Veronique Sandler rides Hafjell Bike Park

Norway

Words by Veronique Sandler / Video by Max Nerurkar / photos by @locteit

A few months ago Melon Optics, Wideopen and I put together a plan to shoot a riding video.

I thought it would be cool to go somewhere that people don’t see many videos of. I knew straight away that Norway was the one. It’s coincidentally one of my favourite places in the World … so it worked out perfectly!

The plan was to head out to Norway with Max and meet up with some old friends. We’d ride the Rollercoaster line in the Hafjell bike park, shoot a video, edit it ourselves and have a proper DIY adventure.

… and here’s our video:

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… And here’s the story of our trip:

Our trip to Norway began with a short two hour flight from Manchester to Oslo, followed by an unglamorous night’s sleep in the baggage reclaim area of Oslo airport. We then caught the train to Lillehammer and met up with Knut Lokas of Hafjell Bike Park – he’s an absolute legend who took us up to our very tidy Norwegian cabin in the tiny town of Hafjell.

Knut gave us lift passes and set us loose for the next ten days. The cabin was beautiful and when we found out that it was about 20 seconds pedal from the gondola the hype became even more real!

We spent the whole of our time in Norway sending laps from open till close and filming the edit. Hafjell Bike Park consists of 15 trails, running from green to black, with a gondola and a chair lift to get you up. The view from the top looks out over the mountains, forests and rivers as far as the eye can see. The trails aren’t too bad either!

Perfect Trails

Our evenings didn’t leave much time to relax as we spent the time watching and editing our footage and running around catching up with some Norwegian homies.

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We spent most of our time on the infamous ‘Rollercoaster’ track which is made up of big jumps, berms, and the smoothest trail you’ll ever find in a park.

One of Hafjell bike parks main goals is to stop the trails being littered with braking bumps. On the three days they are shut during the week they get the trail crew in and fix up all of the non-technical trails.

They keep it running perfectly and it’s the best maintained Bike Park I’ve ever been to!

No Moose

After a busy week we were glad of a break. The park is only open Thursday to Sunday and we spent the down time camping up in the mountains. We quickly found out the hard way that our UK-spec camping gear totally didn’t suit the climate! We did a couple of evening photo shoots with some rad local guys that we’d met and made the most of the insane sunsets.

The whole trip was incredible … and my only downside of the trip was not getting to see a moose!

If you’ve never been to Norway or Hafjell bike park, I’d get it on your bucket list.

Planning your own trip to Hafjell?

The Hafjell Bike Park is open June to September, Thursday to Sunday with lifts from 10am to 5PM. You can visit the Hafjell Bike Park website here.

Flights from Manchester to Oslo vary but start at around £65.

This trip was made possible by:


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