To understand Rondane, it helps to know what the mountains are made of. The rock here is mostly a hard, pale, layered sandstone called sparagmite, and it weathers in a way that gives the peaks their characteristic rounded forms and their slopes of loose stone. Over millions of years the ice sheets rubbed down the summits, left boulders strewn across the valleys and scooped out hollows that became lakes. The landscape looks old, and it is.
It is also a landscape of subtle colour. In summer the lower slopes are green with grass and birch, the middle slopes are a patchwork of heather, blueberry and willow, and the upper slopes are grey and white with lichen and snow. After rain the rock darkens, and the contrast makes the whole scene glow. In autumn, when the bilberry leaves turn crimson, the whole hillside seems to be on fire. The light is clear and cool, and distances are hard to judge, since there are no trees to give scale.
Walkers love the park for its long, open ridges and its network of huts, and in summer you may see people with big packs on the paths beside the road. The wild reindeer are shy, and they tend to keep to the higher ground, but they are sometimes seen from the road at dawn or dusk. The mountains have also been used by farmers for summer grazing for centuries, and old stone shelters survive among the slopes.
The road across this section is easy and relaxed, a gentle ride with wide views and moderate traffic. The surface is usually good, though frost can break it up in places, and the bends are mostly gentle. Wind is common, and the weather can turn quickly, so be ready. Folldal, about twenty-seven kilometres away, is the nearest settlement of any size, with Otta about thirty-three kilometres in the other direction, so check your fuel and supplies before going on. A quiet pause on a clear morning, with the sun on the peaks, is worth more than a hundred kilometres of road.