Preikestolen

Rock FormationsRogaland,Norway

A square granite platform twenty-five metres to a side that ends in an unfenced 604-metre drop to a Norwegian fjord, with only a warning sign.

September·Peaking now

Sep–Oct

The slopes turn yellow, orange and red, and on cold, clear dawns cloud fills the Lysefjord so that only the rock terrace stands above it. Rain is frequent. Buses run daily into the first days of October, then weekends only, and the summer queues are gone.

Year-round The pulpit, its unfenced 604-metre drop and the Lysefjord below are there every day of the year; the road and car park never close. Snow, ice, daylight, buses and crowds all change.

Preikestolen is a square of granite about twenty-five metres to a side that stops 604 metres above the Lysefjord in southwest Norway, with no railing at the lip and a warning sign for company. The name means the pulpit, and the block has the shape: flat-topped, shoved out from the cliff, dark water penned between mountain walls underneath. You walk to where the rock runs out and sit with your legs over the air, or stop five metres short and stay there. You only believe the height from the low rise behind the platform. From up there the pulpit shrinks to a small square shelf and the people on it are specks against six hundred metres of cliff. Along the back edge, where the plateau joins the mountain, runs a deep crack that geologists have watched since 1930. Bolts drilled into the rock still track it. Most of the surface under your boots was laid by hand, over about four kilometres each way and 350 metres of climbing. From 2013 Sherpas from Nepal built stone steps and bog bridges across ground that boots had worn to mud, and the path passes mountain tarns and bare granite. The mornings worth the early start are cold, clear autumn ones, when the fjord still holds summer warmth. Cold air settles over the water, cloud fills the trench below the terrace, and nothing is left underneath the rock but white. The cloud comes with the weather rather than the clock, and the sun burns it off. From late September the slopes along the fjord turn yellow and red, the last colour before the dark half of the year. The clifftop fight that ends Mission: Impossible – Fallout was shot here in 2017, though the worst of the stunt work was done on a replica built elsewhere. Everything that gets you to the lip has been laid, bolted or measured. On the platform itself, the only thing anyone has ever added is the sign.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Go for the first or last hours of light — the low sun rakes across the fjord and the granite, where a harsh midday flattens the whole view into glare and haze.
Summer days bring a steady procession up the trail — start before about eight in the morning, or after the day-trippers have turned back, and long stretches of path empty out.
Wet granite turns treacherously slick — the bare slabs near the unfenced lip give little grip in rain or spray, so keep the edge itself for dry footing.
The dependable window is narrower than the summer crowds imply — snow can linger on the upper steps into early June and returns by late October, leaving June to September as the sure-footed season.

Things to do

1
Stand at the unfenced edge
Walk out to where the granite simply stops and 604 metres of open air begin — no railing, only a warning sign between you and the Lysefjord. Many sit and let their legs hang over the edge; even standing near the lip is a test of nerve you feel in your knees.
2
Watch the fjord fill with cloud at dawn
On the right mornings a low sea of cloud pools in the Lysefjord below the terrace, hiding the water and leaving the rock apparently adrift in white. It comes and goes with the weather rather than the clock, so catching it means being up on the plateau early, before the sun burns it off.
3
Climb the shoulder for the platform's true scale
Follow the low rise just behind and above the terrace, then look back: from there the pulpit shrinks to a small square ledge and the people on it become specks against 600 metres of cliff. It is the view that finally makes the height believable.
4
Walk the hand-laid Sherpa path
Much of the route up was rebuilt from 2013 by Nepalese Sherpas, who laid stone steps and bog bridges across ground that heavy foot traffic had worn to mud. The reworked trail passes mountain tarns and slabs of open granite where you can stop and look back the way you came.

Nearby

132 km