What makes a hike frightening?
Two different scales that get confused
Difficulty is how much the walk takes out of you: length, climbing, rough ground, hours on your feet. Exposure is what happens if you put a foot wrong: a scramble ten metres above a slope is strenuous, a flat path along a cliff edge is exposed, and they are not the same worry. Almost every list of the world’s scariest hikes mixes them, which is why the lists are useless for deciding whether you personally will be all right.
Preikestolen sits in an odd corner of that grid. The walk is moderate and the ground is the hard part, as set out on how hard it is. Then the plateau opens out and there is a 250-metre drop with no railing, no line on the rock and nobody watching, which is covered on the fence page. So people who found the whole walk manageable can arrive at the top and discover they want nothing to do with the edge. That is a normal reaction and it is not a wasted day.
How the three big Rogaland and Hordaland walks compare
What works
- Preikestolen: about 8 km round trip, 4 to 5 hours, roughly 350 to 500 m of climbing
- Kjeragbolten: roughly 9.8 km, about 460 m of climbing, 6 to 8 hours, three steep climbs with no warm-up
- Trolltunga: 20 km from the upper car park or 28 from the lower, 7 to 12 hours, strenuous
- All three end at an unguarded edge, and none of them require any climbing skill
Worth knowing
- Stepping onto Kjeragbolten means a step over a drop of some 984 m, which many people decline
- Trolltunga is a long day in mountain weather, and the length is the danger rather than the tongue
- Preikestolen is the one people underestimate, because it is the one that looks easiest
- Nobody can promise you the view on any of them
Which of them is actually frightening
Kjeragbolten, if you intend to stand on the boulder, because the act is voluntary and specific and you have to choose it. Trolltunga is frightening mostly in the ordinary way that being tired a long way from the car park is frightening. Preikestolen is frightening for about a minute, at the moment the flat ground runs out. Details on Preikestolen against Kjerag and on the three famous rocks.
I am not going to rank the world’s most dangerous trails, because those rankings are invented and because the useful question is narrower: is this one all right for you, today, in this weather. On an unfenced plateau in wind, after rain, with a tired four-year-old, the answer can reasonably be no.
If you know heights unsettle you, do the walk anyway and plan to stop where the plateau opens out. You get the fjord, the wall opposite and the whole scale of the place from thirty metres back. Very little of what makes it worth coming happens at the edge.
What there is to book
Not the trail. Nobody sells a ticket to Preikestolen and nobody can, so anything you pay for is something else: the ride out of Stavanger, the guide who walks it with you, or the boat that shows you the cliff from the water. Which of the three you actually need is set out on the bookings page and in the comparison.
Frequently asked questions
Is Preikestolen scary?
The walk is not. The last stretch is, for many people, because the plateau ends in an unfenced 250-metre drop.
Which is scarier, Preikestolen or Kjeragbolten?
Kjeragbolten, if you step onto the boulder, since that means a deliberate step over a drop of some 984 metres.
Can you enjoy it if you are afraid of heights?
Often yes, by staying back from the edge. Nothing obliges you to go near it.