Norway Ecotrail

September 2022

The Norway Ecotrail is a fifty mile hiking route that begins in the heart of downtown and eventually snakes its way through the forests above Oslo. It has a mixture of wilderness hiking and occasional urban tramping which makes resupplies and morning coffees quite easy. Lexi was already out in Europe, so I decided to fly out and meet her in Norway. We both came down with some undiagnosed sickness, but decided to hike the trail anyways.

We meandered our way through the very pleasant city of Oslo and eventually made it to the more remote forests outside of the city. Norway has relatively loose laws in terms of camping and so whenever the sun set or we got tired we simply found a nice flat spot and broke camp. Our illness kept us from crushing big miles, but it allowed us to spend a few more nights than we had planned out in the woods, which neither of us could complain about.

The forest north of Oslo is defined by tons of evergreens and tons of lakes. Almost every snack or lunch break we took was on the shore of a spectacular lake. Also thematic of the forest were, surprisingly, remote little coffee shops. The trail crossed the odd country road, which usually had one of these little cafes conveniently located nearby. This made the route feel much more domestic than our typical trip.

We would occasionally drop quite far south, into more populated regions where day hikers abounded. But it usually wouldn’t be long before we ascended back into the depths of the forest, where relative solitude waited for us. About five or six days of gawking at idyllic lakes and walking the Ecotrail saw us back to town. We met up with my buddy Halvor after that and did city things for a few more days before heading back home.