Why Nepalese Sherpas Built 1,566 Stone Steps Above Reine

Counting Steps I Hadn’t Planned to Count

Somewhere around step four hundred, legs already burning, I started actually counting instead of just climbing. It’s a strange instinct, but Reinebringen does that to people — the staircase is precise enough, and repetitive enough, that your mind starts looking for a number to hold onto instead of just the next step. The official count is 1,566 stone steps, climbing the mountainside directly above Reine to a viewpoint that shows up in more photographs of Lofoten than almost anywhere else in the archipelago. What I hadn’t known before that climb was who actually built the thing under my boots, and why it exists as a formal staircase at all rather than the worn dirt track it apparently used to be.

Who Actually Laid These Stones

The staircase was built by Sherpa stonemasons brought over from Nepal, trail-building specialists with generations of experience constructing exactly this kind of route in the Himalayas, where stone stairs are often the only durable way to build a path up a steep mountainside that thousands of people will walk every year. That detail changed how I experienced every step on the way up. This wasn’t a path someone bulldozed through with machinery. It’s a hand-built staircase, stone by stone, by people whose actual profession is building trails that survive foot traffic, weather, and freeze-thaw cycles on some of the steepest terrain anywhere in the world.

Standing partway up, catching my breath, I found myself trying to imagine what it took to move and set each of those slabs into a mountainside this steep, with no easy vehicle access and Lofoten’s own weather working against the crew the entire time. The steps aren’t uniform in the way a poured concrete staircase would be — they follow the actual contour and rock of the slope, which makes the climb uneven in a way that felt deliberate rather than accidental, once I understood who’d built it and how they’d learned to do this kind of work in the first place.

Why the Mountain Needed This At All

The obvious question, standing at the bottom looking up, is why any of this was necessary — why not just let people climb the slope the way people evidently had for years before the staircase existed. The honest answer is that the old route wasn’t built for the volume of people who wanted to walk it. A dirt track up a steep mountainside, worn by increasing numbers of hikers every season, erodes. Multiple parallel paths tend to open up as hikers avoid muddy or damaged sections, which widens the scar on the hillside rather than containing it, and a slope this steep gets genuinely more dangerous once the ground underfoot turns to loose scree and mud rather than solid rock.

A formal stone staircase solves both problems at once. It gives every hiker a single, durable route rather than a spreading network of informal tracks, and it turns what would otherwise be a slippery dirt slope into something with real footing, stone that doesn’t erode the way soil does under thousands of boots a season. It’s not a subtle intervention — you’re aware the whole way up that you’re walking on construction, not on a natural trail — but it’s the reason the mountain can support the number of people who now want to make this climb without the slope itself falling apart underneath them.

What the Climb Actually Demands

None of that engineering makes the climb easy. It’s a strenuous few hours round trip, steep enough that the staircase itself needs to zigzag rather than run in a straight line, and it’s entirely weather-dependent in a way that’s easy to underestimate from the bottom. Wet stone turns genuinely hazardous underfoot, and low cloud can erase the view at the top that’s the entire reason most people make the climb. I’d checked the forecast the night before and still found conditions different by the time I reached the top — which matches everything else true about weather in this part of Norway, where it can shift within an hour regardless of what the forecast said that morning.

If you’re planning the climb yourself, the full Reinebringen hike guide covers timing, fitness expectations, and what to check before you commit, and hiking safety in Lofoten is worth reading regardless of which trail you’re planning, since the same conditions that affect this staircase affect most of the region’s serious hikes. If the stairs aren’t right for your fitness level or the weather rules them out on the day, best hikes in Lofoten and easy walks in Lofoten both cover gentler alternatives nearby.

Winter Changes Everything About This Climb

I went back the following winter and didn’t attempt the stairs at all — ice on stone this steep is a different category of risk than mud on stone, and it wasn’t a climb I was willing to make in those conditions. Instead, I went out on a guided snowshoe route that covered comparable terrain at a much lower level of exposure, which turned out to be a better way to spend a winter evening near Reine than forcing a hike the conditions weren’t suited for:

a guided evening snowshoe tour near Reine that also watches for the northern lights

Recovering From It

My legs were done for the rest of that day, and I didn’t try to do anything else strenuous. A boat trip along the coast the following morning, low-effort and mostly seated, was a good match for a body that had just done fifteen hundred-odd steps the day before:

a half-day boat safari along the coast, watching for sea eagles

If your own climb happens during the warmer months, a snorkeling trip is a similarly gentle way to spend the day after — cold water rather than cold legs, but nothing that asks anything of a body that’s already worked hard the day before:

a summer snorkeling trip to see grey seals in their natural habitat

What I Think About Now, Looking at the Photos

I have the photo everyone takes from the top — Reine spread out below, Hamnøy and Sakrisøy visible further along the fjord — and I look at it differently now than I did the day I took it. It’s not just a view I earned by climbing. It’s a view a specific group of people, skilled in a specific craft learned an ocean away, made durably reachable for anyone willing to put in the effort. The stairs under that photo are as much the story as the view itself, and I wish I’d known that before I started counting steps instead of after. For a wider look at how the archipelago’s landscape got its current shape in the first place, why Lofoten looks like that is a reasonable companion piece to this one — different mountain-building process entirely, but the same instinct to ask why a place looks the way it does before just admiring it.

Questions people ask me about the Reinebringen stairs

Did Nepalese sherpas really build the entire staircase by hand?

As far as I could tell from talking to people locally and reading up afterward, yes — the crews brought over specifically for this kind of stonework built the staircase section by section, using the same trail-building skills applied on steep terrain in Nepal. It wasn’t machine-built, which is part of why the steps follow the actual shape of the slope rather than running perfectly uniform.

How long does the climb take?

Longer than it looks from photos — budget a genuinely strenuous few hours round trip, more if the weather or your own pace slows things down. I’d rather undersell the time than have someone start too late in the day and get caught by fading light or a shift in the weather.

Is the staircase safer than the old dirt track it replaced?

In dry conditions, yes — solid stone underfoot beats loose mud and scree. Wet or icy stone is a different story, and I wouldn’t attempt the full climb in winter conditions the way I did in summer; a guided snowshoe route nearby is the better call once ice is a factor.

Do I need to be an experienced hiker to attempt it?

You need reasonable fitness and the willingness to go slowly, not technical climbing experience. It’s steep and long enough that pacing yourself matters more than any particular skill, and turning back is always a legitimate option if the weather or your legs say so partway up.

What should I do the day after climbing it?

Something low-effort. My legs weren’t interested in another hike, so a boat trip and, on a warmer visit, a snorkeling outing both worked as a gentler way to keep seeing the coast without asking anything more of legs that had just done fifteen hundred-odd steps.

Is the view really worth 1,566 steps?

For me, yes, on the day the cloud actually lifted. It’s weather-dependent enough that I wouldn’t call it a guarantee, and the wider guide to this hike is worth reading before you commit a whole day to finding out for yourself.