We decided to spend this summer vacation trekking and mountain biking in Norway. Norway was a little hard in the sense that most of the places we went to were steep and unrideable. We asked around in lots of bike shops but they were all pointing us to Sweden or telling tales of riding on gravel roads which didn’t really interest us.
We did some riding in the Jotunheim mountains. Mostly climbing up tarmac and trying to find some trails with little success. Some of the best riding was around Trodheim. There’s an awesome area called Bymarka just west of the city. It’s full of trails and you could easily spend a day or two riding around, linking different sections. It’s mostly flowing hard pack single tracks, but lower down you will find some nasty muddy stuff with big roots and rock gardens. This is an awesome area to ride and highly recommended.
Having limited success in our endeavours in Norway, we drove over to Sweden and hit the local hills. It was a lot easier to find rideable tracks and the gradient was a lot more manageable. We also also found a DH park and hit it for a day.
The DH park was awesome until my better half endoed the landing of a shore to shore drop. She crashed hard on the shore, breaking both bones in her arm just above the wrist, a couple of ribs plus sustaining general soft tissue carnage. I must say it was probably one of the worst things I’ve seen, and it’s a miracle it wasn’t worse. Our ride was over but she walked down the hill herself.
The rest of the trip was pretty much hospital to hospital, different doctors and three attempts at getting the bones to set which they finally did. Then we just chilled at a hotel for a couple of days before starting on our drive back home.