Looking for glacier visit advice in Olden Norway

I’m trying to decide between cruise ship excursion to Kjenndalen Glacier and Lovanet Lake vs booking the bus and troll cars , on our own, to Briksdal glacier. The reviews seem positive for both and there is a big difference in price. Please respond if you’ve been to one or both. I’m leaning toward Kjenndalen as I’m reading it’s less crowded, less touristy but I’d be on a bus with 45 people. The cruise is mid June. TIA if you can help.

We visited the briksdal glacier and it was nice. The glacier itself has been hit hard by global warming, but the drive there and hike were lovely. We booked the troll car ourselves and took a bus with Olden adventures, though you can save money if you take the public bus (we had a 2 year old and 6 year old so ease of transportation was more important than cost).

You might want to look on TripAdvisor or contact visitnorway, the official travel website in Norway, to see if you can find a private tour for kjenndalen.

You may have already planned on this, but I’d say the loen skylift was one of the absolute highlights of our cruise. That’s about a 5 minute drive from Olden. We switched our order and went there in the afternoon, when the weather was better

Maybe you like to hire a car so you can take trips around by your selfs if you like,?

You can contact Olden Adventure for more questions.

https://olden-adventure.trekksoft.com/en

Welcome to Olden,Andrea A.

Hi kitkat343, were you able to take a bus to

Loen or did you do the trip from the port?

The Loen Skylift is a very short (maybe 5 mile) drive from the port. We were traveling with our two children, ages 6 and 2, and Norway does not allow children to ride in cabs without car seats. So we'd been having a lot of difficulty arranging transportation throughout our trip to Norway.

Olden Adventures, which is very close to the port, runs buses to both the Loen Skylift and the Briksdal Glacier. We took that and didn't price compare if it would have been better to take a cab to the skylift and buy the tickets directly from their vendor due to the logistical transportation problems our family experienced in Norway which you won't experience if you don't have small children with you. If you choose Olden Adventures, buses to both the skylift and glacier leave from the same spot (last year a petrol station across the street from the port). They quickly and efficiently dispensed our tickets and helped us find the buses, and let us switch our reservations so we could visit the skylift in the afternoon, when the weather was predicted to be better.

However, given the short distance to the Loen Skylift, it might be cheaper for you to book a cab and buy tickets directly through the company that operates the skylift (last year the loen skylift had cab companies listed on their website). The Olden adventures buses were running every half hour out, and every hour back last year, but you should check their schedule with them since we visited on the third day the skylift was open. The Briksdal glacier is far, so if you choose that I think you need a bus - either the public bus that people were able to find out about by emailing the people at visitnorway.com (that's the official norway travel site, and they are extremely helpful in describing the excursion options and helping us figure out how to reach excursions) or an excursion. We also booked the troll car independently, if that's something you'd need at the Briksdal Glacier.

Thank you so much, very helpful.:)

We did the Lovatnet Lake trip 8 years ago and it was stunning, thankfully the sun was out.

Back then the glacier had a tongue which could be reached after a 10-15 minute walk. A few years before it had reached the lake, so was receding quickly.

I saw a photo from a couple of years after our visit and no chance of standing on ice like we did. I expect it is now well up the valley.

Thank you all for your replies, still trying to decide which area to visit, both look like good options. It's a shame we are losing our glaciers. I was in Alaska 2 years ago and took the same photo I took 15 years earlier, the amount of glacier retreat was astounding.