Thursday, April 7th, 2011

Lappvikstind – Probable first descents in the couloir city

This last Tuesday I went for the first real adventure since I came up to Björkliden. I went to the mountain Lappvikstind in Skjombotn at the end of the Skjomen fjord south west of Narvik together with Björkliden locals Magnus Stålnacke and Mattias Ström. It’s a mountain I have been having my eyes upon for years with three beautiful couloir on its east face that probably never been skied.

Lappvikstind

You can’t find the mountain in the guidebook, and the couloirs are hard to see from the road and on the top there are not even a cairn (very popular in Norway).

The goal for the day was to climb and ski the two main couloirs on the, about 400-500m high east face. The weather was not to promising setting out from Björkliden, but the further we got to the west, the better the weather became. We started the hike in overcast but as we had climbed the first couloir of the day, perfect weather awaited us on the top.

The view of the savage Swedish and Norwegian mountains awaited us, deep fjords, the ocean and the feeling of being alone in the wild that I never really get when skiing and climbing in the alps. On this mountain we did not see a trace from another human being and the only thing we came to leave behind was our tracks and one rappel anchor in the second couloir.

The skiing does not get much better than this either. Knee-deep powder snow made the boot packing fairly strenuous and on the way down we just skied top to bottom screaming like kids!

The second couloir was much steeper and narrower than the first one and had two small rock steps that treated us with some easy mixed climbing. The top part was probably the steepest I have skied in Scandinavia, and we had to do some down climbing and rappelling for about 30m over the rock steps on the way down. But after this the skiing was, once again, magic and gave us another great memory from the Scandinavian mountains as well as about 1700m of fun skiing.

Thanks Magnus and Mattias for a good day out!

Couloirs and granite walls

Magnus Stålnacke working out

The first couloir from the summit

The mother of Norwegian couloirs; The Ganges couloir on the left. To the right; Heart of Gold – i did the probable first descent of this one a few years ago.

Magnus near the top

Magnus putting the first track in

The second couloir

Me about to ski the second couloir from the top

Magnus on the rappel

Magnus Stålnacke…

… in action

Magnus doing some turns on the way home

Lappvikstind in the sunset

Monday, April 4th, 2011

Fjällfest (Mountain Party)

From Thursday to Sunday this week the mountain festival Fjällfest will be arranged in the mountain station of Storulvån. It will be a weekend full of activities in the mountains and a get together for people in love with the mountains… Lectures will be held by, among others; Fredrik Sträng, Per Jonsson, Baffin Babes, Tormod Granheim and Claes Grundsten.

I will take the 18-hour train ride down to Storulvån to take part of “the only Swedish mountain festival”. Hope to see you there.

For more info, check www.fjallfest.se

Monday, April 4th, 2011

“I’m going home”

It has been a strange winter this year with the conditions in the mountains around Chamonix. Skiing wise, it has been a pretty good winter for powder skiing, but it’s been long in between the magical days and the snow cover we have gotten used to in the last few seasons never came.

In January we got a few rainstorms making for spring conditions in the mountains and great steep skiing but after that it’s been relatively dry.

Dry and warm winters means dangerous glaciers, bergschrunds and mountain faces. Weak bridges on the glaciers is giving you a round of Russian roulette every time you are out there putting the first tracks on the glaciers or want to get on a mountain face for a ski or a climb. And while you are on the faces there are rocks that normally is dead frozen to the mountain that trough melting starts raining from the sky.

It has been a great Chamonix season in many ways with highlights on the great alpine climbing conditions as well as some of the few, but ohh so good, powder days in Courmayeur and Helbronner. The best thing with Chamonix for me is it’s edge – the high end skiing that make up for about 50 % of its terrain but is only accessible for maybe less than 1 % of the skiers. This is what for me makes Chamonix the best ski resort in the world with no stress on powder days, no waiting in lines and still being able to ski more great snow than you can handle.

This year the more advanced skiing has not been in as good condition as the last few years and with the poor cover on the glaciers I have for some time had a gut feeling telling me its time to back of. With lots of friends dying and getting hurt and a bad foundation for the spring skiing it finally became an easy decision to leave Chamonix for my home mountains in the north of Scandinavia where we are having one of the best winters in years.

