An unbroken ribbon
A form less common than stepped falls.
Jun Kwang Han — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Markus Trienke — CC BY-SA 2.0
A waterfall in the Flåm valley dropping about a hundred and forty metres in a single fall, seen from the Flåm railway and from the road running beside it. What distinguishes it is the regularity of the drop: a single straight ribbon of water descending a near-vertical rock wall without breaking on intermediate rocks, a form less common than it appears — most Norwegian waterfalls are stepped or winding. The whole valley was shaped by glaciers: its walls very steep and its floor flat, the classic U-shaped section that distinguishes glacial valleys from the V-shaped valleys cut by rivers. Its volume varies greatly with the season: in May and June with the snowmelt it is at its peak, in late summer it weakens considerably, and in winter it may partly freeze. Seen free from the road, and from the train window on the left going up.
A form less common than stepped falls.
Steep walls and a flat floor — the mark of glaciers.
It appears on the left going up from Flåm.
The Flåm valley, on the Flåm railway line
A line linking Flåm on the Aurlandsfjord to Myrdal station on the Bergen line, twenty kilometres in which it climbs about eight hundred and sixty metres — among the world's steepest railways without a rack system. It opened in 1940 and most of it is cut into rock through twenty tunnels, most dug by hand. The journey takes about an hour each way and stops at the Kjosfossen waterfall.
Late May and June is the answer: the mountain snowmelt fills every channel, and falls that nearly vanish in August run at their strongest. An added advantage is that daylight is very long then and the crowds are thinner than at the July peak. The drawback is that some high mountain roads may still be closed by snow into late May.
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