Lee Harrison Climbing

This is a preprint version of the article that appears in the  2024 UK Alpine Journal . 'How are your plans?' asked Zishan at our guesthouse in Shimshal. Privately, I thought 'not good', but replied, 'I think we'll wait a bit longer'. It was our first full day in Shimshal, and only two porters had appeared earlier in the morning out of the fifteen that we needed. Not a good ratio. Our plan was to trek to a base camp midway along the Virjerab Glacier, to the southeast of Shimshal, but the feedback from our guesthouse was that the way was hard for porters due to the undulating terrain. The lack of advance warning regarding our itinerary probably hadn't helped matters. Only two weeks earlier, Arran Turton-Phillips and I had pulled the plug on our trip to the Indian Karakoram. To cut a long, tedious bureaucratic story short, our climbing permits were a...

We were in Hemsedal because Murilo had been keen to have another go at Midtlinja on Hydnefossen after a couple of failed attempts. A few days ice climbing in the area and Murilo sensed his form wasn't where it needed to be for the route, and I was also a little ambivalent after climbing the line in 2020. With this plan scrapped, a large carrot was immediately dangled in front of my nose via social media. Kjørlifossen had just been climbed and this was apparently a massive classic, despite me never having heard of it before. Despite this icefall potentially being as hard as Midtlinja, the spirit of chasing the ephemeral got the better of us, and the following Sunday morning we were driving over Hemsedalfjellet en route for Lærdal - somewhere I had never climbed before. We were not the only people with this plan, and on the final stretch of the approach we passed a team of three descending French climbers. They were not happy with a horizontal crack at the base of the initial pillar ...

Abseiling the main pitch Plan A had been Grøtenutbekken, however once it became clear that the temperatures would be anything between - 20 and - 27 degrees, we quickly reconsidered due to the tension that would be in the ice. The reserve plan was Setesdal, where temperatures were expected to be in single digit minus figures, however that went southwards shortly before our departure on the Friday, when learned that ice conditions weren't great from a couple of sources. Thin ice, with water flowing freely down some of the major routes, didn't sound appealing enough to take a chance.  Rjukan seemed the natural choice at so short notice, as the temperatures were also a little more moderate than the original plan, and conditions were a fairly known substance due to having visited two weeks earlier. The snow on the approaches sounded deep, but that would be the case everywhere...

With so much ice having formed this season, I was keen to vist Rjukan to climb some routes that had evaded me during milder, drier winters. There was plenty of ice, but there was also plenty of snow to contend with, particularly after the preceeding 48 hours, and the snowfall wasn't due to ease up today. Perfect skiing conditions in fact... To Menn og et Foster seemed a good choice of route due to the moderately short approach. I had climbed the neighbouring route Bølgen in 2008, during which there had also been a lot of snow, and I remembered no epics in reaching its base. I had seen To Menn og et Foster from the road while visiting Rjuken in mid-December, and it had looked already in condition, and so a relatively safe bet for this second visit three weeks later. Some obvious curtains high on the route form the crux, but I was fairly confident that these had suitably fattened due to the amount of snow resting on them. Both Dorian and Jamie seemed psyched, despite this possibly no...