UKC

I failed to prepare and don't have any guidebooks, can anyone recommend any shops in Norway (I am currently North of Hamburg slowly heading north) where I could pick up some guide books?

I'm getting a ferry from Hirtshall to Kristiansand on Tuesday, I'll be in my camper, traveling around  Norway for about 3 weeks. I don't plan on going too deep into Norway, I think I am going to head for the Kjerag area, the trip isn't solely a climbing trip so not essential that I get a good book.

I think a lot of the Norwegian climbing will be out of my league, however the "Climb Norway - A National Guide" looks like something that would suit my skill level. 

Failing that I think I can order online and get it sent to a UPS drop box in Norway.

In reply to Mlewis: The area around Kjerag doesn't have an up to date paper guide, and there's no plan to make one.  Sport and most trad routes are on brattelinjer.no and the bouldering is on buldreinfo.no.

 Platou in Stavanger has the old guide and the Sorlandet rock guide.  If you go to Setesdal there's a couple of places around Valle selling that guide.  Further east, for those area, don't know

In reply to Mlewis:

You could try the largest climbing centre in Kristiansand www.sorlandetklatresenter.no
 

Mail adress butikk@sorlandetklatresenter.no

Probably they have guidebooks, otherwise they can tell you how to get them. 

In reply to Mlewis:

Thanks for the info, as you can see I have done very little planning... I really failed to appreciate quite how much rock was in Norway. 

The links are very helpful, I didn't expect that much information to be freely available online, although the website seems very confusing to navigate. I'll have to spend a few days reading up and maybe I'll face my fears and make a plan!

In reply to Mlewis:  About 1% of what's potentially climbable actually has routes on it.  There is a lot.

On bratt.. - I normally click on any route, then go to 'browse' in the top left to bring up a map of crags.  Most crags have photo topos, solid lines, trad, dotted lines, sport.  Beware bouldering grades

This is obviously Rogaland biased, Rogaland being the Fylke on the SW coast area. 

In reply to Mlewis:

Download 27Crags app on your phone and look on there. A quick scan shows loads of available crags. 
 

Costs £7 a month I think which allows you to download crags, topos, get GPS locations etc. 

No idea how “good” the coverage is but looks like there’s a good spread of things available.

Thanks for all the help!

I've emailed the climbing gym, I planned to visit anyway as it looks like a good rainy day activity. 

I have looked at 27 crags and it does seem to have a fair selection of crags and information but you can't beat a proper guide book which a logical layout. Although I've managed a lot of climbing using just the Rockfax App. 

Does anyone know if Norway has any Via Ferrata, I can only see one route online which you have to pay for....

In reply to Mlewis:I think that the coverage on 27 crags is pretty poor (to be polite) in SW Norway.  UKC is better, but the definitive guides arealready linked to.

What do you want to do?Sport, boulder, trad?  Any other activities?

There are two big walls in K'sand now, which is good as there are some rainy days, but this can be a good time of year for weather (July is consistently poor). Weather is on yr.no

In reply to wbo2:

I'll be climbing, hiking, cycling and swimming so lots to fill the time. 

VF would be a bonus if there are any around!

Im happy with trad or sport, if there are any multipitch sport routes I would be very interested. 

In reply to Mlewis:

Thought I would add an update for anyone that comes across this post in a search. 

We are currently in Valle about 150km from Kristiansands. The via ferrata shop sells the two guide books -

Setesdal - https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/books/setesdal-781

Sørlandet Rock -https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/books/sorlandet_rock-1786

Additionally via ferrata seems fairly common, we have seen two off the main road. However they all seems to be privately owned and you need to pay a fee before climbing. 

Via Valle Ferrata  - 450NOK 

Straumsfjellet Via Ferrata - 600NOK

In reply to Mlewis:  Setesdal  often has better summer weather than nearer the coast... I hope that's proving the case.  Have you done any routes yet? 

Have they reopened the campsite in Valle?

In reply to wbo2:

Bit late here with my reply, but 27crags is the best resource for a lot of the crags in Vestfold area, up the SE coast. The exception is the trad around Larvik/Ula, which has it's own pdf guide. I can forward this if useful as it's a free distribution. Most of the stuff around Drammen is on the DKK.no website, but probably only until the new overdue guidebook is released. 

Thanks for all the responses, I dropped my phone 100m down a slab early in the trip.it was sliding well until it built up speed and started to tumble. As you can imagine it didn't end well  

Then used all the data on my partner's phone trying to buy a replacement. I gave up and just got myself a replacement in Germany. Although it was a nightmare at first I'm cured of my mobile phone addiction! 

The trip was good, we didn't do much climbing. (Take a look at my logbook) As a whole Norway was a little out my league as I only climb VS on a good day. There seem to be very few trad routes below N5, all of which are big and scary. 

My partner has a good Instagram account with some nice pictures of our Norwegian activities and climbs @camper_stan if you interested. 

We followed the RV9 north through Setesdal, I never actually got the guide book as I didn't find the shop until late in the week and had plans to move on. 

We went to Haegefjell for a few days which was brilliant. Lots of climbing but mostly out of my league so we didn't stay to long. We used the mini rockfax guide but everyone seemed to have a print out/pdf guide that had up to date route info. I'll hopefully go back and spend some time in the Nisser area!

Although 27 crags is a good resource the information is very hit and miss (particularly when compared to the guidebooks) and the topos are generally poor quality. The quality of the Rockfax app is brilliant, hopefully in the coming years it will start to cover more of the world. 

The comment about Norway only being 1% climbed is an exaggeration. It seems to be that only 1% of the road side crags have been developed. Even then only the best lines have been done. I looked at trying some random rock however the rock seems to be flawless and have minimal options for gear, even building a decent top rope anchor looked to be hard in most places. 

Thanks for all the advice, we are currently steaming across Germany heading for Czechia, Slovakia, Hungry, Croatia, Slovenia and Italy. We plan to spend about a week in each of the Eastern countries and a month in Italy. Since Brexit we can only travel for 90 days so can't hang around for to long (Croatia is out of the Shengen so we will likely stay for a few weeks as it doesn't add to our 90 day limit)