I’m sure there will be awesome skiing still in Chamonix this year, but with a few added bullets in the clip in the game of Russian roulette that the mountains always want to play with us. And gut feeling is the last thing, I have learnt, that we shall ignore in the mountains.

Evening light in the north, finally getting the first glimpse of the Swedish mountains

So I jumped in to the car and drove up north (the 3500km) to the calm little ski resort of Björkliden, far north of the arctic circle, to enjoy April before my and Max’s adventure to Alaska in May. On the wish list is to ski a few old projects in the neighbourhood, find some nice lines to climb, hang out with the great people up here, lots of running and training and of course enjoy just being in Sweden.

The first real ski tour of the season for me in Sweden on the classic Vassitjåkka. Johanna leading the way…

The view from the top, Voitasrita with its famous ski; the Triangle

Skiing down in good cream

Vassitjåkka north summit, the mountain of the sun…

Saturday, March 26th, 2011

Haglöfs trekking edit

This last summer I went up to North Sweden and Norway with filmer David Kvart and friends Emma Wahlberg, Emma Bäcklund and Sanna Boris Matsson to film a trecking film for Haglöfs. We did the classic treck, The Yo-yo route, between Nallo and Kebnekaise as well as a few day hikes on the Lofoten islands. We had an epic trip and on this edit you can see some of the material.

Check out more of Davids work at www.kvart.com and see more of the material from the trip on www.haglofs.com…

Haglöfs – Trekking Our Way from David Kvart on Vimeo.

Saturday, March 26th, 2011

La Maladière – L’arche perdue

Yesterday I went out with friend Kevin Gourges to climb at Maladière down valley past Sallanches on the way to Cluses. It’s a 250 meter crag with about 60 long routes on it overlooking the Arve valley. To access the crag you drive up on the backside and walk through the forrest and arriving on the top you do a few rappels and then walk to the route you have in mind. In this way you add a bit of nerve to the day as you know you have to finnish your route to get back to the car.

We chose a beautiful route called L’arche perdue and enjoyed some good quality climbing in great weather and perfect temperature for climbing rock!

Merci Kevin pour une belle journée!

On the first rappel

The view

Its steep

Kevin on the first pitch

Kevin Gourges

Saturday, March 26th, 2011

La Maladière – L’arche perdue

We chose abeautiful route called L’arche perdue and enjoyed some good quality climbing in great weather and perfect temperature for climbing rock!

Thanks Kevin for a good day out!

Thursday, March 24th, 2011

Aiguille du Chardonnet – West couloir

Today I had a little solo mission to ski one of the first routes I lay my eyes upon when I first came to Chamonix years ago – The west couloir on Aiguille du Chardonnet. Its one of those routes that one can see from Argentiere as well as the Grand Montets skiarea. But the direct version is still very rarely skied and it has a reputation of never being in good condition.

The West couloir on Aiguille du Chardonnet

As Im just back from Sweden and wanted to get a good workout and get acclimatised without to much objective dangers it felt like a good option, specially when going alone.

I was abit slow in the morning and only made it up with the third or fourth bin, but after traversing the glacier I was in front of the mornig race. I climbed the south couloir and joined the last part of the classic Forbes arête before I stood at the start of the West couloir. It was lots of snow in the south couloir and I was swimming in the snow making the track and in the end when putting my skis on I got joined on the summit by two frensh boys. I waited for them to get ready and then we skied the first half of the decent together with them before they left me alone for the direct finnish. The snow was great and about 15-20 cm deep, but with a hard layer underneath helping you to keep the concentration level up. In the last couloir I first used the rope to get over a small rockband and then skied all the way down to the finishing goulotte in one go. There I did three short sheltered rappels on the side of the couloir and then got back again finishing with a jump over the shrund. A few hundred vertical meters of good spring skiing awaited me here before I got down to the glacier and skied back down to town.

It was a good day up on the mountain with fun skiing and a worthy workout…