Fragments From A Month On The Move

Stockholm, 5/11

Dancing the Gangnam style dance together with the product developers and designers at the yearly Haglöfs sales meeting. Great people, well awaited Swedish food and a little toe suffering from getting a hit by a dancer’s ski boot.

 Haglöfs Sales meet 2012

 

Rehearsal before the show

 

Chamonix, 6-11/11

Metal scratching rock, moisture and screaming forearms dry tooling down the valley. Cold fingers and a crushed toe complaining anticipating every hit ice climbing on the steep but short walls on Mer de Glace – All of this, foreseeing the demands of meeting winter on ice falls in the north of Sweden.

 

Fernando dry tooling in Le Fayet

 

Ice clogging at Mer de Glaces, Chamonix

 

Mer de Glace

 

Annecy, 12-13/11

Coffee breaks, waiting time and long days at the Salomon headquarter in Annecy. Mild waves of frustration sometimes comes in waves from my Swedish mind on these kind of meetings – but then I remind myself, I’m working with artists, and the art of trying to come up with, and develop new inventions is not something that can be stressed in a industrial manner. Things have to take their time, and then once in a while, from all the chaos of brainstorms and test, something ingenious comes out, rises up and gets transformed to something that can be used to realize dreams in the mountains.

 

A work of an artist

Tignes, 14-15/11

Feeling, sensing and trying to understand plastic and metal put together in different manners to create direction change on snow. I have the chance to share the experience with some of the best backcountry skiers on the planet. Chris Rubens, Mike Douglas, Tony Lamiche and Greg Hill together with Salomon’s sharpest developers are skiing hard pistes to great powder and walking up hills in the search for what we believe is ski perfection.

 

 

Mike Douglas enjoying some Tignes november pow

 

Manchester, 16/11

Flashbacks from my childhood’s ice hockey years is taking hold of me in the lift. I’m in the Chillfactor indoor ski dome in Manchester, England. It’s cold and the building has the same smell (and probably the same cooling system) as an ice hockey hall. Mike Douglas and myself are skiing with the representatives from the Salomon store in the same building. After two runs I get a warning because I skied the tiny, flat, but oh so fun bump course without a helmet (there was no (clear?) signs). Mike was taking a photo of me and then skied the course. As he was with me I guess the “ski patrol” thought he should have known. Mike got asked to leave on his third run. They had just kicked out one of the greatest skiers that had ever sat his foot in this 50 meter (or something like that) slope. Everybody there laughed at the absurdity of it all. I went and got a rental helmet and took a few more runs. This was the definitely the most unreal ski experience this autumn.

 

Indoor skiing kicks ass

Kendal, 17-18/11

Some of the most passionate skiers in the world must come from the U.K and about 300 of them came to see the presentation of ‘Tempting Fear’ that I did together with Mike Douglas and Bjarne Salén at the Kendal Mountain Festival. We got a great welcoming and it was really nice to see a big part of the British outdoor scene together with some good films. With tears in my eyes, The Freedom Chair with fellow Salomon team member Josh Dueck (and also produced by Mike Douglas), definitely left the biggest impact on me.

Bjarne Salén, Mike Douglas, Heather Swift and Josh Dueck enjoying great English (Indian) food.

Mike and Josh presenting ‘The Freedom Chair’

Abisko, 19-27/11

Early mornings, cold, ice, early nights, pumped forearms, lack of light, magic light, friends and walkabouts in the darkness could sum up my eight days in the north doing my fourth SBO mountain guide course. The main topics were ice climbing and navigation and we climbed some amazing ice, did plenty of night navigation (in the afternoon) and in the end had yet another successful course on the relatively long road of becoming a mountain guide.

 

Morgan Salén warming up on The Big Blue

Magnus Eriksson at Lillpakte

SBO 2012 course in the dark

Mighty Kaisepakte, great ice already in November

Sami Modenius belaying Pierre Rizzardo and Oscar Wahlund

The magic light of the north! The sun does not rise at this time of the year

Rappelling down in the dark (at 2.30 pm)

Night navigation

French guide and instructor Pierre Rizzardo following on the nicest lead i got to do this week.

Magnus Eriksson taking over the lead

Rescue training at Kurvan

Luleå, 27/11

Lying down in my childhood living room, tired, watching the evening news with a cup of tea in my hand together with my mum – that made me travel back half my life to my high school years, when I was aspiring to live a life I’m now living.

 

Reindeers on the road between Kiruna and Luleå in the North of Sweden

Moscow, 28-29/11

Civilized wilderness defined. Two days in the Russian capital left a deep imprint in me. Beautiful architecture, roughness meeting beauty in the people, wonderful new friends, tons of snow on the streets and way of honesty and simplicity among the people I met, that I have only seen before in Finland. The food felt like what I ate with my family when I was a kid, and the Russian mountains have now discovered through my new friends have made me dream about future adventures. I were for the second time this month presenting ‘Tempting Fear’ as well as doing a short slideshow on a photo exhibition arranged by Russia’s leading mountain magazine VerticalMir. 

