Here are few findings for the next season:

1. Grivel Cascade – Fresh ice axe replacement blades – These are B-rated, but should be better for ice climbing than Grivel’s T-rated stuff, which excel on mixed routes. The link is not to the Grivel site, for some reason, there are plenty of such Grivel products that aren’t there. The link is to Needlesports, they have a good set of replacement blades.

2. Grivel Double Spring Leash (2 krab version) – It is not really a leash, but flexible runner, which can be attached to the harness to avoid loss of axe.

3. Arc’teryx Gamma MX soft shell jacket - A soft shell jacket, no hood, but ideal for wearing under Goretex or other waterproof shell. There’s also hooded version available, price is pretty steep though typically well over 300€.

4. Arc’teryx Gamma MX soft shell pants - The pants part of the above jacket.

5. Arc’teryx Bucket Liner – A hat that’s compatible with your helmet.

6. Arc’teryx Gamma SV Glove - Like many others, I’ve been looking for perfect ice climbing gloves (have a stock of quite a few already), would these be finally the ones?

7. Black Diamond Avalung II – I’m not absolutely sure if Avalung would be something that I would carry while climbing ice, though there’s certainly occassionally a danger of avalanche around. Anyways, for some reason I’ve been tempted to buy one for a long time.

8. Black Diamond First Shot - An interesting tool for getting the abalakov right for those days when you’ve done it already twice and it still wasn’t good enough.

9. Grivel Speedy – A kind of ice screw quickdraw combination, resulting better safety, reduced weight and faster placement.

10. Petzl Crevasse Rescue Kit – A compact emergency kit that contains everything needed for hauling / ascending in rescue situation.

11. Exped DownMat Pump - Like the award winning down mat, but with integrated pump. I mean, the pumping was the only real problem with these, and now it seems that they have solved it.

12. MSR Lightning Accent snowshoes – I’ve been long drooling over these snow shoes. Unfortunately I’ve already got MSR Denalis and I haven’t therefore really been able to justify the purchase.

13. Valandre Freja sleeping bag – A sleeping bag for cold winter nights, still pretty light. Temperature rating up to -33 in Celsius with weight only about 1,5kg is impressive.

14. Silvretta Freeride 800 AT skis – Recently I’ve been thinking that AT skis might be good alternative for approaches and ascents. This being said though, I guess I would like to have these just because of last season I carried my snowboard around way too much (not while ice climbing ofcourse).

15. Silvretta Pure Freeride AT bindings - The perfect companion to Silvretta Freeride 800 AT skis… though if you would like to use skis with your mountaineering boots, one should propably consider Silvretta 500′s. They’ll fit almost on any boot, but for obvious reasons aren’t that good for ski-ing.

I guess I need to start working harder in order to save enough money for all of this.

During the trip we climbed three ice falls at Tamok valley, Norway. It was surprising how easily the first two climbs went. We did both of those in a single day, each required three pitches with 60 meter rope. As we found few old Ablakov threads and attached prusik ropes while climbing it was kind of evident that these three were pretty popular falls for ice climbing. Only difficulty with the first fall was the top, where the stream had carved out most of the ice especially under the snow.

On the second day we had the longer and more difficult climb. It required four pitches and included some seriously thin ice plus a bit of planning while creating decent Abalakovs. After first pitch there was also a long snow section, where it was impossible to place any ice protection. This led us in to running belay situation. To avoid such next time, we will carry some pitons and hexes in future. I have to say that I was well above my comfort range there.

I was really enjoying the climbs. Those were our first climbs, which really required multiple pitches. In addition to those three real climbs, we did a probing climb, which almost turned in to accident, at the ice fall called “Hourglass”, which is located in the Skibotn valley.

Picture above: The third climb, this was four pitches.

During the trip weather was surprisingly nice. The sky was clear (in Norway that’s not that common) and temperature was between -5 (day time) and -15 (night time) in Celsius. Simply put, it was perfect from climbing stand point. We were able to find a camping location right by the road directly in front of three nice falls with easy and fairly short approach. Though we had to dig a small pocket for our car there was a small widening at the road, which made safe parking a bit easier. The location also had a good access to clear water from the small river between our camp and ice falls.

Picture above: Our camping ground and Jari.

Lessons learned and few tricks you should try, in case you already haven’t:

• If you don’t know all the details about the fall you’re climbing, you should cary some rock protection as well. There are situations where one might need to place piton or two to avoid running belay situation. Since pitons are fairly cheap, they come handy also while rappelling in places where you can’t create an Abalakov thread.
• We burned small candles inside the tent, which greatly reduced the amount of condensation (and resulting snow). Though we used improvised lantern hooked to the loop at the highest point of tent, there are some commercial alternatives as well. For instance you could try UCO Candle Lanterns.
• You can store your food by digging them in to snow in a plastic bag. Being below the snow prevents the food and drink from freezing quite effectively.
• If you’re having expedition-type climbing boots, you can wear the inner boot inside sleeping bag. This dries the boot and you can climb the next day with warm and dry feet.

In regards of camping the only problem was the Jari’s HUGE Exped Downmat 9DLX, which filled our Haglöfs Genius tent almost entirely. I didn’t have a chance while competing over sleeping space with my tiny Therm-a-Rest Prolite. I’ve prepared for this year’s expedition with my own Downmat (though smaller version), so that I’ve got an equal chance in the competition.

Location details:

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Few images from the trip below:

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