Lee Harrison Climbing

The hardest element of climbing Hardis at Sørstulen seemed to be getting through the barrier at the start of the private road. The 200kr fee for using the road is around three to four times the typical rate, and arguably exploitative, but pragmatically it's still cheaper than Jeroen and I visiting a climbing wall together, and the quality of climbing at Sørstulen was top notch on my last visit a few years ago. It was worth biting the bullet and paying. We sent the text, with the car registration details as described, waited for the barrier to lift, but nothing happened, apart from receiving a 200 kr invoice by SMS. It was 8:20am and the customer services were not available to speak to until 9am. I tried sending another text ten minutes later but it was the same outcome. Another invoice. We waited patiently until 9am. Sending an angry email to the same customer services helped pass the time. Jeroen meanwhile Googled and tried several optimistic ways to trick the gate to ope...

Rob was due fly home in the evening, however we had until around 2pm to climb. Hunderfossensøyla looked a good bet as the routes were short but there were enough of them to keep us occupied. Also nothing too hard as we were both feeling a little tired. The approach to the top of the cliff took less than ten minutes. We needed to abseil into the routes, which lay along the side of a wide riverbed, but with the easiest route being WI3+ we didn't expect any dramas in trying to escape. The main two lines at the ice crag were the left and right hand variants. The right one was steeper, with the ice stopping a good way below the top of the cliff, and we had no rock gear, so it seemed sensible to start with this. The plan being to climb to the top of the ice and then abseil from a couple of ice screws, which we would later retrieve on abseil. Rob abseiling into Hunderfossensøyla Hunderfossensøyla from the riverbed I found the route quite pumpy because the knobbly ice form...

At first I misread the name to be Øl-traversen ('The Beer Traverse'), which was one of the things that first attracted me to the route. OL-traversen ('The Olympic Traverse') is still an excellent route name and presumably in connection with the Olympic ski slopes at Kvitfjell directly opposite. I really like traverses! Partly because of the level of exposure relative to the grade, and also because of the head games involved as a result of traversing sideways from gear. The hand drawn topo and notes for the traverse was out of format with the rest of the guide, which suggested not many repeats. The route as a whole looked an adventure, which naturally attracted me to it.  After a long outing at Sørstulen the previous day, an easy approach for this outing was most welcome. The hillside looked fairly dry from the road but the ice in the upper half looked passable, although a lot thinner than in the guide. There were a few variations in the upper half so hopefully ...

For me I'm nearly always aiming for a roughly linear relationship between cost and distance traveled versus the amount and quality of climbing done. When I used to drive from London to the Scottish Highlands and back in a weekend the eighteen hour round-trip naturally meant we had to go as 'big' as our sleep deprived bodies and conditions would allow. I've only ever got on a long haul flight for high alpinism and on the flip side I travel a maximum of about one hour to go bouldering. Consequently there are no plans to visit Hampi in India. With Rob visiting from the UK for a long weekend the plan was of course at the relatively 'big' end of the scale rather than roadside ice cragging. Options were limited though due to many areas experiencing warm weather in the days leading up to the weekend. The general lack of snow and thin conditions further limited options. Plan A had been Jukulkula but with a plus degree forecast from Wednesday into the weekend, toget...

Stig and I had in effect done a day and a half's climbing the previous day so were now due for an easier day. Both the energy levels and psych were a little depleted. The single pitch route called Mælumsåa sounded the ticket as it was even closer to our accommodation than Bjørndalsbekken, plus Anna and her partner Bjørn Erik had climbed it the day before so we knew it was in good condition. The trail to the route would also be bashed of course. The route Despite being just a single pitch it was almost a full rope length and felt like a proper route. The ice was an improvement on Bjørndalsbekken in that there was no wet ice low down, and brittle ice high up was less of an issue. I took an interesting line, initially up the right side, that was quite easy to begin with but then ramped up more steeply to 80+ degrees. It was probably the crux, although easier than yesterday's, maybe partly due to a few helpful hooks from the previous day's ascent. Also a few cheeky ice ...

Ice conditions! The routes close to Sjoa had some of the best ice that I had climbed this season. It was far from perfect but much more homogeneous, fatter, and less damaged than the vast majority of routes to date. Bjørndalsbekken was just a short drive from where we were staying and so found its way to the top of our list. Little snow made the approach fairly easy in all respects. The route from the approach This was Stig's first proper ice route of the season (his only previous route this winter being 'Ut i vår Hage' on Skurvefjell, which had lacked any ice). The (optimistic) plan was that I would lead the easy first pitch to give him a chance to warm up and find his ice climbing skillz, and then it would be over to him to lead the steeper second pitch, which proved to be the crux. The ice on the first pitch was rather wet and soft. Not ideal for monopoints, particularly if there were similar conditions on the steeper ground to come. The ice curtains above...