 

The Red Square in Moscow

 

Artem at Vertical Mir outside the Photo Exhibition

Stockholm, 30/11 – 2/12

Returning to my homeland capital I felt like I was on the countryside – the contrast was huge from the Russian ditto. I met up with friend and American alpinist Steve Housefor a bouldering session, and then went to his lecture at GIH. Our story has many similarities, and it was really touching hearing him put his words on the feelings and experiences of life we have both lived. He did a great job spellbinding the audience for two and a half hours.

Next day it was time for the Swedish mountain guide’s meeting; discussing the rules of our games in the mountains.

 

 

Steve House and Staffan Björklund on our afternoon bouldering session

Steve House getting presented at GIH, Stockholm.

What do you have left?

 

Beautiful Stockholm

SBO yearly guides meeting

Chamonix, 3/12

After a month of travelling and my first sleep-in for a very long time, I really appreciate the calm of our apartment at the end of the road somewhere in the Chamonix valley. Only the vibrations of the coffee warming up on the stove can be heard and outside the window the snowflakes are slowly falling with the grey clouds in the backdrop. Even nature is now whispering what social media been screaming for months: winter is here! 

 

A snowy and calm Chamonix

 

 

A Great Ski Day In Cervinia/Zermatt

After skiing the Glacier Rond the other day we tried to go alpine climbing on Midi, but got shut down by the weather. Then I got a call from my friend, Italian skier Giulia Monego. She said she was going to be in Cervinia skiing, the conditions and weather was looking good and she invited Ale Campos and myself to come and stay over the night at her boyfriend Patrick’s house.

We had a great time together with Giulia and Patrick who showed us some wonderful Italian hospitality, and then today Giulia and myself went up to the Zermatt glacier to have another great ski day.

Ten to twenty centimeters of fresh creamy snow awaited us in the morning and even though it was plenty of people on the glacier, almost no one skied off the pistes.

The wind picked up during the afternoon so we headed down to the valley for a good Italian lunch and a yoga session – A perfect ending to another good day in the mountains. Thanks Giulia and Patrick for this time!

Season Opening – Skiing The Glacier Ronde In October

The weeks after the Patagonia adventure has been filled with lots of rest, work, family time and me and my girl friend moving in to a new apartment just outside of Chamonix. Anyone who has been into the moving-in business know how much time and energy that takes.

I have totally ignored the warm rainstorms that has plastered the mountains with perfect steep skiing conditions and instead rested my mind from most things related to skiing.

Our tracks on Glacier Ronde yesterday the 29th of October!

But after getting my year pass for the lifts in Chamonix (and Courmayeur), the winter excitement took hold of me and I felt like I had to ski something. From where I live I have a first class view of on of the Chamonix classical semi-steep skis descents: The Glacier Ronde, and with a weekend full of rain and snowfall I couldn’t stay away from the thought of go skiing one of my favorite ski runs in the world.

Autumn can serve up with some of the best steep skiing conditions of the year, but it’s usually hard work to maneuver the lower elevations on the way back, where the snow cover normally is really poor.

As a proof of the possible good autumn conditions, a few years back, I managed to ski the Mallory (direct) of the north face of Aiguille du Midi in the best conditions I have ever seen up there. The thought of a mini repeat of that feeling was hard to stay away from.

Early Monday morning I met up with Swedish (half Danish, grew up in Spain) friend Niclas Hansen to take the first bin of the day at Aiguille du Midi. Only four other skiers accompanied us up.

At the top we skied down the semi icy ridge, then a very placky south face before we traversed around to the west side of the mountain. We used the rope to check the conditions on the traverse in to the big face where we found really good skiing conditions.

The first part of the run had about 20 cm of light powder snow, then the mid sections was pretty hard and the last third had about 30 cm of fresh snow on it.

We did one rappel to get in to the exit couloir and from here and onwards the snow conditions where competing with some of the better days in the winter season. Great skiing, great weather and great company – I were really happy I was out skiing in October.

At the end of the couloir we did one steep rappel to get down to the glacier and then we did about 2,5 hours of full on glacier warfare zig-zagging, jumping, climbing, traversing and rappelling before we reached the block terrain and “firm” ground.

From here on we had a long walk down to the old lift station and then the tunnel where Niclas Ferin (Thank you Niclas!) picked us up!

In winter it’s easy to ski the Ronde five times and be back in town for après ski, but now it’s still October and it feels great just to be out skiing again on Aiguille du Midi and totally escapistic to get a 1500 vertical meter powder run!