Preikestolen weather, and hiking it in the rain

The numbers, and what they mean on the trail

Stavanger gets roughly 1,310 millimetres of rain across about 162 rainy days a year. October is the wettest month; April and May are the driest. Summer averages around 15 to 16 degrees with highs of 21 or 22. Winter averages about 2 degrees and can fall to minus ten. None of that is extreme. What it means in practice is that if you have three days in the region, you should assume one of them is wet, and that if you insist on a dry day for Preikestolen you may not get one.

The temperature figures are also misleading in one direction. Fifteen degrees at the car park with a light wind is pleasant; the same fifteen degrees at 604 metres, after you have stopped walking and your shirt is wet, is cold. That is the whole argument for a windproof layer and a hat in your pack in July: what to wear.

Cloud on the plateau

The plateau is often in cloud. I will not give you a percentage, because no reliable figure for how often exists and I am not going to invent one. What I can tell you is the local pattern: a clear morning in Stavanger tells you very little about what is happening on the cliff, the cloud tends to sit at exactly the height that matters, and it can arrive in twenty minutes and leave in ten. People walk four hours and stand in a white room. It happens often enough that you should decide in advance whether the walk would be worth it without the view, because if the answer is no, take the boat instead: the cruise from below.

Walking it in the rain

Perfectly possible, done all the time, and it changes three things. The rock gets slippery, particularly the polished sections and the wooden boardwalks. The boggy ground either side of the boardwalks becomes genuinely wet, which is why above-ankle waterproof boots are the one piece of kit I insist on. And the descent becomes the whole problem rather than half of it, because wet stone under tired legs is how ankles turn. Allow longer and go slower: hiking in the rain.

When to turn back

This is the part worth reading twice, because the official advice includes turning round without embarrassment and almost nobody does it. I would turn back for any of these. Ice on the rock, in any month. Wind strong enough to make you think about your footing on the open sections near the top. Visibility so poor that the bare-rock stretch along the edge is not obviously safe. And the arithmetic failing: if you are past your turnaround time, or the light is going faster than you are climbing, the top is not worth what comes after it.

Nobody at the trailhead is going to stop you. The trail never formally closes and there is no gate. Staff at the car park will advise against walking in dangerous conditions, and visitors are asked to respect that, and in practice that advice is the only closure Preikestolen has. Take it seriously when it is given: how safe it is.

Planning around it

Which month to choose is on best time to visit, and which hour on best time of day. Whether the hike is worth doing in poor conditions at all is the honest question on is it worth it.

Booking a guided day

A guide will not change the weather, but somebody who has seen the conditions all week is a better judge of the day than a forecast. Availability below.

A reminder about what that widget is. It books the ride out of Stavanger and, on most of these, a guide. It does not book Preikestolen. Nobody sells a ticket to the trail: it is free, open and unguided, and you can walk up it without paying anyone a thing.

Frequently asked questions