Norwegian Summer 2026 – Day 7: Bygdin to Syningongom Lodge

On the docket today: a short/sweet climb over a mountain pass, a spontaneous round of a bikepacking social hour, a lovely afternoon off-route through the woods, a surprise hike-a-bike, and one giant pain-in-the-ass climb to close it all out.

Surprising no one, we woke up exactly where we’d gone to sleep: in the shadow of the Bitihorn, a prominent peak that’s been lurking in the background of half our photos without us ever realizing it.

Bitihorn yesterday, barely a bump way out on the horizon

Here’s the same peak again today, a good deal closer.

If you look carefully (assuming the blog software doesn’t scrunch these photos down to mush), you can make out the little communications cabin perched on top in both shots. It’s a good landmark for the area, once you know to look for it.

We had a 25-minute climb up to a pass just east of the mountain.

“How high are we, Ben?” “Hmmm, not sure.” Any ideas? There were a lot of folks starting day hikes from roadside trailheads, and we breezed on past them, descending fast to Beitostølen, first on the road and then on a separated bike/ped path. We rolled up to the SPAR market ready to resupply!

We bought the usual: bread, lefse, hummus, olives, cheese, sunscreen, and candy. On our way out we spotted a couple of bikepackers charging their electronics and taking advantage of the grocery store’s free coffee while they did it. Naturally we wandered over to swap stories. Camille and Romain (from Carcassonne, France, but living in Norway these days) are riding our route in reverse, so we had plenty to talk about. First order of business was warning them about the bridge closure so they could plan around it.

We checked out each other’s bikes and generally enjoyed the company of people who didn’t think we were crazy.

After a stop at the public restrooms (never pass up a free toilet!), we got back on the route. A big descent to the west took us toward the northern tip of Øyangen lake. Here we deviated from the official line, planning to dodge one 1500ft climb by swapping in about 600ft instead along with less mileage. The hope was an easier path to our goal for the night, the little lodge at Syningongom.

Our self-inflicted detour ran around the west side of the lake, up in the woods on rolling terrain. Beautiful gravel in good shape, plus a nice tailwind out of the north (which we’d been enjoying most of the day) gave us high spirits.

One more Bitihorn for the stash! We also rolled past a novel piece of Norwegian traffic calming.

We stopped for lunch, then started working our way toward Ryfoss, where we’d rejoin our original route. The roads got steadily less and less traveled, which was sort of fun, and eventually we found ourselves on some dirty double track, poised to make our descent down to Ryfoss. Or so we thought.

Somewhere along the line the wires got crossed, and our route quietly devolved into a hiking trail with no simple way down to Ryfoss, short of significant backtracking. And even then we weren’t confident the roads up there would hold together. So, compounding one bad decision with another, in what felt like the only real choice on offer, we forged ahead and started hiking down the mountain with our fully loaded bikes.

We had 1.5 miles to cover and about 900ft of elevation to drop. That’s an average grade of over 11% down, which would be rough even on a road. This was just a dumb, dumb, dumb thing to be doing. Oh well. We were committed, and the next hour or so had us doing all sorts of ill-advised stuff to get the bikes and our bodies down the mountain in one piece.

We did manage to find a nice rock outcropping with a great view of the valley, at least!

Eventually we made it down, mostly free of injury or damage to the bikes, and we blitzed the rest of the way to the gas station in Ryfoss to catch our breath over some fries and a slurpee.

While there we saw a couple of guys on a loaded tandem MTB heading on our route (reverse from us), which was pretty cool. Exchanged waves. This late in the day, nobody has time for socializing out on the road so that was the extent of our comms.

This was our last happy moment for a couple of hours, give or take, because we were sitting at the base of a bruiser of a climb. It started off well enough, nice pavement and a reasonable grade. Then it turned, and we were disappointed when the gravel surface that took over was dry and dusty rather than the smooth, hard-packed stuff we’d mostly been enjoying. That made for slow going, since it was hard to keep any momentum in the soft gravel. Cue a lot of walking, an hour or two of it, until the surface firmed up about a mile from the top and we could make real progress again. We finally rolled into the lodge around 6:30, just in time for them to fire us up a couple of pizzas.

We’re staying in an “apartment” with laundry and room to spread out, so even though we got in late, we knocked out most of our chores earlier than usual.

A short but exhausting day. Only 27 miles, but almost 4000ft of climbing, and the bonus adventure really dragged it out of us. Tomorrow we’re planning zero adventures, just a nice day of biking!