Climbing Extreme

It’s been over a week since we got back from Kåfjord Valley, Norway. My apologies for the delay with the report. Anyways, I have to say that climbing in Kåfjord were excellent. We had three days of climbing, one fall each day, highest climb roughly 340 meters and 8 pitches. It was kind of late season. Though it’s very much winter here in Finland still, sea, which stays open due the Golf current, warms up the shoreline of the Norway quite a bit and most of the snow had already disappeared. This being said, ice was there and it was good.

We arrived at Thursday evening. Since it was dark, it was a bit hassle to find the right fjord, I mean they all look alike and often fjords have kind of sub fjords, that fool you to believe that you’ve already arrived to the end even though you haven’t. A bit of help from Nokia maps, circling around local small roads (and some fields, which were marked as roads in the map) we eventually found the right spot. All though we couldn’t really verify it until morning we actually ended up just few hundred meters away from the first fall. Exactly on the spot we had planned to camp (which was surprising given the fact that I had forgotten to take GPS coordinates with me). We put our tent, were too tired to eat all we did we just basically went to sleep.

The first day and first 340 meters
We got up quite early, the morning was beautiful and few degrees below Celsius and a clear sky, our target right behind us just few hundred meters away, waiting for climbing. We ate, did lunch packages, prepared some hot tea and drinking water for the day and grabbed our backpacks. Since there were just few centimeters of snow, there were no use for snowshoes (again a large plus). Approach was easy, just followed the stream bank to the magnificent canyon, short uphill sprint and we were right below the fall (“Kåfjord fall 1″ in the map below).

Picture above: Tea time, I’m getting some refreshing tea while on our first climb.

While we geared up, couple French mountain guides came by as well. They were there checking out for possible spots for their clients. They were spending several weeks there (I wish I could do the same) and we were the first ice climbers they bumped in to. This gives a good picture about the arctic Norway from ice climbing perspective. The country is full of magnificent ice to climb, plenty of which within easy approach, with varying difficulty and length, the season lasts relatively long and you’ll be able to have your privacy with the nature if you wish. No wonder why Norway is referred as heaven of ice climbing.

Anyways, we were ready first and able to pick our line first, this wasn’t problem though; fall was wide enough to accommodate us all comfortably. It was great to see how the pros did the thing. The French guys needed 3 screws where we needed 5, they climbed with admirably systematically, one swing, two steps, and it just seemed so effortless. As it later on turned out they were able to climb two falls in a time we did one.

Fall was fairly straight forward to climb. Ice was good and relatively easy to secure, the snow bits weren’t too long and most of the fall was just straight forward climbing, grade varying between WI3/WI4. Only the last portion required a bit planning in order to get to trees (yes there were large enough ones for descent) a bit of snow and few meters of rock / mixed (though rock could have been avoided). The climbing went fairly effortlessly. The only real mistake we did was the fact that we didn’t take our water bottle up, only the thermos with tea. As a result we were pretty thirsty, though there were few “positive” surprises like the water tap which emerged trough one of our screws.

Picture above: Improvised water tap, wonder if that would hold?

For the evening we made fire, there were plenty of scrap food available nearby, and had a dinner. It was pretty fancy dinner actually on camping standards, some green asparagus soup, fire-roasted pork file and South-African red wine. We were even able to temper the wine by the fire.

Day two, onionskins
The second morning was clear again. We were lucky, since we had a plan to a bit of scouting. So I thought at least. So we drove back to direction of Skiboten a bit and spotted several suitable climbs, actually pretty close to our camping place. The two we selected (one for each remaining days) were both on the south side of Kåfjord. Both were flowing over the tunnel right next to Birtavarre, a village at the bottom of the Kåfjord.

For me the climb felt rather difficult. Approach wasn’t too bad, tough much heavier than the first one (and we actually made a mistake while choosing our approach route), but I didn’t feel secure at all with the ice. Axes didn’t feel like holding, my swings were detaching large onionskin blocks of ice and my feet felt like slipping. Perhaps the mixture of snow, water flow and the moist from the sea right below us provided ideal mixture for onion skin to form. This being said, my colleague Jari said that he didn’t experience it as difficult. Wonder if the mixed-blades (though sharp ones) in my axes made it crack, whereas Jari’s ice blades were just thin enough to keep the ice together. As a result of these difficulties of mine, Jari did by far most of the leading and we decided to skip the highest section of the fall. I kind of regret it though.

AAccording to French mountain guides we met day before this one was harder than the one we climbed first. I would agree, both in terms of approach, climbing as well as ice conditions. I guess grade for this fall would fall between WI3 and WI4+ depending on the section in question. There were also pretty impressive icicles and some rock roofs on the right side of the fall, so I guess even very experienced climbers would be able to face decent challenges, if they would like to.

Day three, easy climb
On third day we got up really early, I guess it was already around five a clock. We packed our base camp ate a bit and got ourselves to the third fall. Since it was early we also had time to take a short side track to the opposite side of the fjord and take couple of TOPO-pictures.

The weather wasn’t as nice as the other two days had been. It was much warmed, though not so warm that everything would be melting too fast. Instead it made ice pretty easy to climb, axe placements felt secure, is elastic and it didn’t fracture too much. The third fall we had selected was purposefully an easy climb, fairly high tough. We wanted to chill out and take it easy. The third fall had fairly long snow sections, requiring running belay and the ice sections weren’t too steep. While Jari led most of the ice, I led most of the running belays. I guess I still felt a bit shaky from the experiences on previous day.

There were some signs of recent avalanche. On the last snow section one could see very clearly where a fairly large pack of snow had broken and slid down. Because there were a bit feeling that the snow still there could do it once again we took that section extra carefully. The final pitch, or actually two pitches (though the last one was only perhaps 20 meters), went through a narrow ravine, which was really interesting to climb. There would have been another alternative, a wide formation of ice on the right as well, but since the ravine looked more interesting we chose that way.

Once we got to the top of the fall the weather even cleared out a bit and I have to say I enjoyed the scenery and I were really happy that we got there. Overall it was magnificent trip and I wish to be able to end up there soon again.

Location details:

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Few images from the trip below: