Sixty years to the day after topping out Troll Wall, Europe's tallest and steepest rock face, Tony Howard looks back on his first encounter with the wall, and gives a brief account of how the ascent came to pass.

In 1962, I went with four friends to climb in Lofoten in northern Norway, travelling north by ferries up the coast. Two of us hitched back overland, intentionally passing through the stunning scenery of Romsdal, a steep-sided valley south of the small town of Åndalsnes, where we saw the massive cliff faces looming in and out of the surrounding mist including the Troll Wall, little known back then. 

In 1963, after listening to my tales of Lofoten, two friends, Paul Seddon and Brian Hodgkindson also went to Norway, driving up from Bergen in Paul's minivan for their annual two-week summer holiday. The only information they had was from an article in an Alpine Club journal, written by Arne Randers Heen, a famous Norwegian climber, who lived in Åndalsnes.

It described a 1500m plus route which made its way from the valley up the impressive east face of Trollryggen (the Troll Ridge), graded Extreme. It formed the left (east) edge of the north facing Troll Wall, and was first climbed by Arne in September 1958, with Ralph Hoibakk.

Whilst Brian and Paul's original plan had been to have a look at Trollryggen, they realised that, after doing other climbs, and taking the weather and remaining time into consideration, it wasn't feasible.

However, Arne Randers took them up the winding Trollstigen road to the plateau at Stigfoss. From there, they cut out east up to the the top of the Troll Wall. With a vertical drop of probably more than 1,000m straight down to the valley of Romsdal, they realised it could be the highest vertical cliff in Europe.

Neither of them knew of anyone else from the UK who had seen the face from this vantage point or, if they had, had realised its probable significant standing, so this was an exciting discovery.

Returning to the UK with the news, my first question was whether they thought that the face was climbable. The answer was that it looked impossible from where they had stood on the ridge, but that no one would know until they tried.

So, in February 1965, two of us did a reconnaissance trip and discovered that unlike the tales of it being blank and unclimbable, there were snow-covered ledges on the face. We also saw a likely line slanting up diagonally across the wall.

The rest of the story of the now famous (or infamous!) Troll Wall is now history, and is well- documented. It was climbed in summer 1965, first by a Norwegian team who - to our concern - were already there when we arrived. To our relief they picked a different more direct line than ours, but after a few days both teams were rained off with waterfalls coming down the face.

Happily it meant we had staked our claim on our line, and when the Norwegians returned they chose another line trending left to gain the edge of the Trollryggen Pillar. I should add here that by this time we had all met and became lifelong friends.

It's not my intention here to write about our climb - it's all in my Troll Wall book. I will just say Tony Nicholls led the hardest pitch on the lower walls. Then we were rained and snowed off, descending through ice-filled waterfalls coming from 1000m above.

I failed to climb through, but Nick had a go and did it, saving our lives, soaked to the skin and icy cold. In doing so he trashed his hands so badly he couldn't return.

So only three of us made the actual ascent over  five and a half days, summiting on the 24th July - sixty years ago today - the day after the Norwegians, who met us when we eventually got down to the road.

The next day, we were all hosted by the local community to a celebratory reception whilst outside thunder rumbled and the rain poured down. How lucky we were!

Tony also forwarded this message from Stein Aasheim, Norweigan author and adventurer, shared with him yesterday, on the sixtieth anniversary of the Norweigan team's ascent.

In honor of today (23rd July, 2025), we use this picture of Tony Howard from the winter of 1967.

The story is this:

Today it is 60 years since Odd Eliassen, Jon Teigland, Leif-Norman Patterson, and Ole Daniel Enersen stood at the top guard on the Trollryggen - after making the first ascent of the Trollwall. The last rope length ended in the sunshine, two metres from the cairn on this day in 1965.

Parallel to the Norwegians, an English climbing team had held on a few hundred meters further to the right. They came up the next day. In other words, in the larger picture, it's almost a tie.

The newspapers wrote about the "death race in the Trollwall". "The English are leading", "The Norwegians have moved on", "There are reports of flowers in the middle of the wall".

It was chaos both on the front pages and down in the valley. The police had to direct traffic, the train stopped so the passengers could get out, buses were set up from the Grand Hotel, and a hobby astronomer had set up his [telescope] and got help organizing the queue - and payment.

But the race was a media-constructed case. Clickbait, as it's called today. In reality, the two climbing teams were good friends and helped each other to the extent possible. "First man up" they actually had no thoughts about.

And they are still good friends, the four left: Jon and Odd, and the leader of the British team, Tony Howard, and also John Ammatt, who later made himself Canadian. Tony lived in Romsdalen for a long time in the years after the Trollwall. He created the first climbing guide for Romsdalen, made a number of first climbs and was a pioneer in climbing in Norway - and still speaks Norwegian...

Happy birthday to Jon, Odd, John and Tony!