Picture above: Maija reaches the South Peak.

Picture above: Getting ready to ski down slope called Hydrologen to the Tarfala valley with Kebnekaise crew.

Picture above: First half of the 270m of ice climbed.

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Picture above: Shot from the last year’s trip, we’re on our way to south peak.

Last year we climbed the south peak, now we’re planning for the north peak. Furthermore I think that I’ve spotted a nice and possibly unclimbed multi-pitch ice climbing route from the nearby mountain as well. I’m heading to Kebnekaise a bit earlier than the others, so I’ll have plenty of time to scout the area. Like last year, the good folks at Tribevine.com are also involved (see event invitation at facebook. In short it seems that I’m going to post plenty of ski touring and ice climbing images from the trip soon. Meanwhile you might want to check the report from the 2010 trip.

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Picture above: Searching for some champagne at Kebnekaise South Peak

Though Kebnekaise is not perhaps best place for pure ice climbing, it’s a great spot for winter sports holiday; you’ve got great mountaineering, ski touring and decent ice climbing in a one package. There’s huge variety of ski touring routes. Many easy ones such, Hembacke and everything up till the most frightening runs there is. For instance the one coming down from Laddjuvaggi was simply too much for me.

The biggest problem from ice climbing point of view is the fact that there isn’t too many easily accessible multi-pitch routes nearby. You either need to stick with easy routes such as Skarttacohkka, do the harder single pitch one in Tarfala multiple times or travel a bit further where there should be couple of multi-pitch routes as well (though I haven’t climbed those yet). One should also try out snow climbing there, there’s a good route going for instance on a ridge to the Kebnekaise North Peak.

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While the other article is still in the making (should be out fairly soon though), I thought to list the top three stupid things, I’ve done on the mountains. I’ve (luckily) learned something out of each, I hope you’ll either enjoy or learn from these three small stories as well.

Top three stupid things I’ve done on the mountains:

Number one was the large stone on top of a glacier formed stone ridge close to Annapurna base camp in Nepal. Well, not really the stone, but the fact that I had to climb on top of it. In 1996 we were hiking there with my friend. The last part of the path to the base camp goes on the side of a kind of stony ridge, there it was, right from our trail, a HUGE stone on top of the ridge hanging half out over about 200-300 meters high cliff, not exactly vertical, but steep enough to result deadly fall. Obviously I had to climb and get myself photographed (too bad, I couldn’t find the photo anymore) there. Once I was coming down from the stone I felt how the stone moved slightly. It was a scary moment. I’ve been avoiding such stones ever since.

On the same trip we did quite a few other stupidities as well. Like walked just in few days to the base camp (4130 meters above the sea level) and we didn’t stop there, we went about 700-800 above it without any acclimatization what so ever –> we were lucky and we didn’t get any serious mountain illness. Besides providing few opportunities for danger Annapurna is extremely beautiful spot, there is several over 7000 meter peaks around the base camp and there’s probably no other place such as this in the World. And if you’ll just do it like guide book says, it’s pretty easy to get there as well.

Number two I did while my first trip to Kebnekaise, Sweden. It was late on the summer. We were going up the east side route with my girl friend. She’s slightly afraid of heights and at some point we were so in so steep and high spot that she didn’t want to go further, especially because the next portion would have been on the glacier. Luckily there was another pair coming up straight behind us and one of them agreed to continue with me to the glacier. So we put on the crampons and all the other gear tied the rope (wrong way) and started ascending on the glacier. Neither one of us had any experience on glaciers nor red anything about them. Eventually I fell in to crevasse, which luckily wasn’t too wide. I managed to grab both sides of it with my hands and pull myself up from there.

Though on those first two I didn’t suffer any damage what so ever, the number three got nominated because I got some (though small) damage while being stupid. It’s the sliding incident that happened at the Hourglass fall, where I slid (and rumbled) down several hundred meters on a steep snow slope. If you’re interested, read the full article.

As you probably noticed Kebnekaise mountain station (a fjällstation as they call it) is fairly well equipped. In addition to accommodation and restaurant they rent climbing and randone gear, snow safety equipment, provide snow safety and randone courses and trips as well as ice climbing trips. In short the venue is great. I mean, surroundings is great, food is great, accommodation is great (being a mountain accommodation without no road connections what so ever) and the people, both the employees and visitors, are great. I’ve really enjoyed every time I’ve been there. As an extra plus there’s several smaller cottages available for visit within half a day’s skiing distance.

Picture above: Some mountains near Kebnekaise

Though I had my climbing gear I didn’t climb, not even though the guy who’s running the place asked me to join him for a day. The main reason is the fact that my girl friend isn’t that much in to climbing and I had agreed to help her with a news article she was writing; besides I wanted to ski around with her. I kind of regret it a bit, though. I mean I saw several interesting ice routes there. Anyways during the few days there we did mostly cross-country skiing and one longer one day randonnee trip, which included some skiing (or in my case snowboarding) at the glacier there. I have to say that I enjoyed both the cross-country skiing as well as randonnee.

Though this isn’t exactly ice climbing, I thought that ice climbers might like to know the venue as well as see some of the images below.

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Topics currently on the drawing board:

• Creating a perfect Abalakov thread (V-thread) – Detailed instructions, tips and tricks for creating Abalakov thread.
• The perfect belay anchor on ice – Detailed instructions, tips and tricks for creating belay anchors, techniques involved changing the lead etc.
• Emergency skills on multi-pitch ice climb - Skills, tips and tricks for emergency situations on multi-pitch climbing routes.
• Quickdraw s – what’s different? - A small review on different types of quickdraws.
• Kebnekaise randonee trip – Trip story about last year’s randonee trip with plenty of (good) images.
• Dreambag – In search for best down sleeping bag for high mountain trips.
• Handy equipment review – Review on some not so necessary, but handy, equipment there is for ice climbing
• The best ice climbing websites – Review and tips for best ice climbing related web-sites in the cyberspace.

In addition to these there will be plenty of climbing trip stories and images. So table is yours let me know, what would you like read.