It's lunchtime, which means a break in the steady ascent to the soft marshmallow summit at Mefjellet, one of hundreds of peaks in western Norway's Sunnmøre Alps. On the veranda of a lonely snow-covered mountain hut, in the middle of white nothingness, we unwrap sweet brunost cheese sandwiches and Kvikk Lunsj chocolate wafers. Far below our little group of four—me; our taciturn ski guide, Oscar Almgren; and two other guests—a white-tailed eagle glides over the steel-blue waters of the Tafjorden, which glints in the late April sun. It is just one of the fjords that streak through the mountains here, reaching like tentacles from the pastel town of Ålesund on the coast.
Lanky, with sun-tipped hair poking from beneath his trucker cap, Almgren dryly lists the mountains that dot the horizon line: Slogen, Store Brekketind, Svartetindane. Generally softer-topped, lower, and less craggy than the European Alps, the Sunnmøre Alps are a miracle of the Ice Age, when the glaciers' rough caress crafted mountains and crags that loom over fjords running thousands of feet deep. Many of the peaks were first ascended by a Victorian mountaineer named William Slingsby, who is barely known in his native England but is a hero of sorts around these parts, his moniker often relayed in charming Norwegian singsong. Uhmwpe Plate
Juvet Landscape Hotel uses local, seasonal ingredients in its dishes, like this wild salmon with cured kohlrabi and garlic cream
Hotel Union Øye, near the Norangsfjord
Just as the fjords run deep here, so does the culture of ski touring, which is essentially backcountry skiing without the handy ride: Nordic skiing on the way up, Alpine skiing on the way down. (Snowboarders like myself prefer splitboards: snowboards that split in two for the trek up the mountain and rejoin into a single piece for the descent.) Especially in central Norway and northward, there are thousands of skiable mountains but neither the population nor the will to justify lifts in most places. Instead, most people just park wherever they can, put skins—thin, sticky strips of carpet-like nylon or mohair—on their skis, to allow them to grip the snow while moving upward, and hike up. The practice is considered an expression of friluftsliv, or “the open-air life”: a Norwegian sensibility about journeying in nature with patience and humility and a notable absence of adrenalized ego (even if a byproduct of all this bracing outdoor-siness has been Winter Olympics medals galore).
As a Scot brought up on weeklong visits to purpose-built French ski resorts, I'm a late convert to this peaceful belief system. I've been to other Norwegian ski touring pilgrimage sites, including the similarly awe-inducing Lofoten archipelago and Lyngen Alps—both above the Arctic Circle, with slopes that run down toward mostly open sea. But only in the Sunnmøre Alps is there such a tangible sense of the fjords, of existing in a fairytale universe, of being able to ski right down to the water's edge. It is an area where ferries streak silently across waterways, leaving great dissolving wakes and disgorging near-silent electric cars; of small-scale berry farmers and picture-perfect clapboard houses, with no need for garden fences (but lots of trampolines, curiously). There is a little community-built resort at Stranda, a town of 4,500 or so residents, rising up from the water, but even there the tendency is to hike from the cable car or T-bar to find untouched backcountry snow.
After lunch at Mefjellet, our group keeps shuffling upward. The little forest and the mountain huts are behind us now; ahead is an unbroken curve of whiteness against an inky blue sky. The heave of breath and the repetitive swoosh of shuffling skis invoke a meditative blankness.
Oscar is Swedish but has been here for almost 15 years and seems to have adopted a certain understated, hardy local sensibility. He has slowly built his company, Uteguiden, on skiing, hiking, biking, rafting, trail running, and other wholesome activities in what is perhaps Norway's most adventure-friendly region. The company works exclusively with sustainable partners and transports guests in electric vehicles, recognizable by the “E” designation on their license plates, which are abundant here due to generous government subsidies. There is only regionally grown produce for sale at Hygge, Uteguiden's café in Stranda, where skiers eat cinnamon buns and drink strong black coffee on midcentury sofas made by local craftspeople. When Oscar's team takes cruise passengers on kayak trips from Ålesund, picking up litter is part of the excursion. The company is carbon neutral, but, as Oscar says, “It seems a bit uncool to go on and on about it. We'd rather just do it.”
