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Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

Failure on Jiehkkevarri – Or, how we climbed and skied the normal route on Holmbuktstind in a snowstorm

On Monday we went to try Jiehkkevarri, the highest mountain in Lyngen, together with Patrik Jonsson (CEO on Magic Mountain Lodge) and Fredrik Aspö.

Our intention was to traverse the whole island via the highest mountain on in Lyngen and then try to spice it up on the way down. We wanted to check out the south face and we also had a great plan B in mind.

We started out early in the morning in good and clear weather, but the clouds where on their way in. The forecast up here is really unreliable so one just have to wake up and hope for the best in the mornings. We where hoping that the clouds would disappear while we where walking so we started up the normal route via Holmbuktstind.

To make a short story even shorter; the weather did not improve – it got much worse and when we where on the big glacier between Holmbuktstind and Jiehkkevarri we could not se much else than each other. We knew that if we would manage to find the summit (that is hard to find in good weather, because its so flat) we would still not be able to do any kind of interesting skiing. So we retraced our tracks and skied down the same way we had come. We got some good turns and got back to the lodge in good time for Mintu hot chocolate.

It was just another good day in the mountains with around 1700-1800 vertical meters of skinning. I felt a bit disappointed though, as this one would have been a great ending to our episodes and we did not have many days left.

All photos below are taken by Morgan Sahlén:

Bjarne walking in the snow storm

We finally found our way back to where we could see something

Myself skiing some powder

And asking Bjarne where to go

Patrik Jonsson taking a break

Myself skiing

Bjarne charging

Both Bjarne and me visited other realms after skiing

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

The Marecottes episode up on Oakley.com

Check it out here!

Monday, April 16th, 2012

An everyday adventure in les Marecottes – another episode from Endlessflow!

This is another episode from Bjarne Sahlén from when we took a small two-day adventure to Les Dents du Midi earlier this winter. The conditions where not perfect but we went out there trying and had another good mountain escapade!

Check out more of Bjarne’s good work at: endlessflow.posterous.com.

Andreas Fransson in Marécottes from Bjarne Sahlen on Vimeo.

Sunday, April 15th, 2012

This is it

This one is for all of us out there searching, for whatever that might be!

I shared this one last year too, but I feel like its time for a retake. I’m turning 29 today, and I’m still on the grand search… Jeff’s words are both comforting and alarming for me. I got reminded of it again when I found my girlfriend in tears after listening to him.

Sunday, April 15th, 2012

Stortinden – Mallroy

Yesterday we had another great and long day on the mountain. We drove around the mountain the day before to do some camping along the beach and then, in the morning we walked in to Stortinden on the south island of Lyngen.

Stortinden with the ramp, Mallroy, clearly possible on the north face – a really special run in the Lyngen alps…

On one of the first days in Lyngen we spotted this beautiful ramp that crosses the north face of the mountain and we felt from the first glimpse that this would be a perfect project for us!

The approach was long, but not very complex and just after twelve o’clock Morgan and me stood on the top of the mountain while Bjarne had reached his filming spot on the other side of the valley.

From here Morgan belayed me so I could have a good look at the entrance just under a big cornice. I shoveled away plenty of snow and then we tied a sling around a block and rappelled down to the start. I screwed up a bit as the perspectives had changed from the photo in my camera so I rappelled down to the next face further down and Morgan had to belay me so I could climb back up.

But in the end we where right and I started skiing down the extremely exposed start of the ramp. It was steep and at one point there was a meter vide steep traverse to skiers left with hundreds of meter of air under my skis. After that Morgan took over and cruised the wonderful snow on the ramp in big turns. I followed him and got really amazed of the snow quality in this forgotten place.

We continued down to a narrowing where we changed to crampons, down climbed for ten meters and then continued skiers left. We where not totally sure about the continuation because the terrain was very convex with just a little bit of snow on slabs so I banged in a piton and used rope support over a ledge. From here we kept on moving skiers left in to a couloir that offered us excellent snow all the way to the open fields below the face.

At that point I was relieved that we had found a good way down and got really happy to get some low angle powder turns to end the day.

We got back to the Magic Mountain Lodge at eight o’clock to an awaiting dinner. Today we have been resting in the sun, eating lots of birthday cake and doing interviews for the episodes. Tomorrow we are aiming for another big day in the mountains!

The name, Mallroy, hints to a classic on the north face of Midi in Cham. Both runs are including a seriously exposed traverse…

Boys getting ready at the car

The approach

Morgan making the track in deep powder

Morgan close to the top

Happy boys at the summit of Stortinden

The entrance

The start of the ramp

Some one third down

Morgan Sahlén in excellent snow

Look at the snow cloud!

!!!

Morgan disappeared… not to common on steep skiing missions

Happy Morgan!

Thursday, April 12th, 2012

Sofiatinden – Kosmiska Korridoren

Today we had another really good day! We had a long and chilled breakfast at the lodge and then Morgan and me sat of at around eleven to find something fun to ski. The weather was far from perfect but the forecast promised some sun in the afternoon. First we were thinking of doing a south facing couloir, but arriving at the objectives it was simply too warm so Morgan dropped the idea of going to Sofiatinden, a really classic ski tour close to the road, but with a steep north face with a couloir he had spotted the previous year.

Kosmiska Korridoren

I was all easy and treated the day as a good day out, and anything we would get done would only be bonus. We set up from the car at around twelve and two hours later we had done the a bit over 1200 meters to the top, where we were amazed by the look of the amazing couloir starting below our feet.

Boot deep powder awaited us all the way down this wonderful line and we only had to take our skis of once during the about 800 vertical meter run. That was to down climb a ten-meter icefall.

We are guessing it’s a big chance someone skied this already as the peak sees lots of traffic, but we choose to christen it anyhow till we find the rocker who already done it. Kosmiska korridoren seemed to us a perfect name as it reminded us of the Cham classic couloir Cosmique.