Brown Smear, and a reccie for ice

The moose hash was very tasty indeed. Moose meat tastes like slightly gamey beef. We had moose and cheese sandwiches too, and Toby made salad on the side. Normally I eat healthily but I'm afraid this was probably the first salad I've ever eaten on a climbing trip.

Today we drove south towards Hatteng and parked by the side of the fjord where we'd seen a yellowy-brown ice pillar. It turned out to be a 32m WI4. Nick despatched it in short order.

We then joined Toby, Jody and Earendel to play on a wide, fat 40m WI3 a few hundred metres south. Climbing equipment manufacturers send Toby samples of their gear to test and review. Here's Toby giving some new ropes a good testing!

It seemed strange being at a crag with other people. One of the striking things about this trip is that we have seen no other climbers at all, not a single one in 10 days of climbing on great ice in fantastic surroundings.

We then decided to explore Kitdalen and Signaldalen valleys, accessed from Hatteng at the south end of the fjord. We found a good-looking multipitch ?WI4 at the end of Kitdalen valley, and so many icefalls in Signaldalen valley that we lost count. Signaldalen is higher and feels remote, with impressive mountains at each end.

The sun came out today and the skies are clear now. We may see the Northern Lights yet.

Melting ice, and moose hash

We woke up later than usual (after 7!) to find that there was no electricity in the cabin. I rang Stein-Are's dad and he popped round, cheerful and smiling as ever, to say he'd sort it out. Luckily Jody found that the kitchen block still had power so we were able to brew tea. Phew.

We drove up to Kafjord again, had a closer look at a couple of promising-looking lines, but didn't fancy the steep walk-in after yesterday's slog, so we drove back towards Skibotn again until we saw a straightforward-looking roadside ice crag.

It was my turn to lead. It turned out to be a 60m WI3 with a steep step to start with. A longer, vertical final step would have made it WI4 but I wimped out and chose an easier line to the side. My confidence isn't there yet.

As I type Jody is cooking Moose hash. He knows someone who hunts, then arranges to have some of the moose meat canned. Moose can weigh 700kg so one of them would fill quite a few tins. He's mixing the meat up with mashed potatoes. It smells good!

Roadside my a***

Toby, Jody and Earendel joined us at the cabin at first light, looking only slightly worn after an epic 17 hour non-stop drive from Helsinki. They're here for 3 nights before heading south to Spansdalen. Nice lads.

After eating our standard muesli/banana breakfast and making our standard cheese and salami sandwiches (we packed our gear last night - yey!), we set off north again to have a look at Gehsteig, a WI5+ graded climb next to a climb called Roadside.

As it turned out, although the climb is visible from the road up on the hillside, getting to it involved a two and a half hour slog uphill through deep snow between boulders and trees. Here's Nick with the end in sight.

Nick then did probably the best leading I've ever seen him do, up a long, sustained vertical section on the first pitch and finishing up a pillar on the second pitch, which boomed as we placed our axes.

Here Nick is (click to see him) towards the top of the first pitch.

After abseiling off in one, the journey back down to the car took only 25 minutes. We arrived tired but satisfied and buzzing after a top day.

Tamokdalen dagger

This morning we scouted north for a WI5 we'd heard about on the internet. We found it about 25km north but the ice looked a good 2 hours walk from the road and we were by then too late for such a long day. We plan to go back tomorrow with an early start.

Instead we drove south to Tamokdalen valley south of Skibotn, where we found some ice crags to the left of the road:

After a short trudge uphill Nick led up to an ice dagger (click on the above photo to enlarge), which he then climbed as I watched agog. A very impressive lead.

When I joined Nick at the top he pointed out I had blood on the bridge of my nose. I must have been hit by ice he'd dislodged on the lead, without noticing.

Here's Nick at the top setting up an abolokov (a V cut into the ice then looped with cord, from which you abseil). We've been doing a lot of abolokov abseils this trip - the trees are small here!

More "Scottish" than Scotland

Here's short clip from the walk-in this morning. The language isn't for the sensitive:

It doesn't have to be fun to be fun from Jim on Vimeo.

Harder than it looked

Today we revisited the west side of the fjord to look at one of the lines we'd seen on Wednesday. The southern half of the fjord had seen less snow but as we drove north it was deeper on the ground. As we parked more snow started falling, quite heavily. Faced with driving back and sitting around the cabin for another day we put on the snowshoes and walked northwards past our Wednesday climb.

After a slog upwards through deep snow we reached the base of the climb.

I led the first pitch which turned out to be steeper than it had looked, and the ice wasn't great for security of protection. So I gibbered and swore my way up, while Nick tried to keep warm on the belay. At the top the ice gave way to deep snow so I dug a deep snow belay and brought Nick up.

From where we were the rest of the climb looked short and quite easy. Here's Nick wading up to it through deep snow and almost losing the will to carry on:

The final pitch turned out to be 60m in length (it had looked half that) with a hard vertical top section. Here's Nick towards the top.

As we got towards the top the weather cleared, giving us good views across to the fjord.

Snowy day in Kafjord

During our first climb of this trip we'd spotted a promising-looking icefall in a canyon on the north side of the Kafjord valley. Today we decided to have a closer look.

It was snowing gently on the drive up. The forecast was for snow all day, but there hadn't appeared to be snow slope above the icefall, so we weren't too worried about avalanche.

The approach climb up the canyon to the foot of the icefall turned out to be at a good angle for shedding snow, though. Nonetheless we still weren't too concerned as the recent weather hadn't been conducive to layering, and it felt stable under our snowshoes.

It wasn't clear which of two ice lines on the right side of the canyon we should take. We decided to try the lower one and Nick set off on the lead. Almost as soon as he'd started climbing it began snowing very heavily. Together with the spindrift blown off by gusts of wind the conditions were becoming truly "Scottish". Nick had to contend with a good bout of Hot Aches as blood started to circulate in his cold hands. After 45 minutes of trying to see Nick through the snow, quite a lot of freshly fallen snow slid past me down the canyon. The game was now off. Nick abseiled down, and we ran away. Again.

A good 6 inches of snow had fallen during our time in the canyon, and by the time we reached its mouth, we found ourselves in Narnia. Magical.
On reaching the car a half hour later there were ten inches of snow on its roof.

That should have been the end of this blog post. It isn't because on the way back to the main road I managed to drive off the road into 12 inches snow. I tried to reverse out but the wheels just spun. Nick applied the shovel but that didn't work either. Just as we were scratching our heads, along came a tractor. We flagged it down and the kind Norwegian driver attached a chain and dragged the car out in a jiffy. Nick videoed the scene before handing me the camera saying, kindly, "that has to go on the blog."

On the drive home I said "Well, at least since I'm doing the blogging I can give the incident some spin", I said. Nick said, "You'll have difficulty spinning that."

He's right too. In the video you can clearly see the red roadside marker pole that I missed before driving off the road.

Kafjord 2nd visit from Jim on Vimeo.

Game on

Nick cooked fajitas last night. They were surprisingly good*. Chicken, of course.

Woke up this morning to find that it's still snowing gently but the wind has dropped. The plan is to return to Kafjord to search for a WI5 we saw in a report on the Internet. If we find it we'll need to look hard at the snow conditions above the climb and on the approach.

*I meant: surprising, given the paucity of Mexican ingredients. Despite spending 3 weeks with Nick in Canada, and a week in Spain, I'm still not sure how good a cook he is.

Running away

We woke up to find it snowing this morning, with wind moaning in the chimney flue. We decided to have a "wee look" anyway, so drove back round the head of the fjord and north towards Lyngseidet. We parked, watched the snow swirling around for 5 minutes, then wimped out and drove back to the cabin.

Here's Nick choosing his breakfast in Skibotn petrol station. Cake!

I bought some smoked dried reindeer meat as a present for work colleagues. Chocolates are so passé.

Ice south of Lyngseidet

This post will probably be of interest only to climbers. The video below is of some of the ice lines south of Lyngseidet. Most of the climbs are multi-pitch, from WI3 (probably) to WI6 (possibly) but certainly with some WI4s and 5s. A map follows showing where the video was taken.

Ice south of Lyngseidet from Jim on Vimeo.

Roadside ice-cragging

Here's a clip from yesterday. 20km north of Skibotn on the E6.

Roadside cragging Norway 1 March 2011 from Jim on Vimeo.

Chicken fest

When we got back to the cabin I dug the chicken out of the snow. All 2kg of it was intact, untouched by wolverines. I cooked a huge Chicken Jalfezi which we are still struggling to digest. The rest went in the oven and then into the fridge for the next couple of suppers.

There is under-floor heating in the bathroom. This cabin is amazing.

More ice than you can shake a stick at

The forecast was for rain all day, but it was snowing quite heavily as we drove round the head of the fjord then north along the west side of Storfjorden towards Lyngseidet. We stopped for a coffee at Lyngenalp Lodge, then drove back south looking for ice to climb.

By the time we reached Kvalvik the cloud had cleared somewhat, and we spotted what looked like quite a short and easy icefall. A small road took us toward the base of the climb then it was on with the snowshoes for the short approach.

It turned out to be a 65m WI5, much longer and harder than it had looked. [Update: on consideration the climb is probably WI4+]. Here's Nick on the final pitch.

By the time we had reached the top the cloud had lifted giving us great views across the fjord. On the way back we saw several other promising-looking (and a couple of terrifying) icefalls along the escarpment we had climbed and the next one further north.

So we have found upwards of a week's worth of climbing, yippee. And Nick's a happy man now that we've found some harder stuff.

How to descend

Nick demonstrating how to use snowshoes with panache.

Nick's jump from Jim on Vimeo.

Day 3: searching for ice

We hired a very small car.

This morning we set off south-east from Skibotn towards the Finnish border. Kjetil had mentioned climbs in a gorge not far from the E8. After parking the car we first tried to descend to the gorge in just our climbing boots, but sank to our waists in the snow so we went back to the car for the snowshoes.

Once down we walked the length of the gorge along a frozen river. The ice climbs we saw were short and very easy, so we just enjoyed the atmosphere and the scenery. Kjetil had mentioned there are wolverine and lynx in the area. We saw some tracks but had no way of knowing what animal had made them.

Here's Nick crossing the river.

The climb back out of the gorge was a battle: even in showshoes we sank deep in snow and struggled to make headway.

It was lunchtime by the time we arrived back at the car, so we decided to have a look at some roadside ice about 20km north of Skibotn. It turned out to offer good climbing, 25m of off-vertical ice made plastic by the warmer temperatures.