How long does the Kjerag hike take?

Where the six-to-ten-hour range comes from

That spread is Visit Norway's own figure and it is wider than most trail estimates because the trail earns it. Three ascents and two descents means you gain and lose height five times before you even start back, and the effect of that on a tired party is not linear. A group that is walking at the same pace as everyone else at the first chain can be an hour and a half behind by the third descent. The fjord-region tourist board quotes around six hours for the quick end, which is real, but it describes somebody fit walking steadily in good conditions and not stopping much.

The other reason for the spread is queueing. On an August afternoon there is a line for the boulder photograph, and it is not a short one. Twenty minutes of standing in the wind at the end of a three-hour climb is not what people budget for, and it is the most common reason a nine-hour day becomes a ten-hour one.

The full-day arithmetic

Take the walking figure and build outwards from it. Two and a half hours from Stavanger to the trailhead. Somewhere between six and ten on the mountain. Two and a half hours back. That is eleven hours at the very best and fifteen at the realistic worst, and none of that includes stopping for food, filling a tank, or the twenty-seven hairpin bends of Fv500 behaving like the narrow mountain road it is when a coach is coming the other way. Driving the long way round through Sirdal on E39 and Rv450 is quoted at roughly three hours, which stretches the numbers again.

This is the arithmetic that makes the start time the single most useful decision of your day, and it is why I have given it a page of its own: the best time of day.

How the guided day handles it

The flagship guided trip out of Stavanger runs about eleven hours door to door. The shape is two and a half hours of road, a safety briefing, roughly five and a half hours on the mountain, and two and a half hours back, with hotel pickup and drop-off at both ends and a maximum of eight people. That five and a half hours on the mountain is the fast end of the range, which tells you something about the pace a guided group keeps and about who should think twice: the guided hike. The private version allows five to six hours of hiking and is a little more elastic: the private hike.

What the hours are actually spent on

Not what people imagine. The first climb out of the car park takes a bite out of the morning and feels like the main event; it is not. Litle Stordal and the second climb are where the day settles into its real pace. The plateau walk out to the boulder is flat and quick and feels like a reward. The boulder itself is a few minutes, including the photograph, and then the whole thing runs backwards with the hardest descent at the end. Stage by stage, with what each part does to your timing, is on the trail page.

Two days instead of one

There is a version of this that removes the worst of the arithmetic, which is sleeping on the right side of the road. The two-day trip does Preikestolen and a Lysefjorden cruise on the first day, stays overnight in Lysebotn, and then walks Kjerag the next morning with the two and a half hour drive already behind you. If the length of the single day is what is putting you off, that is the answer rather than a faster walk: the two-day trip.

How long it takes outside the season

Longer, and the question changes. Fv500 is generally open from late May or early June until October or November, and when it is shut the chains are down and the hike needs winter equipment and a guide. A winter Kjerag day is not a slower summer day, it is a different undertaking with different timings, and it is not something to estimate off this page: the season page.

If eleven to fifteen hours is too much

Then the answer is Preikestolen, honestly and without embarrassment. Roughly eight kilometres, four to five hours on the trail, and about an hour from Stavanger instead of two and a half, which turns the whole thing into a comfortable half day: the Preikestolen hike. And if what you actually want is the Lysefjord rather than the walking, the cruise is three and a half hours from the quayside: the cruise.

Booking a day that is already timed for you

A word about what that widget books. It books the ride out of Stavanger and, on most of these, a guide. It does not book Kjerag. Nobody sells a ticket to the trail: it is free, open and unguided, and anyone who gets themselves to the top of the road can walk up it without paying a soul.

Frequently asked questions