What injuries happen at Preikestolen?
Why I am not giving you a number
Because there is not one. There is no published Preikestolen injury record, no breakdown by body part, and no local figure I could stand behind. You will find pages that state a most common hiking injury as though it were established for this trail; they are quoting general claims and dressing them as local knowledge. Rescues do happen every year, and in early July 2019, a record visitor year, call-outs had already passed the whole of the previous year’s total. That is the only hard shape in the data and it is about volume, not about what went wrong.
What the terrain does, which is reasoning rather than data
The walk is about 8 kilometres with roughly 350 to 500 metres of climbing over 4 to 5 hours, and the surface is forest path, stone staircases, boulder fields, boardwalk over marsh and then bare rock. Going up, that is work: you are slow, careful and looking at your feet. Coming down is the other thing entirely. You are tired, you are faster than you should be, you are placing feet on angled blocks rather than on a path, and your quadriceps are doing braking work they are not used to.
So the pattern I would expect, and the pattern that matches what I hear from people who come off this mountain unhappy, is ankles rolled on boulder edges, knees complaining on the long stone staircases, and falls from a foot placed on wet granite that looked dry. Add blisters from boots that were fine for two hours and not for five. None of that is a statistic. It is what the ground is like.
What actually reduces it
What works
- Boots above the ankle, which is also the official advice: the kit list
- Budgeting more time for the descent than for the climb
- Poles, if your knees have opinions, used properly on the steps
- Eating and drinking before you are empty, because tired judgement places feet badly
- Turning back early, which is free and which nobody will notice
Worth knowing
- Racing the last kilometre to catch a bus: the timetable trap
- Wet rock treated as dry rock: rain on the granite
- Trainers with smooth soles on boulder fields
- Starting so late that the descent happens in poor light
- Winter conditions without crampons or a guide: the winter hike
The separate and much graver question of falls from the plateau itself is dealt with soberly on this page, and the overall safety picture on how safe it is. They are different risks with different causes, and conflating them is how people end up frightened of the drop and careless on the boulder field.
Take ten minutes at the top to eat and drink before starting down, even if you are not hungry. The descent is where things go wrong, and it is the part of the day you will begin with the least in the tank.
What there is to book
Not the trail. Nobody sells a ticket to Preikestolen and nobody can, so anything you pay for is something else: the ride out of Stavanger, the guide who walks it with you, or the boat that shows you the cliff from the water. Which of the three you actually need is set out on the bookings page and in the comparison.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most common injury on the Preikestolen hike?
No figures are published for this trail. From the terrain, ankles and knees on the descent are the reasonable expectation.
Do people get rescued from Preikestolen?
Yes, every year. In early July 2019 call-outs had already passed the whole of the previous year's total. No reliable annual figure exists.
Are walking poles worth taking?
If your knees dislike long stone staircases, yes. The descent is the part that hurts.