Reviews of the Preikestolen tours and Lysefjord cruises
Before any of this is useful, one fact has to be in place: nobody sells a ticket to Preikestolen. The trail is free, open, unguided and unstaffed, with no gate, no permit and no time slot, and roughly 350,000 people a year walk up it for nothing. So not one of the five bookings below is an entry ticket. They are the ride out of Stavanger, the guide who walks with you, and the boat that shows you the cliff from 604 metres underneath it. I review them as the things they are.
The five bookings reviewed
Stavanger: Preikestolen (Pulpit Rock) Hike with Local Guide
The largest review count of the guided options, and the one built around a ship’s hours in port. Six hours door to door, which is brisk rather than leisurely.
6 hrs, from the cruise terminalRead the full review ›
From Stavanger: Pulpit Rock Guided Hike with Pickup
The same rating over nearly as many reviews, an hour longer, and it collects you where you slept. A quieter route in, and the same mountain once you are on it.
7 hrs, hotel pickupRead the full review ›
Stavanger: Electric Fjord Cruise to Lysefjord & Preikestolen
Ten thousand reviews, the lowest score of the five, and no walking in it at all. The boat does not land: you see the plateau from below and do not stand on it.
3 hrs 30, by boatRead the full review ›
Stavanger: Lysefjorden Cruise and Preikestolen Hike
Both halves of the place in one day: the fjord from the water, then the plateau on foot. Eight and a half hours, and the climbing comes second.
8 hrs 30, boat and hikeRead the full review ›
Stavanger/Sandnes: Preikestolen Guided Hidden Nature Hike
A perfect score on eighteen reviews, eight people at most, and a back-country route that is longer than the main trail rather than shorter.
7 hrs, max 8 peopleRead the full review ›What the ratings do not tell you
They do not tell you that the hard part of Preikestolen is not the height. It is the four to five hours of uneven ground: forest path, stone staircases, boulder fields, boardwalk over marsh, then bare rock along the fjord edge. Almost every disappointed account of this place on the internet comes from someone who expected a viewpoint and met a mountain walk. The photographs are taken from a drone or from a boat and never show the boulder field. That is why how hard is it and the trail, in order come before any review on this site.
They also do not tell you whether you needed a booking at all. With a car it is Highway 13 through the Ryfylke Tunnel and road 523 past Jørpeland, about 45 to 60 minutes from Stavanger, and the only unavoidable outlay is the car park. From around 20 June to around 13 September there is a seasonal bus from Byterminalen, with tickets bought online in advance rather than on board. Outside those months there is effectively no bus, and that is when a tour stops being a convenience. See getting there, the bus and shuttle page and is the hike free.
And no rating anywhere mentions the thing I would want mentioned first: there is no railing at the top. The plateau is roughly 25 by 25 metres, almost flat, and it ends. That is a deliberate decision by the people who manage the land, not an oversight — is there a fence and how safe is it deal with it properly.
The one I have not given a page to
There is a sixth booking, the winter cruise and guided hike, nine hours, with crampons provided when the ice requires them. I have not written it a review page, because with twenty reviews the score is not the useful part. The useful part is that from roughly November to March both Visit Norway and the trail’s own operators say to go with a guide, or at least not alone: snow hides the cracks and the streams, the rock ices over and the daylight is short. One reviewer found the timings tight, another praised the guide, Hege, for her patience, and a Norwegian reviewer put it plainly that 8 km there and back with sections that climb a lot is not easy for a complete beginner. That season has its own page, the winter hike, and the question of guides in general is on do you need a guide.
Where to start
Off a ship, read the review of the terminal departure and then the six-hour arithmetic against a ship’s call, which is the number that decides it. Staying in the city, read the hike with pickup. Not walking, for whatever reason, read the cruise and the accessibility page, which is honest about what this landscape does and does not allow. To decide without reading five pages, it fits in one table on the comparison page.
The ratings and review counts here are the figures I noted at my last reading; the booking modules show the live ones, and they move. Everything else you need before coming is in the complete guide.
Frequently asked questions
Do you have to book anything to hike Preikestolen?
No. The trail is free, open and unguided, with no ticket, no permit and no opening hours. What you may need is a way to reach the trailhead, which is what these bookings are for. See getting there.
Which of these gets you onto the plateau?
All of them except the Lysefjord cruise. The boat passes 604 metres below Preikestolen and does not land, so it shows you the cliff without putting you on it.
Are these reviews independent?
Yes. I am not a tour operator and I have no connection to the trail, the landowners or the lodge. The site earns a commission on bookings made through its links, set out on the affiliate disclosure page.
Why do you not quote the reviews word for word?
Because one sentence lifted out of a listing proves very little and is far too easy to pick selectively. I describe what recurs across many reviews, and name a guide only where a reviewer named one.