North Norway Ice: a Guideblog

Nick's put together a Guideblog for ice climbing in the Lyngen area. The idea is to put in one place all the information a climber might need for a trip.

There'll be lots of stuff we haven't covered, so we'd be grateful for any further information or comments.

Back to work

I had mixed feelings about returning to the UK. But spring has arrived, the leaves are coming out on the trees and it was a balmy 15 degrees today. I returned to more than 1300 unread emails at work, but am sustained by what was a truly great trip.

My work colleagues enjoyed the dried reindeer meat.

Here are a few more photos from Norway:

Just Another Morning

From yesterday:

Just Another Morning from Jim on Vimeo.

Stuff we haven't had time for

Hattavarri: two climbs at about 90m, plus a shorter one, all believed unclimbed
Kitdalen: a big icefall off the end of the valley, long-looking walk-in
Spansdalen: large number of icefalls (15-20?)
Kvalvik: remainder of the Seven Sisters
Kafjord: we heard about a canyon further southwest from where we climbed, including a 120m M6/WI5+, 80m WI6 X and WI7- X 170m
Nordkjosbotn: good-looking WI4 above the town
Furuflaten: a series of climbs on an escarpment above the village
Tunnel north of Furuflaten: long WI3-4 above the road tunnel
Between Skarvdalen and Birtavalen: another above a road tunnel
Opposite Lyngspollen on the east side of the fjord: a hard looking climb high up towards the top of the escarpment above the road (the main pillar of which collapsed while we were here).

I'm sure there's lots more. Someone with skis and a sense of adventure could probably find lots of virgin ice, too.

Last climb

We chose one of the Seven Sisters of Kvalvik as our last climb. It was, as usual, steeper than it looked. I led the first pitch, Nick the second. Nick had to weave about to find good ice. Even that kept fracturing in great dinner plates, adding interest to the lead.

A good WI4+ 160m, of which 60m was snow-plodding between ice pitches.

After that we drove to he largest town in the area, Nordkjosbotn, 50km south of Skibotn, to get cash to pay Stein-Are's dad for the cabin. We had coffee and cake in the town and picked up a few beers at the big Coop supermarket for our last evening.

It's been a superb trip. For the first couple of days we were a bit concerned that we wouldn't find enough ice at our grade but after some scouting and some advice from Kjetil and Aadne we found a bounty of very good climbing, more than enough in the area around Skibotn for our 3-week stay.

And we saw no other climbers, not one in 3 weeks!

Furuflaten

We woke early, to hear wind gusting around the cabin. The sun was out but we didn't fancy cold windy belays. Over our now standard breakfast of muesli with yoghurt, banana and raisins we worked through our dwindling list of ice venues would be sheltered from a south-easterly.

In the end we plumped for our original choice, a climb Kjetil had mentioned, and that we'd seen in a valley west of the road at Furuflaten.

By 09:30 we were at the base of the icefall, which was out of the wind. It looked to be a fairly short and easy climb but by now we'd learned that appearances can be deceptive up here. Part of the fun of there being no guidebook. As we were gearing up Nick remarked that "if it wasn't for foreshortening no-one would climb anything."

I led the first pitch. About halfway up the icefall I was nearing the end of the 60m ropes, so belayed and brought Nick up.

Nick led on, sending ice whizzing down. I didn't manage to dodge all the incoming fire and, for the 2nd time this trip, took a small piece of ice on the bridge of my nose.

The 2nd pitch was steeper than it had looked, as well as longer. The climb is a good, 110m WI4.

There were white horses on the waves in the fjord as we drove back to the cabin.

Stein-Are's dad came round after we got back. He's given us the key to the sauna and said to fire up the sauna's wood-burner today and tomorrow too if we like. The sauna is heating now.

Best day of the trip so far

Here's a video of yesterday's goings-on.

Hattavarri Prime from Jim on Vimeo.

The iceman sleepeth

All sorts of rationalisation has been going on as to why we aren't climbing today. "It's warmed up, tomorrow will be colder". "We need to conserve energy for the big one tomorrow" etc. Truth be told, we're wasted. Nick's gone back to bed.

