Lofoten

The Road to the Islands

We spent this leg of the honeymoon climbing in Lofoten in the Norwegian Arctic. The road to the islands was long; a 19 hour ferry ride from Harwich to Esbjerg, Denmark, followed by a 2500 km drive (equivalent to London-Geneva-London-Edinburgh) through Scandinavia.


The van runs smoothly, we have plenty tunes and podcasts to listen to, and it is really handy to be able to drive until you are tired, then stop when you find somewhere pretty to park, free from the constraints of hotels or campgrounds.

With little to see but pine trees and glaciated granite, driving through Sweden was like being on the A9 near Aviemore, but for four whole days. We split the journey with a day in Stockholm, where we joined in with a dance around a maypole and sang a song about frogs and pigs as part of their Midsummer celebrations. Norway was mountainous, but shrouded in rain and drizzle. Along the way, waves of pitter-pattering upon the windscreen were heard. These were uncorrelated with the presence of clouds in the sky...


Lofoten Climbing


After leaving the UK on a Wednesday night, we finally arrived in Lofoten on the Monday morning. The Lofoten islands are reknowned for the quality of their climbing on expansive granite faces. Of all the routes there was one that we especially wanted to climb: the Vestpillaren. Running up the sheer face of Presten (the Priest, above), the route is regarded as a world classic and everyone who has climbed it says that it is one of the best routes that they have ever done. It is longer (467 m or 1.5 Eiffel towers) and harder (Norwegian grade 6, ~E2 5b) than any of the longer routes that we had climbed before, but we thought that we would be up to it. We studied the guidebook intently, reading and rereading the route description and thinking about how we could maximise our chances.


Initially, we had day after day of great climbing on loads of short, fun, roadside routes in the sunshine. It is clear to see how Lofoten gets its reputation, with beautiful clean rock in a stunning setting, such as above the little town of Henningsvaer (below).


Wind and Showers

By the end of the first week the weather changed, bringing winds and rain. As the days passed, we tried to get out between showers to catch whatever short routes that we could. We knew that our time in Lofoten was finite so we were keen to get as many of the 'Top 50' best lines done as we could.


Some days were a complete write-off. On these, we caught up on washing and chilled in the van, reading and sorting digital photos. We also visited a viking museum where we drank mead and ate bread made with bone-marrow.


One afternoon we judged the weather poorly, and finished the route in the rain. The wet and windy abseil descent was particularly 'atmospheric'. Repeated trips to the tourist information or wireless internet zones predicted a few consecutive days of rainy mornings with drier afternoons and evenings.


Vestpillaren

On Thursday afternoon, as the last of morning's rain dried from the tarmac, we set off. 17:30 hrs would normally be late to be starting out on a 12-pitch route, but in the Arctic summer it doesn't ever get dark.


The route follows a series of cracks, grooves and ledges up the right hand side of the face. The cracks provide handholds and opportunity to place protective gear. In some of them you can barely fit your fingertips, others your whole fist. Many are climbed by laybacking: by pulling hard against the side of a crack, you can push your foot hard against the wall in front of you at waist height or higher. The roughness of the granite and the stickiness of the climbing shoe rubber keeps your foot in place and allows you to walk up the near vertical wall, at least as long as you have strength left in your hands to hold on, and in your feet to oppose them...


In the end, we climbed the whole route smoothly and without problems. We'd allocated the hardest pitches based on our individual strengths (strong fingers for Gemma, thuggy moves for me) and each was climbed steadily. There were opportunities to place protection at each of the hard bits, so it was never scary. Most of the pitches were brilliant and would have been classics in their own right. All our preparations seem to have paid off.


Halfway up, we caught a group of three that had set off two hours before us, so we took our time and savoured the moves and the views to the top. We finally topped out on the summit at about 02:30hrs, just as the rain began to spit once more. After walking down the back of the mountain and round the bottom, we got back to the car at 04:30 hrs, 11.5 hours after we left it.


Leaving Lofoten

Now we are en route back south. Following a rest day we climbed a final route on the Svolvaer Goat, a tall rock pinnacle above the town of Svolvaer. We declined to jump between the two horns (Matt Balmer has a great photo of Pete Rhodes making the leap when they went there last year). Then we hit the road again, this time following the Norwegian coast road. It's slow and windy compared to Sweden, but the fjordland scenery is much more spectacular.

Oslo Tuesday (where I made the map below), Malmo today, and Cologne for Lena and Tobi's wedding by the weekend.