A guest room at the Storfjord Hotel in Skodje, Norway
The Geirangerfjord near the Valldal valley, as seen from Ljøen, a panoramic lookout point
Ski touring boomed across the world during COVID lockdowns—because the lifts were closed, but perhaps also for the mindfulness it imparts in practitioners. At the dry-stone cairn of the summit, where a great panorama opens up, I feel all the satisfaction of having climbed one of Scotland's Munros. Except here, there's no ankle-buckling walk down. Instead, I take off my skins, clip my skis together, and twist the bindings until the pieces lock into a single board. All I have to do now is push gently in order to convert that suspended energy into glorious whooping arcs in virgin spring snow pointing in the direction of the Tafjorden. I savor each turn all the more for having earned it.
The bracing, honest sense of the friluftsliv seems to linger. That evening, we stay at the Juvet Landscape Hotel, a series of glass pods situated around a revamped farmhouse deep in the Valldal valley, east of many of the skiable mountains and almost two hours inland from Ålesund. I find myself with my feet dangling in the sunken hot tub, a bottle of local Slogen ale (named after the best known of the nearby mountains) in hand, transfixed by the river babbling through the snow-covered forest. Up to my right looms a great Yosemite-like crag, and above the ridge, an ethereal ghost moon is starting to appear in the late afternoon sun.
Juvet was the main location in Ex Machina, Alex Garland's eerie 2014 thriller about a wild-eyed billionaire and his restlessly captive AI. In real life, it is less ominous—though, like its cinematic alter ego, it does feel somehow apart from the real world. Around the communal farmhouse table, guests recount stories over minke whale carpaccio and local reindeer, while the silence outside is punctuated only by the occasional basso profundo of an avalanche beginning to rumble somewhere along the valley.
The following morning, the hotel's owner, Knut Slinning, pokes his head into our rooms at the Writer's Lodge, a generous chalet with the sparse, finely curated feel of a contemporary Scandinavian home. He has wrinkled, smiling eyes and wears a Norrøna jacket. Like us, he's going ski touring with friends and a packed lunch. “Nice day for it,” he says, stating the obvious.
Ski touring on Mefjellet, a mountain near the village of Fjørå
the rustic façade of the Storfjord Hotel
Our happy routine while at Juvet consists of walking to the snow, sticking on skins, and heading wordlessly upward—tuning in to subtle varieties of silence, broken by ski whoosh, pine rustle, snow melt, or grouse blather. At Blæja (“the altar”), we ascend beside a great looming slab of mountain before a strip of the Hjørundfjord suddenly reveals itself from the summit, one of Slingsby's favorite views. At Stranda, we shuffle up from the top of the cable car, passing the slopes where video production companies have built giant jumps so that the skiers or snowboarders seem to be leaping straight into the Storfjord. Each day, sun-dappled car journeys between mountains are broken by tunnels and hops on little green ferries surrounded by looming natural amphitheaters—our base layers soaked with sweat as we drink Oskar Sylte pineapple soda from orderly supermarkets, a quick pit stop to refuel before the next ascent.
Everywhere, there's a constant nagging temptation to stop. One afternoon, we park by the roadside above one mirror-like end of the Storfjord, looking toward the corner that turns into the Geirangerfjord—the stretch of water that inspired a thousand cruise trips and the kingdom of Arendelle in Disney's Frozen. Today, the bigger cruise ships are banned from coming this far in, and the switchback Trollstigen road down to the Geirangerfjord is closed due to snow. Below the viewpoint, the only interruption to the stillness is an older man in a T-shirt, slowly pushing a wheelbarrow full of branches from his farmhouse of chipped sky-blue clapboard. He probably remembers the days when the farm kids would row to school across the 850-foot-deep fjord, before the first tunnels were built in the 1970s, and would help on friends' farms when they got stranded by bad weather. Before oil and aquaculture transformed an area that once relied on fishing and furniture-making. He would have seen his country transform into a quietly wealthy nation of rule-abiding taxpayers who reap the rewards and disappear to the hills or the beach every July, barely even bothering with out-of-office notifications.
