Rush Hour at the Trollstigen Road
Hands slippery with cold sweat squeezing the steering wheel, eyes widened with fear, heart knelling in a cacophony that would give an infarction even to your cardiologist...
The hair-rising bends and above all, the trolls!
Well, not quite :-)
Yet the Trollstigen — meaning "Troll Path" in Norwegian — is still a pretty nerve-wrecking serpentine road in Western Norway. Especially when the slow-moving columns of nervous vacation drivers get seasoned with a few long coaches.
Here's a short hyperlapse video taken from a viewing platform hanging cosily some 200 metres above the road.
Trollstigen (or trollstigvegen; The troll path ) is a serpentine mountain road and pass in Rauma Municipality, Møre og Romsdal county, Norway.It is part of Norwegian County Road 63 that connects the town of Åndalsnes in Rauma and the village of Valldal in Norddal Municipality. It is a popular tourist attraction due to its steep incline of 10% and eleven hairpin bends up a steep mountainside. During the top tourist season, about 2,500 vehicles pass daily. During the 2012 season, 161,421 vehicles traversed the route, compared to 155,230 vehicles during 2009.The road is narrow with many sharp bends, and although several bends were widened during 2005 to 2012, vehicles over 12.4 m long are prohibited from driving the road. During the 2011 and 2012 seasons, buses up to 13.1 m were temporarily allowed as a trial. At the 700 m plateau there is a car park and several viewing balconies overlooking the bends and the Stigfossen waterfall. Stigfossen falls 320 m down the mountainside. The pass has an elevation of approximately 850 m.Trollstigen is closed during late autumn and winter. A normal operating season stretches from mid-May to October, but may sometimes be shorter or longer due to weather conditions.
Source: Trollstigen (wikipedia.org)
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