape now follows the coast, passing through tunnels, offering even more amazing views. The landscape is bare of trees, the sea extends on the horizon. I met a lot of other bike travellers, like two cool French guys with whom I slept in some luxurious public toilets, just for the fun.

After passing through the famous tunnel under the sea, I was met with wild reindeers right next to the road and snowy mountains in the distance. It felt like a portal leading to the world's end.

Days 88-89 : The North Cape

It was time for the final boss battle. Two steep uphills in an epic ambiance between the sea, the snow and the mountains. For the second one, fresh snow and ice gets bashed in my face by the wind. I scout the area where the Knivskjelloden (real north cape, accessible only by foot) trail starts. After one last smaller ascent, I arrive at the touristic north cape, with the cliche globe, a ton of camper vans and other cars, and an amazing view on the ocean and other mountains. It already feels like quite an accomplishment to be there.

Before pitching the tent, I shovelled the snow with one of my paddles. It worked well and I was pretty well installed. During the night, the wind blows strong and I ended up getting out around 3 or 4 am to add a few guy lines and build a snow wall to cut the wind. Without them, the tent was bent sideways to the point of almost flattening out. Overall a pretty fun experience. In the morning, I made sure to strengthen and reinforce everything since I would be leaving the tent mounted for the whole day and the next night.

Orientating myself through those whitened hill was not an easy task. In the beginning, everything looked the same under 20cm of snow. I was still in pretty high spirits since my goal was so close. After a few hours, The trail went down to the coast, where the snow still wasn't established. At the end of a decently muddy path, I found a cairn. Nothing else than the endless sea in front of me. I was at the end of my quest for the north.

The realisation of what I had just done hit me right after taking the pictures. The emotions I felt were intense: satisfaction, fulfilment, release, joy, all those things. I was also a bit sad that it was the end of the trip, but still happy to be heading south, the start of my long way back home. The comfort of my tent waiting for me and the hot delicious meal I cooked this evening had a taste of victory, and were even more appreciated than usual :).

The way back

I pedalled hard and fast in the morning to catch my bus at Honingsvåg. Loading the bike inside was easier than I thought. The speed of the ride was very impressive in the beginning. I enjoyed the comfort of doing absolutely no effort, and still travelling what took me 3 days in a 3 hours ride.

It was important for me to do the whole return trip with public transportations for multiple reasons. The first obvious one is ecology, because I believe planes should be kept for important and mandatory travels, not for tourism. The second reason is to be able to actually appreciate the distances, to see more amazing landscapes, experience the nature slowly shifting as I get back to warmer climates.

I did around 8 hours of buses or trains per day, then biked to cool places to setup my tent and sleep. Except for a few problems with loading the bike in small trains or small buses, it was pretty much the dream life. I even took a huge ferry from Oslo to Fredrikshavn. At this chill rhythm, it took me 10 days to be back home in Switzerland.

Conclusion

This adventure surpassed my expectations. I left with the sole intent of crossing the sea and planning the rest on the go, and ended up packrafting on a lot more fjords and pedalling to the end of the north. I learned a lot about myself and the world, and gained a lot of mental and physical strength. It certainly helped me pass the paratroopers screening test I came home for :).

Thank you for reading all of this, it means a lot to me! Don't hesitate to contact me if you want to chat or ask more questions before going on your own adventures :) You can also read about my next adventure, even crazier, here (I haven't finished writing it tho lol). See you out there!

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