South America autumn adventure!

I haven’t really made it official before, but on the 20th of September I’m going for the next adventure, and this time its to South America. I’m going with friend and filmer Bjarne Sahlen on Endlessflow  (www.endlessflow.net) and we are looking forward to a three-month expedition trough the Andes, starting in Ecuador and flying out from Santiago. We have of course kind of a game plan, but I don’t like talking too much before I do something because it can easily affect decisions up on the mountains, whether you are aware of it or not. But the adventure will be filmed and posted as episodes during the journey and I will also post you with some updates on this blog.
And yes, it will involve mountains, snow, skis and hopefully a bit of rock n roll! 




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A beautiful end of the summer

The last few weeks I have had a beautiful vacation in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Italy.  I stopped working about three weeks ago and then had a week of just hanging out in Norway. We even moved in to a house (yes, I have been living in a tent the whole summer, and with the Alaska trip about three out of the last four months). Then after Norway we went to Finland to catch up with my family, then back to Luleå  (my hometown in the North of Sweden) where after I went for a quick visit to Stockholm and Italy. Now I’m back home preparing for exciting times, but first I’m going for a photo-shoot in Narvik with Haglöfs friends Per Jonsson and Johanna Stålnacke as well as photographer Nicklas Blom.
Summing up the summer its been exactly what I was needing; an vacation from big mountains, great climbing both for myself and with clients, a fun job, lots and lots and lots of running and everything in one of the most beautiful sites in the world; the Lofoten Islands in the north of Norway.

Maybe I was working a little bit too much to really get in to the shape I would have liked to be in right now, but then again its great to get the energy from beginner climbers, and I still managed to log around 100km a week even though I was climbing nearly every day.

I have also been extremely bad bringing my camera for my everyday adventures, so there are not much to look at from this summers small adventures. But on the other hand it was my vacation. From now on I’m going to bring it where ever i go!

Now, as always I’m focusing for the objectives to come! 


A photo from one of the last climbing days in Lofoten… 

Dundret, Gällivare (In the north of Sweden). We drove bast the mountain an thought we needed to run up to the top to het the heart beating and to stretch our legs. It felt super easy after a summer of mountain running in Norway!

I usually gets one round a year of waterskiing out side of my cousins little island outside of Vaasa. 

Johanna caught a fish! 

Morning workout by the water… 

Expedition prepping back home…

And a clean rack, ready for a winter in a box. Except a few chosen ones that will suffer from winter climbing and steep skiing. 

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Alan Watts on one of the secrets of skiing, and life as well for that matter…

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Stetind – Eating humble cake on the national mountain of Norway

Last weekend I went over to the mainland for some climbing with my friend Seth Hobby. Our objective was the northwest ridge of Stetind, by some called “the longest rock route in Norway”. As both of us been working lots and only had this weekend free and the darkness is slowly coming to the north we felt like it was our last chance to give the route a try. So even though it was raining hard during the night we hoped to get up the lower slabs in the wet to enjoy the harder faces up higher that was getting dried up by the sun.
It was supposed to be easy but fairly unprotected climbing in the 5th grade on the lower slabs and we came in with the understanding that it was going to get though. But it got much harder than expected. Imagine forty meter run outs on slimy and mossy grade five slabs on less than perfect pro. What we would have run up in dry conditions slowed us down to snail speed climbing with Seth taking a 25meter fall in a bush and me doing some naughty unprotected down climbing.  So after half the day of feeding the Rat we called it the day. And we had only got up 300 or so meters out of the 1400 m that are making the route. 

Still, we where only about two pitches from the dry stuff where we would have been able to keep on moving, so the attempt didn’t feel to illogical.
 

We knew the odds where not to good to start up with, but it felt much more of an adventure than doing one of the easier popular routes (that we have already done) on the south face.

So down we went for a good dinner at the camp and a hope to blitz something shorter the next day.

But so wrong we could be. We still wanted a route that stood up to our ambitions so the day after we run up to the North-east ridge in 1h 20min and hoped to be really fast and then get back home in good time for work the next day.

However we run in to the wetness once again and did half the route on slimy rock. But realizing the cruxes higher up would just be too dangerous and take too much time we once again bailed and barely made it in time for the last ferry back to Lofoten.

We hit the mountain twice in a weekend and got spitted out at the bottom both times. And we only made it back home in early morning making the start of the workweek less than perfect.

Still, we had a really good weekend on my favourite mountain and not succeeding every time just makes the mountain games much more interesting. A real adventure for me is one where you don’t know how it’s going to end. Everything else is routine, at least in the point of view of an adventurer.  And it’s with the adventures that we all are feeding the rat, as late and great Mo Anthoine would say.


Stetind north face with all its splendor with the northwest ridge in the skyline. For those of you guys out there that are really able to climb the north face would be a great objective. It have never seen a repetition. 

Its dry in between the streaks… 

No pro

The east face with the north east ridge on the right

This area is both wild…

And beautiful… 

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Life of a young photographer

Check out talented photographer and friend Daniel Rönnbäck’s blog: “Life of a young Photographer“. He regularly post cool photos from all around the world and portraits of people, often from our own little bubble – the ski and adventure world. Follow this guy, he got a bright future…

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Seth Morrison – The Ordinary Skier Trailer 2

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Work and stuff…

Guiding Råna in the rain…
The tea is speaking early in the morning

Johanna at Unstad 

Working at Svolvergeita

And Stetind…

Course at the Eagle ridge

And the Rock n Roll ridge

And Pianokrakken… 
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