// words by Wideopenmag’s Mark Scott
// photos by Jacob Gibbins
Team Wideopenmag’s Mark Scott goes behind the scenes of their latest adventure. This time, it’s Norway.
Our trip to Norway was definitely one of the more relaxed ones!
We had booked our flights and our hire car (a sturdy Volvo V70) and were on our way. Sam had been in contact with Vegard Breie, our first host of the trip and he also happened to run the Hillbilly Huckfest with a few different guys that ran during the summer, so he knew of a lot of contacts all over the country which proved to be vital for us in the end!
We made it to Oslo no stress and picked the car up, then we played Tetris with 3 bikes and 3 bags and a Volvo. Our first destination was the town of Al, about 4 hours northish, I was piled under bags and bikes for the duration. We were staying actually at Vegard’s place, we owe him a big thanks for that as he wasn’t even there when we stayed! Cheers again!
“wide spaced pine forest with slab rocks dotted all around … the dirt was prime”
We arrived, built bikes and bought some food for the next few days we were staying there. Oyvind, a friend of Vegard’s was to be our guide for a day or two. We were riding the surrounding areas of Al and it had plenty to offer for us. It’s most known for being the home of the Hillbilly Huckfest but there were a ton of other cool trails in the deep pine forests and some mega open landscape. It was quite a new place for MTB’s so there wasn’t a huge widespread trail network but the potential up there is massive. The trail we rode was mega, wide spaced pine forest with slab rocks dotted all around and the dirt was prime, just deep loam and it seemed to dry quick too! It reminded us of Canada a lot, I reckon it will be a sweet spot for trail bikes in Norway in the future.
So we didn’t shoot much on our first day as we thought we’d get a sense of what we had to work with and what would ride best for camera. We decided we needed a whole day up on the forest side so the third day we had Me, Sam and Milky got to work! I think we were on the hill for 9 and didn’t finish until 5 or 6, just relentless sectioning and blasting trails, hard work but always well worth it in the end! Milky could end up making 30 minute episodes if he wanted with the amount of footage he gets! It’s always cool working with Sam and Milky, it ends up being a right laugh and I think we all know what looks good for camera.
“Milky ends up shouting nonsense at us all day and me and Sam end taking the piss out of him for most of it”
The day after we managed to get a ton of epic photos in wideopen landscapes. Photo days are a little less entertaining for us and especially if it’s landscape ones, Milky ends up shouting nonsense at us all day and me and Sam end taking the piss out of him for most of it! It’s funny when you see some photos and you know how exactly they were shot and it’s nothing like how it looks.
So our final day in Al was cut short due to pissing rain all day, we didn’t get up to much apart from planning our next few days riding and meeting up with our next amazing host that was Knut with his friend Andreas. They were really cool to and help us get the stuff we needed from our trip! He lived about another 3 hours north westish and I was in the back again all the way to a place called Sogndal.
Sogndal was genuinely one of the nicest places I’ve ever been to. Unreal steep mountains that were only about 1000m high but went straight up from the super blue sea. The sun wasn’t even out and we thought it was still incredible! The riding was insane, the week before had recently held a national enduro on the hills we were riding. It was real hike a bike up for an hour or so but well worth every step. It started wide open rocky fast and loose for about 5-10 mins. It was relentless and you were always covering the brakes and never pedalling! It’s hard to describe it in a way to do it justice but I think the video does it a bit better than me.
“Once we hit the tree line it was like we had hit the alps.”
Once we hit the tree line it was like we had hit the alps. Tight fast walking path with turn after turn. Milky warned us to stop anywhere we thought looked awesome but me and Sam were going flat out shouting at each other the whole down and having to much fun to stop. All in all I think the trail we rode, which was in the race was about 15-20 mins long, pretty insane considering we barely pedalled at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an EWS there in the next few years, the trails are some of the best in the world!
For our final day and a half we had to get down to the Hafjell bike park. I have raced there before and new the trails were next level! It was easy for us to get the footage here and me and ended doing about a million runs in between filming and perfecting the art of the tweak. I think it was the perfect way to end our Norweign trip, we had done a fair tour of the lower half of the country and we met a load of new friends that showed us some of there local trails which was an experience for us.
Thanks again to all that made it happen, Vegard, Knut, Andreas, Oyvind and Flange, oh and Milky for turning up!
These trips have been a blast this year and if anyone’s ever in Scotland hit me up and I’ll show my local trails as you guys have yours!
Like this?
Watchin Trippin’s Whistler episode here
Or… read our review of the Nukeproof Mega TR here.