Just as the fjords run deep here, so does the culture of ski touring
There are good hotels in the area but not much excitement in the well-to-do villages to distract from the landscape. One evening, we leap deliriously from the little floating community sauna in Sæbø into the fjord in our underwear, before a night of sleep at the Sagafjord Hotel. Wood-hulled boats, some of which are used to ferry groups of skiers, bob gently in the marina outside. Another night, a log-fire-warm welcome ushers us into the turf-roofed cabins of the Storfjord Hotel. We eat reindeer with local blueberry sauce under antlers and gilt-framed old paintings of farm girls overlooking the Geirangerfjord, surrounded by knitwear and laughter. I retreat with tired legs and a face reddened by fresh air and wine to my cabin-like room and close the curtains on a darkening pine forest.
For our final afternoon's skiing, we try to chase the sunset at Hundatinden, a mountain closer to the coast that Oscar has never taken guests to before. From the stony path we walk up, the route looks intimidating. Across on the mountain, there are rocks and narrow couloirs below a just-visible powder bowl, the edge of which is catching the last of the day's sun. As on almost all of our ski routes, there isn't another soul in sight.
We cross a stream running from a short waterfall, with tiers like a wedding cake, before the now-unspoken ritual of strapping in for the ascent. But after an hour or so of slow, steady movement upward, with the promised land of the sunny bowl almost within reach, the snow suddenly becomes gnarly, topped with icy debris. As Oscar pokes, prods, and sighs, it is yet another moment to stop—to see little boats heading round the coast to Ålesund; to tune in to the white noise of the waterfall down below. Nature has decided that we will have to turn back, but it is okay. Okay to be here, in this exact moment, as the world turns and the snow slowly yields to a lowering sun. We rip off our skins and down we go.
The cozy, minimalist dining room of Juvet Landscape Hotel in Valldal, Norway
Juvet Landscape Hotel Since this intimate collection of glass pods and tree-house-style rooms—most with unbroken views of a hypnotic stretch of the Valldøla river—debuted in 2010, Juvet's style of natural modernism has been much copied. But its combination of location and timeless design by Oslo architects Jensen & Skodvin remains hard to match.
Hotel Union Øye There's a Gothic fairy-tale theatricality to the region's only grande dame, which, since opening in 1891, has welcomed everyone from Kaiser Wilhelm II to Henrik Ibsen. Like the Storfjord and Brosundet hotels, it's owned and operated by the pioneering local company 62° Nord, run by the entrepreneurial Flakk family, who expanded the property this summer to include three new suites, a vast conservatory, and five stand-alone cabins. The knowing Victoriana falls somewhere between austere and whimsical, with floral wallpaper, gilt accents, and suites named after esteemed former guests.
Storfjord Hotel Just 40 minutes from Ålesund, this is a smooth take on the Scandi deep-nature retreat—with a general vibe of antlers, cowskin, and coziness. Rentable electric Porsches sit outside turf-roofed cabins on a wooded hillside overlooking the fjord of the same name. The locavore restaurant is one of the best in the area, known for its superlative cheese board and house beer.
Hotel Brosundet This city hotel—a reimagining of an Ålesund harborside fishing warehouse by Norwegian starchitects Snøhetta, complete with a roaring five-story lobby fireplace—is almost too cool for its Art Nouveau surroundings. Seafood-focused restaurant Apotekergata No. 5, overlooking the harbor, is the best in town, while low-lit Arkivet cocktail bar and sunny Butikken café are also best in class.
Uteguiden can organize bespoke itineraries, but a three-night weekend trip, which comes with guided ski touring and accommodations at the Juvet Landscape Hotel, costs around $1,415, excluding flights.
This article appeared in the December 2022 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.
By subscribing to our newsletter(s) you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement.
Condé Nast Traveler does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Any information published by Condé Nast Traveler is not intended as a substitute for medical advice, and you should not take any action before consulting with a healthcare professional.
More from Condé Nast Traveler
PA66 Plate © 2022 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Condé Nast Traveler may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices