Climbing Extreme

It’s snowing, finally the long waited winter seems to be at reach. Just a few weeks, but the end of November at latest, and there’s enough good ice for climbing at Korouoma, Finland. It’s going to be exciting winter, there will be of course plenty of climbing at Korouoma and the usual trip to northern Norway, but I sense that there will be a few other very interesting trips in addition to that. Though Caucasus area has mainly attracted me for ski touring, I’ve heard that there are some ice climbs as well. I also made a summer trip to Rjukan and ice climbing seemed to be very much in the genes of the place. As I have a few friends in Oslo area, that’s another tempting direction. Atleast right now I’m determined to upgrade my grades, let’s see what happens.

Meanwhile I thought to drop you a few tips for climbing at Korouoma. Or actually there’s two.

1. Early season you could approach the falls from the other side, i.e. from the side of those falls and end up immediately on top of them. As the road there takes roughly 30 minutes to drive from other side it might not save much time at the approach, depending on where you come, but it’s definitely saving plenty of sweat. There’s a fairly short walk and it’s pretty level compared with the other way around.

Picture above: The “other-side-parking”.

2. Another no sweat hint is to use the ice of the river, at the bottom of Korouoma. If it’s cold before it snows too much (snow acts as insulation), there’s strong enough ice up till Northern Lights fall. Though the river takes plenty of turns, one should consider it as a viable alternative, as it is lot easier to walk than the river banks. You should be careful though; it’s slippery and you can’t use the crampons (too much pressure on ice). And it might break at the times. The river though at that time of the year is not deep, but still it’s not nice to have wet feet before starting to climb. Actually most people use part of the river ice every year, but the thing is that during certain years one gets to use it a lot more. The river trail usually starts a few hundred meters upstream from the bridge and ends well before Mammoth. During those good years, you get to walk all the way up if you like.

The images of this article are taken November 2009. Hopefully it gets like it soon this year as well.

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Few images from the Korouoma (November 2009):

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