Hattavarri Prime

Aadne emailed to say he thinks no-one's climbed the icefall we did. Nick's first new route! He's named it Hattavarri Prime, after the mountain it's on.

An arctic day high in Tamokdalen

We left the road heading northwest, snowshoes crumping in the snow as we walked up through birch woods for 45 minutes. At one point, as I waited for Nick, what looked like a Marsh tit flew up and sat on a branch five feet away, bold as brass, hoping for tastier food than the lichen or moss it had been taking off the birch trunks.

As we rose above the treeline a wide basin came into view surrounded by mountains. On the northwest side of the basin were 4 fine icefalls. Our approach involved a steep snow traverse high above a frozen lake, scary not so much for avalanche potential but because a mis-step would have led to a steep and very long slide down to the lake. It took 3 hours to reach the base of the climb from the car, most of it on the traverse.

We chose the second climb on the left, the steepest. It turned out to be 90m WI5, the second pitch just off-vertical for 50 metres. Another cracking lead by Nick, and a superb climb.
Thanks Aadne!

Dinner is chicken & pesto pasta with cheese, salami and veg, an easy favourite of this trip.
Nick has just remarked, "my head and heart want to climb tomorrow, but my body isn't willing." Let's see. It was a big day.

New routing?

Today we are going to follow a tip about ice hidden away a couple of kilometres from the road in Tamokdalen. The tip came from Aadne, a friend of Kjetil who lives and climbs locally. Apparently a lot of the ice there has never seen an ice axe. Exciting!

Simpletons climb at Kafjord

We had an "off day" today. We weren't engaged mentally and everything was harder work than it should have been. No disasters though, and in the end Nick led a steep 60m WI5, so all was not lost. The climb is to the left of the first climb of the trip in Kafjord.








Here's a clip from today.

Simpletons at Kafjord from Jim on Vimeo.

The moon's out so we may see the Northern Lights tonight. Toby emailed to say he saw them 3 nights running in Spansdalen!
Red Thai chicken curry for supper.

The cathedral climb

We got up at 05:30 feeling refreshed from our rest day and lots of sleep. The plan was to climb an icefall high on the escarpment by Kvalvik, and we were expecting a long, steep approach. In the event the approach wasn't as tough as expected - we reached the ice in an hour and a half. We could have slept in!

There was evidence of another climbing party before us: snowshoe tracks on the approach and V-threads in the ice. But in 16 days we still haven't seen any other climbers.

The icefall is about 30m wide at its base, tapering with height. The first 2 pitches gave excellent climbing past some strange ice formations:

Here's Nick belayed in an ice cave at the top of the 2nd pitch.

Exiting the cave and climbing up past it was scary. The ice was chandeliered and so didn't offer Nick any icescrew placements for a good few metres. It involved stepping up on small mushroom formations which didn't feel too secure either. It was another impressive lead by Nick. Further up the 3rd pitch Nick's axe broke through to the stream running underneath, which burst out and poured down the ice - and onto me as I followed.

It was another fine climb, a 170m WI4+/WI5. Approaching the top:

A rest day

We woke up to the news from Japan. Truly terrible.

This morning we both felt a bit jaded after 8 days climbing on the trot and so decided to have a rest day. Not much to report. I cooked bacon and eggs (thanks for the bacon you left, Toby, delicious!) then after breakfast we went back to bed and slept until noon.

Stein-Are popped in for a chat this afternoon. He and his wife are over visiting his dad for the weekend. He fired up the sauna for us, a fine woodburner-heated one. He said it's traditional to swim in the river afterwards, but we copped out and had cold showers instead.

Tonight's dinner was baked salmon with new potatoes, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower and Lofoten fiskesaus (white fish sauce). We'll be in bed by 21:30: we're planning to climb a big line high on an escarpment across the fjord, and need to be up early.

It's a cold clear night, but still there's no sign of the aurora borealis. Nick said it could been seen from Aberdeen in the last few days. Typical.

Domestic life at Cabin 7

Domestic life at Cabin 7 from Jim on Vimeo.